We have just over 20 miles to travel today and two stern anchors (one on Boreas and one on Once Around) to retrieve before we depart. Due to the tide shifts (and all the playing around we did yesterday with anchors), Boreas is secured by the bow anchor and the stern anchor is relatively slack while Once Around is opposite that, tight on her stern not her bow. Because of this, we decide to retrieve Boreas’ anchor first with Frank and Fred in Frank’s dinghy and me at the helm of Boreas to make any slight engine maneuvers, if necessary, to keep the boat off the creek banks once the stern anchor is released. The anchor is retrieve quickly and the guys head off to work on Once Around.
Since we know Once Around will swing when the stern anchor is released, we decide to have Frank on the helm and Fred and Carrie in the dinghy. That way if the boat swings toward the creek bank, Frank will be able to control it with the engines. The stern anchor is released, the boat swings safely and Fred and Carrie try to pull up the stern anchor – however it is well hooked and no amount of tugging seems to do much. The next decision is to bring in the bow anchor, then motor up to the stern anchor, tie it to a cleat on the stern of Once Around and use the power of the boat to pull it up. This all goes extremely well and Carrie returns Fred to Boreas and then loads the dinghy back on their swim platform while we bring in the bow anchor on Boreas. From start to finish we have four anchors up and stowed and two boats on the move in less than 35 minutes – an excellent job by everyone!
The remainder of the trip is uneventful. Much of it is through the same salt marshes we have been traveling in. We must transit a section of the waterway called “Hell Gate” today. This cut between Raccoon Key and Harvey’s Island cuts over twelve miles off the journey and keeps us from having to travel out into Ossabaw Sound and the Atlantic Ocean. However it is extremely shallow – rumored to be the shallowest spot we will encounter on the intercoastal. Our plan of traveling during mid to high tides works perfectly and we slide through Hell Gate with over eleven feet of water in the channel, but we agree this would be a much scarier trip at low tide.
As we travel the last few miles toward Savannah, we begin to see more trees. While there are obviously still salt marshes, there are also islands covered in trees – we didn’t realize how much we missed the trees until we started seeing them again. Apparently the ospreys miss the trees as well. We have not seen an osprey nest on a channel mark since we got into Georgia, but just past Hell Gate we encounter our first one. But, thinking about what an osprey nest looks like, if there are no trees, there are no branches and so no building materials for a nest.
Miles: 20.2 Bridges: 1 Locks: 0
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| white pelicans at the entrance to Birthday Creek |
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| Hell Gate - as seen from the bridge on Boreas |
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| a few trees instead of just miles of salt marsh |
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| the bascule bridge at Skidaway Narrows is being replaced |
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| it is good to see an osprey nest on a channel mark again |
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