Overnight Sail From St. Augustine North

 We arrived in St. Augustine on May 23rd and spent the 24th touring the very historic waterfront. Since we had sailed into the Ft. Pierce inlet on May 3rd, we had spent most of our travel time on the ICW running the motor. I find the cruise along the ICW interesting, and at times very beautiful, but also the amount of other boat traffic and narrow channel make it a bit tedious and tiring. It is very similar to driving on a highway except with many other drivers that have no idea of the rules of the road and really don't care. On the other hand, when we can sail offshore, we can generally set the autopilot and play with the sails and just relax and make big chunks of miles. The problem is finding the right weather and the right inlets to use to get to and from the open Atlantic.

As I looked at the plan for the next few days after St. Augustine, it became very clear we would want to sail on the outside in the open Atlantic Ocean. The coast line takes a strong turn to the northeast at about the Florida/Georgia border. If we take a direct path to the northeast from St. Augustine, we could cut that corner and significantly reduce the miles on this trip. We are really not in a big hurry, but with the price of diesel, the cost savings could be significant. We have been seeing diesel prices approaching $6.00 per gallon. 

I looked at the weather and we had an excellent weather window to do a 2 day sail to Charleston, SC. The third day looked iffy, so we had to get into Charleston by dark on the 26th. We needed to maintain a 6 knot average to do that. 

I had one other big concern is that the St. Augustine inlet is notorious for difficult navigation. There are ever moving shallow shoals on both sides and many boats have run aground. I made a call to the local TowBoat US Captain to get local knowledge. He told me that it is really a very easy inlet in calm conditions. Just stay in the marked channel all the way to the sea buoy before you turn and you will be fine. Most people that get into trouble make the turn north or south too soon and hit the shoal. Got it!

I would have liked to leave at first light, but we had two problems with that plan. First, we had current against us and the current in this area rips at close to 3 knots. The second issue is that we had scheduled a pump out of our waste tanks at 9am, so we wanted to wait for that. 

At 8 am, I called the marina and cancelled the pump out. I really wanted to get moving and every hour would be critical to get to Charleston. I really did not want to enter that harbor in the dark and try to find a place to anchor. We were off the mooring and moving by 8:15am.

We had the strong current with us and we were moving at over 7 knots as we exited the harbor. When we cleared the jetties, the waves got bigger with the current crashing into the swell.

Pictures never do the sea state justice, but it was a bit rough while we exited the inlet.  

 I made sure to go all the way to the sea buoy (The buoy that marks the head of the channel) and then turned north. At that point we brought up the Genoa and staysail. We had one reef in the main. The boat felt great. We then were able to shut off the motor and I was a bit surprised to see that we were able to go 6 knots with less than 10 knots of wind. I think we had some help from the outer edge of the gulf stream. 

We had a fairly comfortable ride. Kim now takes some sea sickness meds. It helps, but she does catch up on her sleep. That is actually very good, because she is awake at night, allowing me to get some rest. 

It was by no means calm, but SHIFT didn't seem to mind. 

My navigation system was calculating that we would make Charleston at about 9pm the following day. That was cutting it close. Later in the day the wind picked up and so did our boat speed. It looked like we may make it. It was a very good day of sailing. We had no squalls and we had very good wind. I would have liked a little calmer sea, but you can't have everything. The only thing we had to concern ourselves with was ship traffic. It is amazing how in this great big ocean, two vessels end up trying to occupy the same place at the same time. 

Pardon the red and white reefing line hanging down, but beyond you can see a large ship that passed about 1 mile off our bow. 

 As we approached sunset the wind died down a bit. We were now going closer to 5 knots and our expected arrival was moving beyond sunset the following day. 

Sunsets at sea bring very mixed emotions. They are beautiful, but you also know it will soon be dark and the lack of vision can be a bit scary. 

I love the first light. I can now see and I can anticipate the action of the boat from the swell. 

I never get tired of sunrise over the open ocean. 

We had a good night. I even got a couple of half hour naps and was feeling pretty good. The problem is that the wind was not cooperating. We were now behind schedule to make Charleston by dark. We could have sailed on through the next night and go in further north, but I was concerned about the weather. It appeared that our best option now was to stop short of Charleston. We had a very good inlet that was about 30 miles from our current location. The Beaufort inlet leads to Hilton Head Island. We decided that was the best bet and the safe call. We had to make a significant turn to port. The wind was now behind us and so was the swell. I thought that this would be ok, but the boat rolled with each passing wave. This caused the wind angle on the genoa to change and the sail collapsed. Then when we rolled back it would fill with a big "Whomp". This is really hard on sails. We did this for about an hour and then I decided to bring in the sails and run the motor.

As we got closer to shore I saw something very strange on my chart plotter. There were over 20 targets on AIS, all at anchor, right in front of us. I am able to look at information on each target and found that they were all cargo ships at anchor waiting to go into Savannah, GA. As we got closer to them we could see they were fairly spaced out and were the size of large buildings. It was quite a site to see. 

Each one of these ships was over 600 feet long and just sitting there with all of the goods we need in this country. Very strange. 

From there, we motored into Port Royal Sound. It is a big and very long inlet, but luck was on our side. We had a strong current running with us and we were making over 6 knots the whole way in. The only problem was the winds were picking up to close to 20 knots. We couldn't sail because of the direction, but the concern became docking. We wanted to see some friends while we were in Hilton Head Island, so we called and got a slip at Skull Creek Marina. The $100 per night rate is about normal in this area, but it doesn't make it any less painful. We had a marina staff member meet the boat and it made the docking go off without a hitch. When we landed at Hilton Head, we were now in the South Carolina. That is only the third state we have been in on this trip. We had been in Florida since Thanksgiving. We skipped right over Georgia.

I recorded some video updates during the sail north. Click below to watch and listen to the updates:

St. Augustine Sail North

We were now tied to a dock and hooked up to AC power for the first time since December in Punta Gorda, Florida. It was hot, so we turned on the air conditioning. It still worked! I have to admit, it really felt good. 

I was tired and hungry. I called a good friend and former employer of mine that now lives on Hilton Head. He had plans for the long weekend ahead, but had time for dinner that evening. We had a great meal and really enjoyed catching up on the business world that I left long ago. Thanks for dinner, Mark! 

That night, I slept like a log until a storm woke me up at 6am. We had some 40+knot gusts in the marina, but we were nice and secure and the wind was blowing us away from our finger dock. I was very happy that we had made the decision to come on in and not push on. 

We had planned on only staying two nights in the marina. We started thinking about all of our options. It was now Friday the 26th of May and we were scheduled to depart the next day. This would mean that we would be traveling on the Memorial Day weekend. I really don't like to travel on weekends, but holiday weekends can be crazy. We decided to bite the bullet and stay in the marina for the entire weekend and stay 5 nights. What would we do with those 5 nights? In my next entry, I will tell you what we did with our time. 

A shot of Skull Creek Marina on Hilton Head Island. SHIFT is actually right in the middle of this shot.