Our nice little island anchorage last Monday took a turn in the middle of the night. We had left the windows open for the breeze and were woken up in the middle of the night by no see ums. So we shut all the windows and vacuumed up as many as we could. But the damage was done, add a few dozen more bites to my count 😩.

As soon as the sun was up so were we. We pulled up the anchor and headed to St. Augustine. We had been warned by multiple people about the current there so we made sure to arrive at slack tide. Slack water is a short period when there is no movement either way in the tidal stream, and which occurs before the direction the tidal stream reverses.

There were a few Loopers boats at the marina and that evening we went over to Caribbean Dream for docktails. That night the pistol shrimp were back.

Wednesday morning we went to Castillo De San Marcos. A Spanish Fort built to protect the coastline. It was built in a star formation that gave great vantage points from all sides. The Fort was eventually turned over to the United States when Spain ceded the Florida territory.

From there we went to the Pirate & Treasure Museum. It was really interesting with actual artifacts and treasure pieces from real pirates throughout history.

The last exhibit was of movie prop pieces from famous Pirate movies, including my favorite 😄.

We went back to the boat to get the fluff and take a walk to West Marine for a new boat pole. Ours had made its way into the water and got ran over. Afterwards I walked around checking out the town. The whole area is heavily Spanish colonial influenced with many beautiful buildings.

That evening we went to dinner with Ken & Kathy from Caribbean Dream to Casa Reina Taqueria and Tequila. They had really good salsa and excellent pork belly tacos! 😋 I’d put them in a close third place after the food truck in Miami Beach.

Thursday morning we left St. Augustine and traveled up the ICW. We came to the Jim King free dock just outside Jacksonville. There were already a few boats docked here and a few more arrived after us, some of them Loopers. We all gathered in the evening for docktails.

Friday everyone on the dock got ready to leave in the morning. We made our way to Jekyll Island in Georgia. Having first arrived in Florida in November I was ready to move on! It was low tide when we arrived and the amount of water between the shore side of the dock and land was very narrow. We got set up in our slip and I took Skia for a walk. We found this nice nature trail with live oak covered in Spanish moss.

Afterwards Don and I walked up to the market in town and then we met Dan and Deb from Razors Edge at Zachary’s Riverhouse right at the marina.  I had a very good crab stew.

Saturday we woke up to rain. As we left the marina it was a very dreary ride. We did see more dolphins along the way which never gets old. When we got to the anchorage we were aiming for it did not look very good so we kept going. We found a spot that looked nice and protected with a patch of sand across the way to take the fluff.

All night the wind kept getting stronger. Sunday brought heavy rain and more wind. We started heading for Savannah. It was a fairly rough ride especially crossing the channels going out to the Atlantic. When we got to a pass between two islands called Hell Gate the boat stopped moving.

The engine was still running but the throttle wasn’t engaging and we weren’t getting propulsion. Don tired bringing it back into neutral and re engaging but it wouldn’t move. The channel was super narrow with very shallow water on both sides. We dropped the anchor and shut the boat off. I called Tow Boat US (AAA for the water). They dispatched a tow boat to come get us. The driver called us to verify our location and said it was a very bad place to be stranded.  I also called the marina we were headed to and let them know our situation. When I told them where we were stuck the guy said that was just about the worst spot we could be. So that made us feel even better about the situation. Don got in the water to check the propeller, which best he could tell seemed okay.

We restarted the boat to see if we could at least get it into idle. It seemed to move so we pulled up the anchor and puttered out of that area. Once clear and in more open water Don tried to throttle up a little and it cut out again. We dropped the anchor back down and called our tow boat driver to let him know our new location. He was glad we were out of that other spot, picking us up where we were now would be a lot easier.

While going to check the prop, we also discovered the wind had tore the bimini top stitching out, ripped the solar panels off the roof and bent the aluminum mounts. Extra fun.

The tow boat got to us pretty quickly, we got hooked up and got a ride the rest of the 16 miles to Thunderbolt Marina.

When we got there they got us set up for a service call in the morning. We were docked behind Table Six and went over for much needed docktails that evening.

This morning while waiting for the mechanic I sewed up the bimini and did laundry. Don looked in the engine hatch and found a corroded double wire with one of them severed. When the mechanic came he confirmed that it was the wire for the throttle relay. Don was able to repair it himself and the mechanic didn’t charge us for coming down. The wind was still pretty strong though so we couldn’t take the boat out to test it yet, but the code was cleared from the console so Don is 99% confident we are good to go.

We then took the marinas courtesy car to Home Depot for parts for the solar panels. When we got back Don set to fixing that while I took Skia for a walk to the historic Bonaventure Cemetery, dating back to the civil war.

Because we spent today on repairs we decided to extend our stay here so we can actually get to enjoy Savannah tomorrow.