Monday 30 March 2020
I had my usual banana and a bowl of cereal before starting
the generator and main engine and rousing Mary to man the engine control on the
bridge while I handled the 150-pound anchor and chain with the hydraulic
windlass. As usual, I then took over
navigating the vessel while Mary went below to the galley to get her coffee
brewed and breakfast made which she then brought to the bridge settee/dinette
where she could observe the scenery and kibitz.
After a short time we passed by the town of Beaufort, SC, again wishing
the virus crisis would allow us to stop and enjoy these neat southern waterway
towns. A bit later I looked up from the
chart plotter to see the Briny Bug with Jill and Rudy Sachez aboard, a couple
we had not seen in some years since they left Panama City in their boat to
continue their peripatetic life style.
In the old nautical vernacular, we “spoke” the Briny Bug as we pulled up
alongside each other to have a “gam.”
Rudy, in his usual sarcastic mode, wanted to know if I needed directions
to the ocean. I told him we could find
it by drifting with the tide down the Beaufort River, if necessary. After crossing wakes with the Briny Bug, we
continued down the track to the decision point for whether we would tempt fate
at sea with a one-day weather window or continue the possibly more arduous
process of avoiding grounding in the Georgia marshes. Due to the infamous shallowness of the AICW
waters there and because of the ridiculously restrictive anchoring restrictions
the Georgia legislature recently passed (some of rather questionable
constitutional validity), I was anxious to avoid their waters and give them a
taste of what will happen to their recreational marine-related interests if
they persist in this foolishness. I am
thinking the virus scare with marinas refusing to take in transients, will slow
the annual spring boating migration north from southern waters further impacting
Georgia. After a last listen to the
coastal marine forecast on the marine radio, we elected to try the off shore
route to Jacksonville. A cool front was
blowing through the coastal areas as we exited Port Royal Sound with winds and
white caps following us down the long channel to sea. By the time we got to the sea buoy, the winds
were down to five knots or so. No white
caps were seen for the rest of the afternoon as we headed into a two-foot swell
with less than a foot of wind waves. At
1700 the port fuel tank was shutoff, and the starboard tank, which started the
day with more fuel in it, was brought on line for the rest of the night. I closed the two large sea cocks in this hull
sealing us off from accidental flooding; these large valves supply a saltwater
head (not in use by us) and an anchor wash-down pump and all four marine air
conditioners. The generators and main
engine are keel-cooled requiring no seawater intake to cool. So, about the only thing which could cause
the bilge alarm to go off would be spilled engine coolant or oil, and either of
those would create an alarm at the helm by the time the high bilge level sensor
went off. Thus set up, we wound up
supper before dark and settled in for the long hours of darkness alternating
with each other on lookout watching gauges and the two navigation displays and
radar, all dimmed to prevent loss of night vision. The ever present rumble of the main engine
and the thrum of the prop against the hull were either comforting or annoying
sounds, depending upon the listeners’ predilections – in this case, we all
probably know who is who in this boat! I
bought my night vision rifle scope along for this kind of dark night. All of this business of setting up for and
standing the watch is second nature to me from a misspent youth during over 20
years at sea as a “trained killer” in Uncle Sam’s Navy. Old watch standing habits learned the hard
way come to hand without even thinking about them. For instance, many people scan the horizon
with binoculars in a sweep, while the Navy taught that the human eye processes
in snapshots and the proper way to scan with binoculars is to make short stop
and start overlapping sweeps. Late in
the afternoon, be passed by the entrance to the channel into Savannah and saw
the pilot getting on board one of the several merchant ships in the
offing. About midnight we went by the
entrance to Brunswick, GA where the car carrier Golden Ray still lies on her
side in St Simon Sound waiting to be cut up and hauled away. With my laptop displaying the chart and our
route and us on that route over on the port side chart table, the Garmin chart
plotter which its radar overlaid on the chart and route in the center over the
helm, and the old school green colored radar display from our second radar on
the starboard side, we were well informed of what was happening around us. I fiddled with the faulty heading reference
(compass) of the autopilot to enable it to follow a route from the Garmin
plotter allowing us to never touch the wheel of over 130 of the 170 miles we traveled. We were hardly ever much more than 20 miles
from land in about 45 feet of water most of the time. By 0500 we were turning into the St Johns
River channel into Jacksonville and had to motor around for a couple of hours
in the swift ebb tide waiting for the Morningstar Marina staff to get into work
and for the trawler occupying the spot we needed at the pier to leave. By 0700 we were moored, ending a long 24-hour
run.
