Heading South on ICW Cumberland Island mile marker 710
We headed out early hoping to go off shore and make it to the GA FL border. We traveled about an hour in light fog and overcast sky before we got to St Simon Inlet where we went off shore. We had checked the stats and we were supposed to have 10 or 11 kts winds, seas 4+ ft, waves at 11 sec intervals and that was not too bad. We would be arriving at St. Marys Inlet about 4 to come up to Cumberland Island state park to anchor.
We went out St Simon Inlet and the wind was 17-23 kts and wave interval more like 3 seconds and waves were about 4 as expected. It was a tossy and tippy ride. You had to hold on to something to keep on your feet. Things below scattered everywhere. After a couple of hours of that we decided it was not fun. Not dangerous, but not fun. We headed back to the waterway coming in at St Andrews Inlet. We were going off shore mainly to avoid the extremely shallow water at Jekyll Island, and we had passed Jekyll by that point.
Once in the waterway things again got calm. We motored for a good while then a cat in front of us hailed us and said the water where they were was very skinny and they were reading less than 4 ft on their depth gauge. Cats have shallow draft but even they were getting anxious. Lee tried to watch carefully but managed to go hard aground. He wiggled and went up and back and worked his way off. While he was doing that a large power boat, maybe 45 ft, came up behind us and tried to go around us. He ran hard aground too. We got off and went on our way.
It continued to be cool and dreary until we were almost to St Marys, our inlet to where we planned to anchor. Then suddenly the sun came out and the drizzle stopped and a double rainbow appeared. We wound our way up the river to Cumberland Island and dropped anchor with sun shining and a belief that the rainbow was telling us tomorrow would be a better day. Today was certainly a physical and emotionally stressful one.
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