Today we left the St Augustine mooring field at 6:30AM to take advantage of the incoming current to give us a push north on the ICW. We were doing almost 9.3mph which was great! Out 38 mile trip to the St John's River was uneventful under beautiful sunny skies. After crossing the river and a lift bridge we moved 2 miles to our next challenge...Three Sisters Creek. This is a place know for shoaling and boats have been grounded at mid tide in 5' of water. We were passing through just 30 minutes past high tide. We had depths of 12-13' all the way until we reached a crossroad in the water and the depth dropped to 6.5'. That is only 1.5 feet under our keel...very scary for a bit. We hit a few other skinny spots but we were moving through from high to mid tide and found the rest of the trip OK. When we reached Fernandina Beach we almost got sick from the smell of 2 paper plants along the shore. Who said cruising was exotic? We reached St Mary's by 4PM and sat to relax for the evening.
The winds are 22 and the tide is splashing under our keel (where we sleep) so it will be a noisy night. Peter has been receiving emails from his weather router, Chris Parker. He is talking about a tropical low forming off the north Florida/Georgia coastline with 40-80k winds Saturday to Monday. So, in the morning we are going to try to get back into the marina we stayed at last summer. Brunswick Landing marina is a hurricane hole and only about 35 miles to our north. To be continued.......
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