Tuesday 1 December – New Teakettle Creek to Brunswick, GA
Through the night we would check the GPS just to be sure the boat was securely anchored and would be in the same location in the morning as when we set the anchor yesterday afternoon. We were happy that was the case.
We woke up to heavy fog this morning. The weather forecast predicted the fog would lift by 1000 and thankfully we weren’t planning our departure from the anchorage until then anyway. But as the hours ticked by whenever it seemed like the fog was lifting, a new wave would appear and sock us in, making us wonder if we would be leaving the anchorage today as planned.
But true to the weather forecasts the fog lifted enough for us to feel safe enough to start the engine, lift the anchor, head back down the creek and re-enter the ICW on schedule.
We were glad we had planned to transit Little Mud River at high tide when we saw shoaling on the south end with depths of 11 feet. With an 8 foot tide that would mean that at low tide there would have only been 3 feet of water and the river would have been impassable for us.
We continued to wind our way through the Waterway on this quiet day.
Way back in October as we started this adventure we first saw another Gozzard (s/v Belle Bateaux – who we met in Goderich, Canada in April at the Gozzard Reunion) as we crossed under the Annapolis Bay Bridge in the Chesapeake Bay. We would hear them on the radio off and on throughout our travels but were always a day or two behind or in front of them it seemed. Today we finally saw them on the water as they came up behind us and passed us as we exited the Waterway to make our way up a small channel to Hidden Harbor Marina in Brunswick, GA.
The journey along the ICW really is a small community of the same boats passing each other along the way, leap frogging each other as one boat stops at one place for a few days and another at another place. It is not uncommon to see folks we met a week ago at a new marina.
We are starting to see native palm trees along the way….yay!!!
This marina had been an old fishing camp that was renovated into a townhouse/marina community. But timing is everything in real estate and due to the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, only half the the townhomes were ever built. They really didn’t sell as predicted and you can see the two story foundations that had been poured but never built.
The managers of the marina have the reputation of being the friendliest and most helpful along the ICW. True to their reputation they kindly offered to drive us anywhere we wanted to go for shopping or dinner.
Instead of taking them up on their generous offer, we connected with a friend who lives in Georgia. We had met Ben a couple of years ago on a sailing expedition in the South Pacific. We enjoyed a lovely dinner and catching up in nearby St. Simon’s Island.
We made plans that tomorrow Ben would join Bob for the 2.5 hour transit to our next marina in Brunswick (Brunswick Landing Marina) while Christina would drive his car the short 12 minutes the trip takes on land.