March 17 ,18, 19

Tonight I am sitting, rocking gently, in the tidal flow going by the Isle of Hope Marina just below Savannah, GA in the town of Isle of Hope. I chose this marina to end up at today because it is next to a historic area and the little town is very old. It also has a bus which you can ride in and out of Savannah on. This is better than struggling up the Savannah river to the riverfront docks downtown which from what I hear are always full but this dock nearly always has room and is very nice. I left Brunswick this morning at about 8:30 AM and arrived here at 4:30 PM for a run of 90 miles and it was not tiring at all. I had good tides some of the way which meant that they were flowing the direction I was traveling instead of the other way. I would guess that today I hit them about 50 percent of the time. When you go against the tide the motor runs the same speed but the agitation and speed of the flow can cut your actual speed about 5 knots if you are close to the mouth of the river. Just think for a minute that I must have passed close to half million acres of marshland today. That land is just barely covered by water at high tide; lets say maybe six inches of water. Now think of all the little side creeks and rivers flowing into one another and then accumulating to go down to the ocean all at one time and then turn around and flow back in the next six hours and then do that four times a day. Just think how many times the riverbeds and marshes are scrubbed by the ocean tides and at this time of month the tides are usually much higher and much lower. Coming up the waterway at the low tide at times places Shorty and I so far down that anyone high up could probably only see my radar tower which is about a foot above the boat. I could only see boats coming at me when they got within about a half mile. Then they would become visible showing only the top part of the boat and most of them are from 15 to 20 feet high on the flying bridge deck which most of the bigger boats have. The only flying bridge I have is the one that I go under from time to time that tower over me by as much as 90 feet from me to the deck of the bridge. When I got up this morning there was fog on the river due to the fact that it was still only in the high 30’s but the water was much warmer. I am really cold most mornings when I get up, before I get my heater started to take the chill out but the floor of the boat always feels warmer than the air temperature which is nice and makes a cold morning nice on the feet. We are almost at high tide now and the ramp up to the shore is just a slight incline. When I got here this afternoon you almost had to be a mountain goat to climb up the ramp. The tidal flow today was going against the wind so in areas which were not shoaling there were some pretty good whitecaps and waves about two feet most of the day and I drove with my windows closed most of the day but in shirt sleeves as the sun felt good coming through the windows. I imagine that it will be pretty cool here tonight and I think it begins to warm up tomorrow. Out my windows I am surrounded by large boats ranging from a thirty foot boat behind me to mostly trawlers in the forty-fifty foot range and a few large cruisers bigger than that. But guess what; today with Shorty running at 3000 revolutions per minute for most of the day we passed most of the boats sitting here tonight. They all came in later than we did to the docks or were already here and haven’t moved for a couple of days or more. I think most of them are doing what I want to do tomorrow and that is sightsee in downtown Savannah without going up the river in there boats because the currents are really wicked and there is so much commercial traffic. For a major river I was surprised at its width when we crossed it a few days ago. It is very difficult for the large ocean going vessels to maneuver around little people such as Shorty because they cannot see him except on radar when they are close and even then once you lose sight of a vessel with eye contact it is hard to tell where they might be in front of or behind you. There was a large roll/on roll off ship in the Brunswick river this morning when I left and he was easily 1000 feet long and I know he had no idea I was about a half mile from him as he left port and when he got to the last buoy on the river he was in the same spot that I was going to make a left turn up the waterway and he had about a mile to go to the ocean entrance and he was already traveling faster than the twelve knots I was doing at the time.

I did not have any marker problems today. I managed to find all of them right where they should be thanks to the chartplotter. The chartplotter is really a most valuable instrument that anyone can have on board. Mine tells me the latitude and longitude that I am at and gives this information to my radio should I ever need to call for help on channel 16 which is the Coast Guard monitored channel. That would tell them exactly where I am at. When I contact marina’s using my radio I tell them at what marker I am and which direction I am headed on the waterway and this lets them know how far away I am and how long it will be before I am at their dock. They all provide help with the boat, they help you tie off to the dock. They hook up your shore power and make sure it is working.
They assist you in putting fuel in the tanks and then help with lines and such as you leave. They pump your holding tank from the boat to shore with a vacuum connection to make sure that none spills and the waters remain as clean as they can be.

A cute little towboat is going by towing a fishing boat which must have run out of fuel. That is one thing you can say so far about this trip is that everyone is very nice and will help you do anything you don’t know how to do yourself. Most of the boats when meeting are nice and slow down and when you pass someone you also give them the courtesy of no large wakes. The only ones who are not nice are the delivery captains and sportfishermen who believe there is only one speed and that is all the way to the firewall. You can now see the marker beacons strobing the red and green as darkness descends on the dock. Everyone has pretty well battened the hatches to keep the bugs out of their boats and all the socializing has been done for the day. The marina’s are really quiet, nobody is partying as everyone is either catching up on email or writing their notes or blogs for the day. I have logged my hours and caught up on expenses that I now keep on the computer as it is much easier. My dockage cost so far is twice what my fuel for the boat is running. I thought I would do more anchoring out and may do so as I continue on but with the tides being five feet or more and the currents pretty rugged it means that somebody on this boat must be a light sleeper in order to know if the anchor is dragging or not. I have been sleeping like a log except the night before I make the next move. I would not know most nights if I had drifted all the way to the ocean on the tide or not. With the tidal current moving about two miles per hour or more in eight hours you could be a long way from where you first started if you didn’t wake up. Most times the anchor will give you a scraping sound if it is not holding and you can reset it but in a tidal area the problem most often occurs when the tide changes direction so you could be further up or down the creek you are anchored in when you wake up. If you don’t turn off your chartplotter it has a function which will sound an alarm if you move a certain distance from where you are now, say a hundred or two hundred feet depending on how much anchor rope you have set out for the night. Your anchor rope can also wrap itself around something on the river floor and then you could also have problems. It that enough of this about anchoring. The only reason I am not anchored out is its easier to plug in than start the generator. I know that is what you are thinking. I really am afraid that the big bad wolf who comes around on the nights the moon is not out will get me. HA HA