Our run from St. Augustine takes us through Palm Valley, with some of Florida’s prime real estate fronting the ICW. We experienced some fairly strong squalls in the afternoon, but nothing other than some wind and rain. We arrived in Fernandina Beach and took a mooring ball overnight. We shoved off the next morning and headed outside to Brunswick, avoiding some of the shallow areas of the ICW. Our transit of the most troublesome areas would fall just about dead low tide, so an outside run avoided that.
We arrived in Brunswick early Sunday afternoon, and planned to stay two nights. Brunswick is a popular spot with cruisers, many of whom prefer the protected area to leave the boat while traveling to homes or other destinations. We met up with some cruising friends, Molly was thrilled to find Bella and they enjoyed some play time. We later joined Don & Ellen of Sirius Endeavour, and Chris from Synergy for dinner. Four Selenes were docked, and Innu and Mystic Moon were still aboard, so we enjoyed dinner at a restaurant thanks to Luc’s rental car. We visited with several other cruisers we know, a stop in Brunswick is always like old home week. Part of our purpose in visiting was accomplished Monday morning when we visited Ocean Petroleum and took on 480 gallons of fuel. At $3.67/gal. our most costly fuel to date. Still, the price was down about 50 cents from the previous week. We didn’t top the tanks, we’re gambling that prices will drop by the time we need to fuel again.
We departed Tuesday evening to do an overnight to Beaufort, SC. The overnight was helped with bright moonlight, although conditions were not the best with winds piping up into the 25 kt range from time to time. We left with a very clean boat, arrived in Beaufort with a salt-covered mess! So first order in Beaufort was a fresh washdown! Beaufort is a beautiful town, one of our favorites.
Gardner & Caryl Mason on 19 Jun 2011 at 9:24 PM #
Steve & Barb, just a note to let you know we made our trip out of FL just bit before you all. We left Apr.5th and arrived May 31st We spent 5 weeks traveling and 2 weeks recharging the human batteries. Both of us lost weight 10-15lbs. Bud & Pat kept a very well maintained boat that was well named Almost Perfect! In 1900 miles we bought 900 gallons running at 1750 average on the 6068tfm.
We had our obligatory run aground in the cut to the Savannah river. Got IFR syndrome on the chart plotter and mistakenly thought a cable run was the channel. Will not be running outside the marks a second time! I will be searching your blogs for tips on running the boat we anchor almost all the time,so am very interested in your strategy on keeping bat bank healthy. We run 3 hrs a day while at anchor and shut the pro sine 3000 down at nite. I need to locate some blue strip LEDs for my
Electrical panel I Think I saw some comment on the Selene site. Thanks for running
Your blog! Gardner