Back in May, when we last published, we hung out at Melbourne at Bill and Kitty's dock for a couple days waiting for a storm to pass. We were visited by a momma manatee and her baby one afternoon. After visiting Bill and Kitty ( former owners of Delphine. ), we continued on to St. Augustine where we briefly stopped in to see Curtis and Kelly and all our vending friends from the park. Unfortunately, $10 dollars a night for dingy dockage is a bit pricey to stay for more than a couple nights and we moved on after only a couple of days. We could tie up to the restaurant next to the marina for free but then we’re scrambling up a dirty seawall and walking through mud at low tide. Not to mention worrying about theft the whole time we’re away from the dinghy.
At the time there were large wildfires in blazing all over central Florida. Day two out of St. Augustine we crossed into Georgia. The air began to look hazy and tinted brown... worse than usual. We could smell smoke. We knew the smoke plume had closed highways in central Florida days before but we couldn’t get any news on where the smoke was headed while we were zig-zagging through marshes in the middle of nowhere. So we called Mark, Paul’s brother, and made him get online to give us an update. The southern Georgia coastline was right in it’s path. We figured we could stop and go inside somewhere air-conditioned if it got too bad, but we had never witnessed Georgia’s desolate coastline. Our main concern was Paul having an asthma attack. Visibility continued to diminish throughout the day but it never became less than a of couple miles. We never found an inviting place to get off the boat but, luckily, it wasn’t necessary.
After dark the air and the smell thinned out. But then the horse flies came. We put up the screens as fast as we could and killed the few that snuck through our defenses. Unfortunately, we only have pictures so the full effect is lost. The sound of thousands of horseflies trying to invade your home is quite disturbing. We had to turn off all our lights to get some peace.
Later on, in the middle of the night, Paul suddenly leapt out of bed. He heard a boat coming so he stuck his head out the companionway. There appeared to be a tug pushing a large barge turning into the small creek we were occupying for the night. Paul began flashing our super-bright light at the tug. The tug flashed a light back so we knew the captain had seen us. That was a relief, but were we in its way? Why would it try to maneuver down a narrow creek? The tug proceeded to complete a many point turn, head a few hundred yards back the way it came and run aground. Had we totally screwed this guy up? The answer wouldn’t come until morning.
We awoke around dawn that morning to get an early start. The tug and barge were still sitting where we had last seen them. We were about to haul anchor. Paul wanted me to motor up so he wouldn’t have to fight the current by hand. I expressed concern about the rode of the second anchor being to close to the prop. He glanced back and said, “it’s fine, go forward.” Two seconds later the engine abruptly shut off. Our hearts sank. Of all the places to get an anchor line tangled around our prop, we had to do it where the water was the color of black coffee and thick with sediment. We couldn’t see our hand six inches underwater. We tried to untangle it from the dinghy, but we couldn’t reach the prop. Then Paul remembered Sea Tow listed prop disentanglements as one of there services and our hearts lifted. Then we read the fine print and our hearts sank once more. It does not cover the services of a diver. How else could Sea Tow deal with a tangled prop? We decided to call anyway. The guy was really nice. It said he would come out and try to untangle it the same ways we had already tried, tugging on it and running the motor in reverse for a second. He tried to assure Paul that the gators stick to the areas near trees and, being out in the marsh, we had nothing to worry about. He offered to come out for moral support but that wasn’t necessary. Nothing was going to make us feel better about what we had to do.
Paul suggested I try first since I had a wet suit. Unfortunately, that made some sense because the water was a little chilly and I’d have some protection from the barnacles on the bottom of the boat. I also knew Paul was sick with fear about having to get in pitch black water. I suited up and climbed into the dinghy where Paul was sitting looking at me with a mixture of pity and admiration in his eyes. I slowly lowered myself into the water, took a deep breath, and went under. I followed the line to the prop in the blackness and felt the tangle. The suit makes me very bouyant so one hand had to hold onto the prop to keep me down while I got a loop off with the other. I had to come up for a breath.. Paul said I had a brown film on my face. I went back down and got another loop off. Up for a breath. Back down. I didn’t feel that I’d made any progress that time. After about four more tries, I felt that the rope was jammed and needed to be yanked out. I’d tried enough times. I’d been in the water for several minutes. It was time for Paul to give it a go.
As I pulled myself into the Avon, Paul began to psych himself up for the task. He looked sick. In less than a minute he said he was ready. I thought that meant he would now lower himself into the water as I had done. Instead, he rolled out of the dinghy into the water and began thrashing violently. I thought he was panicking. His frantic face came up for air for a split second and I tried to shout at him to calm down and take a breath but he was already back under. A few seconds later he climbed back into the Avon as fast as he went out, but now the rode was in his hand. I think he was in and out in less than thirty seconds. He wasn’t about to hang around in “gator infested” water.
Finally, we were off. As we pulled out of the creek back into the main waterway, The tug backed its barge off the shallows it had pushed it onto and proceeded on its way. Why it turned around, we don’t know, but we concluded that tugs must purposely run barges aground from time to time to get some rest.
Georgia’s waterway is very monotonous. Nothing but marshes and not a sole around. When the 8 ft tide is out, all you can see are the sides of the ditch you’re in. We came close to running out of diesel but found a busy little marina/ramp a mile up a side creek. We were used to Florida’s waterway where the towns and marinas come one after another. The most gorgeous undeveloped section we saw on our first trip from Melbourne to St. Augustine was bulldozed when we came back six months later. The only undeveloped areas left are just north and south of St. Augustine.
We noticed all of Georgia’s inlets are navigable so we decided to get out of “the ditch,” as the ICW is called, and do an outside trip. This would be our second overnighter. The trip to Bimini was only 12 hours (4 am to 4 pm). Coming back from Bimini took 18 hours and we came into Lake Worth around 4am.
The plan was Paul would nap during the day and stay up at night and I would also nap a little so I could stay up some of the night with him too. It didn’t quite work out as planned. About every twenty minutes Paul would wake me from my nap to ask me what he should do about some freighter ten miles away. Just as I would begin to doze off again, he’d wake me with another “problem.” I managed to stay up until 3:00 am and then slept until 6:30, when I took over for Paul. We managed to cut several days off our trip by this one overnight trip.
We bypassed Savannah and Charleston and came into South Carolina just south of the Waccamaw River and some really beautiful swamps. Some of the most beautiful section of ICW in our opinion.
Next came the most hideous part of the trip, Myrtle Beach. The highlight of this stretch was when Paul, while I idled in the waterway, hopped in the dinghy for a milk run and came back with Burger King too.
We made it to Ocean Isle Beach a few days ahead of schedule. We investigated the depth at the dock of the house Betty and Da rented in the dingy. With an oar, we could feel the bottom at low tide was about 2 and a half feet to three feet. Our boat draws four feet. So we pushed the oar into the mud and discovered it was soft for another 2 - 3 feet. We then checked the depth at the house Tioga and Ashley had rented.
It was the same. Delphine could make it in at high tide and would be resting in the mud at low tide. We deemed this acceptable since we really did not want to dinghy 15 minutes back and forth to Delphine at least twice a day to check on her. We didn’t want to worry about her constantly anchored all alone in ferocious currents in a creek at the north end of the island near Shallotte inlet. During the two weeks at the beach we replaced the water pump and investigated which NC marina we would be leaving Delphine at for the summer.
We chose Bayside at Hubs Rec in Belhaven because it was only $140/month, it has water and electricity, and we could stay on the boat if we needed too. A bonus was the cute little tiki bar. The manager, Sue, was very nice also. In our last few minutes on the boat before we docked her for the summer, the tiller broke in half. We had planned on at least one trip to Ocracoke, but all trips were off until Paul made a new tiller. We also noticed our dinghy was leaking air.
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