Trawler Blogs

Fernandina Beach to Jekyll Island, GA

Now this is the way to cruise. We were only going 32 miles so we could start out later. We were also gauging our departure and arrival times to take advantage of the tides. We are finding that the currents seem to be quieter at flood and/or ebb tide. Flood tide at JekyllIsland was 2:45 so we left FernandinaBeach at 11:00.

We were excited to pass by King’s Bay. This is a submarine base for the US. We read that when these subs enter at St. Mary’s Sound, often they are on the surface and throw huge wakes. Well, all we saw was the submarine dock – empty – and the patrol boat on alert. The ICW passes very close to the base and we saw a patrol boat start toward us right before we made our turn into the ICW channel. They definitely were ready in case we had continued straight.

Jekyll Island

What a pleasant stay we had at the Jekyll Harbor Marina, Georgia – a clean marina with accommodating staff and the first courtesy car since Mobile, Alabama. Our four days here were quite hot – high 80s to low 90s – and very humid – about 85%. The locals say this is pretty normal for this time of year.

Friday we made reservations and played golf at PineLakes, one of the four courses on the Island. I am not a good golfer, but I enjoy the game – That day was better than normal and I almost broke under 110.

Did you notice that I didn’t mention Mark’s golf score? He’s starting to talk about quitting golf again. I hope not as I truly enjoy golfing with him. I told him before we go golfing again, that he needs to eat a good breakfast instead of the one he had

http://www.jekyllislandhistory.com/federalreserve.shtml

We left JekyllIsland Sunday morning and cruised 70 miles to Kilkenny Marina. Originally, we had planned to break it up with a shorter stay, but we would have needed to travel a ways off the ICW and there was a questionable shallow spot on the charts that made us feel uncomfortable. There aren’t many marinas to choose from along this stretch of the ICW so Kilkenny became our next choice. There were mixed reviews about Kilkenny – some have loved the peace and quiet and the sky full of stars while others commented that they thought they heard the banjo pickin’ from “Deliverance”.

We were pleasantly surprised to have a fellow traveler come upstream and also stop at the marina. Tony and Joan (m/v Destrier) were looking for a place to anchor, but saw us and decided to stop. We met them in Demopolis and we were in Turner Marina in Mobile, AL during Thanksgiving. We did some brief catching up and then planned to stay in the same marina at Hilton Head. We love these kind of surprises.

Monday morning started out with Mark changing the fuel filters and by 8:00 we were off. There had been notices to mariners on line about several passages that were very low during low tide. We were trying to plan around the tides but we are not quite sure how long it would take us to travel the many twists and turns of the ICW. Because of the 8-9 foot change from low to high tide, there was plenty of clearance under the two bridges that would have typically needed to open for us.

However, the narrow cuts from one river to another became very shallow. Mark’s knowledge of river currents and where shoaling occurs came in handy for this leg of the trip and he kept us in the deeper water. We also had one local captain volunteer how to navigate a particularly tricky cut entrance -very helpful indeed.