Dock 1 at Brunswick Landing
Flight Risk next to her neighbor Zulu Chief
11/14/2019 Thursday
On Wednesday, Cathy and I spent considerable time analyzing our situation: timeline, weather, distance, and ICW depths. We need to be at Palm Cover marina in Jacksonville Beach by November 22 at the latest, but we have a reservation starting on November 20. Basically, we are early. We are only one or two days away, depending on how we go.
I guess we have been moving too fast, but we were worried that weather might slow us down early in the trip, making it difficult to make up lost time. Because the weather has been great and we took several offshore hops, we are close to Jacksonville quite early.
We plan to stay in Brunswick Landing Marina in Brunswick, GA until Sunday, November 18. Our first impression of Brunswick was not so good. Probably due to the weather when we arrived. As we have explored the town and met the people, the place has grown on us. Glad we are staying a bit.
The red is less than 6 feet deep at mean low low tide behind Jekyll Island
We thought about leaving today (Thursday 11/20) to sail offshore down to Jacksonville, but the seas offshore did not look very pleasant and the current in St. John's river would have been 3 knots against us when we arrived. We are expecting major winds late tonight, so being in a protected harbor will be important. That is why we decided not to go halfway on the ICW past St. Mary's Inlet to anchor out behind Amelia Island. Marina choices and protected anchorages were limited in the area.
BTW, we rely on Windy and Chris Parker at the Marine Weather Center for our weather related decisions. Chris and his team have been great and right on target.
So, the current plan as of Thursday at noon is to wait here until Monday morning when the weather looks a little better and take the ICW to Amelia Island to anchor. The ICW from here runs behind Jekyll Island, which includes several very shallow sections. We will need to go through those at mid to high tide.
Docks as far as you can see
Another neighbor
Club house at Brunswick Landing
Photos
Saturday 11/16/2019
Another really dreary day today. I am slow to get started doing anything productive. Yesterday, I did install a new tank monitor on our holding tank. Thanks to John Bergman for the suggestion to use the SCAD monitors. Today, I have the fun job of calibrating the monitor. That means empty tank all the way and set it. Fill the tank all the way, then set it. Empty again. I hope it works.
I will take care of some other odd jobs today.
We are still on track to leave here on Monday morning around 7:30 am, so I can hit a rising tide behind Jekyll Island but not so high that I hit the bridge right after the shallow section.
Sunday 11/17/2019
What a difference a day makes. Well, the other day we made the decision to go through the ICW to St. Mary's. Today after further analysis, we have changed our minds again. We plan to go offshore to St. Mary's inlet tomorrow morning. That way we can bypass the shallow depths in the Jekyll Island channel and St. Andrew's Sound AND avoid going under the bridge at Jekyll Island. Turns out that bridge is not really 65 feet. With super high tides right now, we did not want to run the risk of hitting the bridge.
We need 62' of clearance. The bridge is known to be 64' under normal conditions. With super high tides and our need to go through the shallow areas with higher tides just seemed too complicated. It is simpler to go offshore.
It takes extra time to go out the inlet and back in at the other end, but overall the trip will be less annoying.