Nov. 11

The morning was still and relatively calm as we headed to Factory Creek swing bridge. I had misread the notes and thought he would open his last time at 7:00am. It turned out the bridge was closed from 7:00am to 9am, and would only open at 10:00 and 11:00. We had gotten an early start and were able to get an opening at 6:40 am. I am glad we started out a little early.

I looked at the chart plotter without my eyeglasses and thought I could shortcut the ICW by going around an island on the inside of the turn. It turned out that the water for the most part was deep enough but there were shallows for about 1 yards that were only 4 foot deep. Fortunately I caught the mistake before we were hard aground and learned a lesson that it is always better to follow the waterway.

We passed Parris Island at about 8:30 on our way to Port Royal sound and the weather was sunny and winds were light.

As we left the protection of the land out the channel the wind started to pipe up and blow fairly strongly out of the North at around 20 knots. Since this put the wind on our stern quarter the seas were rolling us a little.

We passed Savannah inlet at 12:00 and the ship traffic was light and we had no problems making our way through. It was a relief to get through this area with so little ducking and dodging of container ships.

We approached the St. Mary's inlet at 11:30 pm having covered out 119 miles from Beaufort while it would have been about 300 miles down the ICW from Georgia. The trip wasn't too arduous and we saved about 5 days. So here we are in Fernandina were we will sit for a day or two before continuing our trek south to the Bahamas.












Parris Island









Container ship outside Savannah















Fernandina Mooring Field