Fernandina Beach

I think I forgot to mention in the last blog that we were in Georgia! Here is the sunset from that night. As Georgia’s ICW is quite shallow in spots and it is not dredged due to financial reasons I was leaning toward going off shore. The would be via an overnight sail to get into Florida where the ICW is in better shape. As mentioned in a previous post it did not work out the day we tried. Steve (Slow Flight) was interested in doing the same thing so we made plans for leaving the next morning. We were going to either Fernandina Beach, Jacksonville or St Augustine and would make the decision based on timing and speed. As you can see by the picture it was very calm although the sea was going to be sloppy with waves coming in on our beam for the trip. It took a couple of hours to get out far enough from all the shallow water to actually head down the coast to Florida. We had some things going for us that we didn’t have two days before, the weather was going to be warm, even at night. The waves were not as bad but there were still no winds so it would be motoring for up to 24 hrs. Well two out of three isn’t bad! As a bonus Steve would be going along on his boat too. The seas were not agreeing with me today, although this time it was not bothering Heather as much. We had a full moon, which was a bonus, although the first part of the night it was overcast with a bit of rain. Once we got going we all agreed to press for St Augustine because at our present speed

(6 knots) we would arrive in Fernandina Beach at about 1 AM, not a good idea if you could help it. We could however make St. Augustine by noon the next day, so that was our destination. Around midnight Steve, who was about 2 miles ahead radioed and said he was having fuel problems. He had already changed his primary filters twice, cleaned out some lines but still had a very high vacuum so the engine would run and then die. Changed his filters out in that sloppy sea? Wow, he’s a real sailor, I was just working on keeping Heather’s potatoes and chicken supper down while being in the cockpit, there is no way this crème puff sailor could have managed to mess with fuel filters last night. Anyways we both stopped moving for a while, so he could try some more things. At this time with no forward motion we were sickenly rolling from side to side. Heather’s dinner was still in the northern hemisphere and I managed to avoid a feeding to the fish, but it was not fun :(

After what seemed like an eternity we decided to make for our nearest port , which was Fernandina beach (about 20 nm). Steve could do a few knots for a bit, then the engine would die, start it again, then die etc, but we were making progress. In the meantime he got a hold of a towing service (Sea Tow) but they would be another 1.5 hrs until they could get out to where we were. About 3:00 am Sea tow made it out and began towing him in. We decided to do the entrance at night, although not preferred it is very well marked, is quite deep and there was a full moon with good visibility. The hardest part was dealing with being tired after 16 hrs of sloppy seas. We made it in safe and sound at 5:00 am for a well deserved rest.

This afternoon we toured around town and had a nice lunch at the Happy Tomato.

These cool looking small speedboats are available for rent at the main dock, I’ve never seen anything like them but they look like fun!

Steve worked on his boat, checking and changing most of his fuel lines but to no avail. I’m going over tomorrow to help out and maybe between the two of us we can figure it out.