Goodby Hilton Head.
The only tricky part of this passage was at the beginning. South is to the left on this chart:
The deep water is shown as white and shallower is blue. We came from Hilton Head (the knife point) through Calibogue Sound and then had to cross over through blue water to Tybee Roads, the entrance to the Savannah River (beside the fork). The Roads is well marked by red and green buoys (purple dots to you) on the passage to the sea, lower left. But not many buoys in that blue water and some three foot depths. The fact that the sands shift make the chart not that accurate and we went at low tide so this was the scary part but we never saw less than ten feet of water.
The annoying part was how totally wrong the weather forecast was. Lene has become a bit obsessed about checking many sources to get it right and they all said the wind was from the northwest, behind us, but only five to ten knots, so we expected to need the motor, reduced our planning speed, left at 11 am instead of three pm and planned to get to the breakwater of the St. Marys River just after daybreak the next day. But the wind was much stronger, 15 to 20 knots, and from 220 degrees, the very direction we had to go. We played with tacking for a few hours with main and small jib, making great time but not in the right direction, so the remaining distance to the entrance was not diminishing much and the time remaining to get there on these courses would get us there in the late afternoon of the next day. So we furled all sails and motored directly into the wind, with each wave reducing our speed when the bow slammed back into the water after being lifted by the oncoming seas. No heeling, no rolling, just pitching and slamming.
During my after-dinner off-watch, 7:30 to midnight, the seas laid down a bit, increasing our speed. When I relieved Lene, the winds had come far enough westerly, the predicted direction, that we could sail, close hauled. But I was not about to try to put up the main in the dark, alone. So shutting off the engine I only used the genoa and it gave us, at various times, as little as three knots and as much as six, which was enough. The long and the short of it is that we turned into the St. Marys River entrance and Cumberland Sound, about 15 minutes after daybreak. It was cold, no moon, lots of stars in the clear skies. Sunrise:
Our choices at the end were threefold: north to an anchorage behind Cumberland Island, west up the St. Marys River or south to Fernandina Beach on the back side of Amelia Island, whose paper plant runs day and night and lights up the area at night for miles.
We chose Fernandina because our friends Dean and Susan of Autumn Borne were here, but plan to visit the other two locations in the next week. We took a mooring, our first mooring since we left the Harlem on October 8, grabbing it at about 7:30 am. The next hour, before breakfast, was devoted to putting away all of the stuff needed for an overnight passage and lowering and pumping up the dinghy. We are in FLORIDA at last! But it is still cold.
Well what to do all day? Lene liked the idea of my going ashore and leaving her with the kitties. On our way through the entrance from the sea we passed Fort Clinch on the northern tip of Amelia Island. A good place to explore, but, I was to learn that it was a far piece. A little more than a mile eastward on Atlantic Avenue, which runs the width of Amelia Island to the Atlantic,and then, after entry to the State Park that contains the fort, three more miles north through beautiful woods with nature trails, camp sites, observation points, a fishing pier and bike trails. I hitched a ride after about half a mile, with a man who it turns out is a park employee.
The fort, like many, was built after the British had bombed our cities in the War of 1812, but unlike most of those in the northeast, it was the scene of historic events, though minor ones, in later wars. It has a commanding position at the mouth of the St. Marys River, through which we had sailed this morning.
It was not quite finished when the Civil War began and the Union Army scrambled to try to get it ready but it was taken by the confederacy, without a shot being fired and surrendered to the North by General Lee, who gave up all of Florida to concentrate his forces in more strategic areas elsewhere. Fearing attack by the Spanish, it was again prepared, somewhat, during the Spanish American War, but that was the type of war we have sought but not obtained ever since: a decisive victory and over in a few months. So Fort Clinch was again not ready in time, and also, the Spanish were in no position to attack. And it was a Coast Guard observation base in the World Wars. It became a State Park and the fort was restored somewhat by the Civilian Conservation Corps, during the depression.
You can see the larger bricks in the lower half of the construction before the Civil war, with the second story added later of smaller bricks.
What made the visit memorable was the performance of Henry Work, a talented artist, in costume as a non-combatant who showed us arms, the infirmary, the storehouse and played the fife. He is a volunteer and has also volunteered to do such a gig at the fort in the Dry Tortugas if the National Park Service accepts his generous offer. I hope they do.
I got to talking with fellow tourists, Norma and Pierre, a retired couple from Montreal who tour the US almost six months each year in their truck drawn trailer. Such nomads are a lot like us, driving land yachts, sharing camaraderie and information with fellow travelers but unlike sailors, they can see the interior of the nation too. They drove me to see their campsite ($25 per night, compared to our mooring at $20) and then back to the marina, where I dinked back to the boat after buying fish, per the Admirals orders.
Aboard were Dean and Susan who had brought a bottle of red. We spent a pleasant few hours together before each couple cooked its own dinner on its own boat.
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