Fernandina Beach, Florida to Brunswick, Georgia
March 10 to 16, 2024
The end of our first season of cruising has arrived and now the de-commissioning work begins. We just pulled into Brunswick Landing Marina on Friday, March 15th after a memorable last week of cruising.
Final Days in Florida
After four years, Utopia has finally left Florida. The prior owners brought her to Florida in May 2020 after a five-day passage from Honduras. She sat in a yard for 18 months before we purchased her and put her back into the water. We moved her from the Charlotte Harbor area up to the Shell Point near Tallahassee for a year, then sailed her down to St. Petersburg to prepare for our full-time cruising. From there, we worked our way down the west coast of Florida, around the keys, and up the eastern coast.
Last week started out on a mooring ball in Fernandina Beach, where visited the downtown area and took a long walk to the beach on the Atlantic side of the island. It was interesting to see the charming downtown so close to the very industrial waterfront only a couple blocks away.
Welcome to Georgia!
The Georgia-Florida state line is in the St. Marys River, just north of Fernandina Beach which is on Amelia Island. When we departed on Monday morning and crossed the St. Marys Inlet, it did not enter into our minds that we were finally leaving Florida because we were so focused on getting Utopia across the river with a very strong flood tide. We pointed the boat to straight across the river, but Utopia swiftly slid upstream. We anticipated the current and tried to leave a lot of room away from a range marker in the middle of the inlet. However, the effect of the current was stronger than I thought, and we got closer to the range marker than planned. The feeling was similar to a Floridan driving a car on icy roads.
Once safely across the inlet, it was not too long before we turned into the peaceful anchorage near the Sea Camp part of Cumberland Island National Seashore. Cumberland Island is Georgia's largest and southernmost barrier island at 17.5 miles long, totaling 36,415 acres. It is known for its sea turtles, wild turkeys, wild horses, armadillos, abundant shore birds, dune fields, maritime forests, salt marshes, and historic structures. We pretty much saw all of that except the sea turtles. It was very cool seeing wild horses wandering around the beach and the ruins of the Dungeness Mansion, brought to fame by the Carnegie family.
During our three nights here, we spent a fair amount of time exploring the island. This included a couple of shake down hikes with our loaded backpacks in preparation for our Appalachian Trail through-hike. It was a good test of what is upcoming for us once we begin our thru hike. We both consider the shakedown hikes to be a success but do need to remember to go slow at the beginning of our hike so to prevent injury.
After the last of our hikes, while the weather was still somewhat warm, Jimmy put on a wetsuit and jumped into the sub-sixty-degree water to check out the boat bottom, prop and zincs. We have noticed that our speed over ground was often more than two knots different from the speed through the water, making us wonder if we had excess growth on the bottom or on the prop. Also, it had been since January since the condition of the zincs were checked. Luckily, Jimmy did not have to stay in the water long because he found that all was good under the waterline. Now the accuracy of the speed log is under question, but not critical.
We timed our departure from the Cumberland Island anchorage to pass by Jekyll Island at high tide. Much of the ICW inn Georgia requires playing the tides. With our planning we had 7’ of water under the keel. The tide swings around this part of the state range from 6 to 8 feet, so had our passage been during low tide, Utopia would probably have hit the ground.
A little bit of research on the tides can make a trip much less stressful. In fact, while at Cumberland Island, we saw a guy row to shore at the as the strength of the currents began to increase. We hoped that he planned to spend several hours on shore to wait for less current to return. However, that was not the case. Later in the afternoon we saw him struggling to row back to his boat, unsuccessfully fighting the strong current and the wakes of speeding boats. We could not watch him suffer anymore and untied The Jeep, lowered it into the water and headed his way. He was incredibly grateful for the tow, and said we restored his faith in humanity. The comment surprised us since this was an easy thing for us to do, taking less than an hour of our time. We just hope he starts to read tide and current tables to make his rowing endeavors a little more attainable.
The last night of our cruising season was spent at anchor near the large cable stayed bridge over the Turtle River, near Brunswick. It was a nice, calm anchorage and a pretty afternoon to close out our first season of full-time cruising. In the morning, we weighed anchor and headed into the marina. We are so happy to have a positive experience with docking and departing the fuel dock, then getting into our slip, with dockhand help, all drama free.
Utopia will stay in the slip until next week, when she is scheduled to be hauled out. In the meantime, we have a good bit of work to do to de-commission the boat for spending hurricane season in the boat yard.
The last of our northbound trip photos are available in the button below. The newest photos start on 24-03-10.
This week's blog post was cowritten by both Sondra and Jimmy.