Florida

ICW
Friday, November 29 - The weather had turned cold and rainy and conditions outside the ICW were rough with small craft advisory. We needed to press on to get to St. Augustine by December 1 and opted to motor the ICW. We left St Marys around 11:30 and zig zagged our way down, hitting bottom in one spot of the channel. Kevin was able to wiggle the boat out into deeper water. We motored about 5 hours, past the St John river and anchored in front of the Atlantic Blvd twin bridge. Kevin looked at the plan for tomorrow and realized there was a problem with the bridge and tides. We needed it to be low tide to get under the bridge, low tide was 5:30 am or 3:30 pm. Neither option was good as it would be too dark at 5 in the morning to risk going under a fixed bridge and leaving at 3:30 only gave us 90 minutes of daylight before we would need to anchor again. (We avoid moving in the ICW at night due to all the potential obstacles). Then it occurred to us to pull anchor and go under the bridge and re-anchor. We had 20 minutes left before the tide became too high to move so we quickly pulled anchor and went under the bridge. We made it under the eastbound bridge fine but tickled the flex antenna on the westbound bridge.

Saturday, November 30 - It’s hard to believe that it’s the last day of November and it’s been almost a year since we left Kemah. I’m looking forward to being in one spot for a month and getting into a routine. We left our anchorage at 11:30 a.m. and went under 2 more fixed twin bridges with fingers crossed. The tide board for both were just above 64’ and we need at least 64’3”. Out antenna hit both bridges but no damage. The first few hours well passed large water front homes on our port side and uninhabited land on the starboard side. Later in the day the ICW widened and trees and beach lined both sides. It was warm in the sun but cold in the shade, which called for layers to come off only to be put back on again. We anchored at 4:10 p.m. near Vilano Beach, north of Bridge of Lions - we made it to St Augustine, Florida!

St Augustine
Sunday, December 1 - One of the reasons we anchored by Vilano Beach was to go to Publix, a half mile walk from the public dock. After returning with the groceries and putting it all away Kevin called the municipal marina to see if our mooring ball was available, which it was. At 11:10 we pulled up the anchor to make the 11:30 Bridge of Lions opening. I was putting the snubber in the locker after bringing the anchor home when we hit ground. It was a light touch at first but then there was a more powerful hit followed by several more hits as Kevin tried to steer off the sandbar. The current was strong and the tide was going down and the more we tried the more the current pushed our keel in. The charts showed we should have had 3 feet of water under our keel but clearly the charts were wrong. Another boater came by and tried to help with the dinghy trick but the current was too strong, his dinghy would not stay perpendicular to ours and he did not have enough power to turn us into the current. Kevin called TowBoatUS and we were told it would be 2 hours before someone arrived. That was bad news as the tide was continuing to go down and our keel would be in too deep. We have a winged keel which is problematic in this situation because the wings just dig in and putting too much pressure on one side will cause the keel to break. The good news is that the winged keel helped to keep us from getting blown over. TowBoatUS arrived an hour later and the captain was not able to get us off the sandbar. Our only option was to sit and wait until evening when the tide was high enough that it would lift us up. So we sat, healed over 5 degrees, and prayed that we didn’t heel anymore and that our keel and rudder didn’t break. The more the tide went down the more we felt the rudder bouncing up and down as it hit the bottom. I was checking the bilges to watch water levels and Kevin was in the aft lazarette checking the rudder. At 4:40 TowBoatUS came back to try again. By this time our rudder was sitting on the bottom. The TowBoat captain had us tie lines to our bow cleats and he was able to spin us around but the tide was still too low to move us out. The captain had his boat in slow and was gently coaxing our boat out, but as soon as we thought we had water under the keel we hit bottom again. We waited for more than an hour for the tide to come in high enough to give us momentum.
Finally, around 6:15 p.m. , the captain was able to pull us free and tow us into the channel. He watched us for a few more minutes to make sure our rudder was working properly. 7 hours after our first attempt we made it under the Bridge of Lions and to the mooring field. It was pitch dark and I was on the bow with a spotlight looking for our mooring ball and making sure there were no obstacles in our way. I was nervous about catching a mooring line in the dark but I wore a head light and Kevin did a great job of easing up to the ball so I was able to snag it with no problem. Once secured Kevin took the dinghy to check in with the marina and I went below to start dinner. Aside from the Gulf of Mexico crossing (where I truly feared we would die) this was our most stressful day of the year. We were concerned the boat would sink from either getting blown over by wind and current or from a broken keel not to mention concerned about a broken rudder. The stress of all that and sitting in the cockpit on a cold day left us depleted. We were very thankful to be safely on a mooring ball.Read more