A Submarine at St. Marys
Finally, we started out from Brunswick! We had been waiting for a pump out of our holding tank (sewage), part of the reason for our delay as the pump out machine wasn't working. At the last minute this morning we were told it had finally bit the dust in a rather messy way, so we never did get our pump out. It's not a big deal, as we weren't desperate for one. We just would have liked to flush it out after Chris did all the improvements to our pumps and hoses.
Two friends helped us off with our lines, and we backed out of our slip and into the channel. We remembered just after leaving to turn our instruments on and the depth meter wasn't working!! It worked perfectly when we checked all our systems yesterday. We really didn't want to have to go back again, so we carried on without it. It is probably a piece of muck that got dislodged after our long stop, and we can clean it later.
We went south via Cumberland Island, which has wild horses and ruins of past grandeur on it, and is only accessible by boat.I saw a couple of large sea turtles. This is an area close to several of their protected nesting grounds. The weather was good, so we could go "outside" and pump our holding tank out the requisite distance from land. If it had been wild, we could have taken a slightly longer route through narrow rivers and streams, but not been able to pump out.
We passed by St.Marys, which has a submarine base. There are huge long "hangars" where I guess they build them. We had trouble with our route, as the one we had charted and loaded into our GPS didn't match up with the paper chart and the marker numbers. It turned out that our paper chart for this area is a little out of date (Chris only bought it a year and a half ago!) and the numbers on the buoys had changed. We nearly ended up going down the wrong river!
We passed Fernandina Beach (I guess the pretty side must face the ocean) and anchored south of it, in Alligator Creek. Chris got up the nerve to dive the transponder for our depth meter (located on the bottom of the keel) and I stood guard with a boat hook in case an alligator got hungry.
We didn't see any alligators and Chris didn't find any muck on the transponder, so our depth meter still isn't working.
Two friends helped us off with our lines, and we backed out of our slip and into the channel. We remembered just after leaving to turn our instruments on and the depth meter wasn't working!! It worked perfectly when we checked all our systems yesterday. We really didn't want to have to go back again, so we carried on without it. It is probably a piece of muck that got dislodged after our long stop, and we can clean it later.
We went south via Cumberland Island, which has wild horses and ruins of past grandeur on it, and is only accessible by boat.I saw a couple of large sea turtles. This is an area close to several of their protected nesting grounds. The weather was good, so we could go "outside" and pump our holding tank out the requisite distance from land. If it had been wild, we could have taken a slightly longer route through narrow rivers and streams, but not been able to pump out.
We passed by St.Marys, which has a submarine base. There are huge long "hangars" where I guess they build them. We had trouble with our route, as the one we had charted and loaded into our GPS didn't match up with the paper chart and the marker numbers. It turned out that our paper chart for this area is a little out of date (Chris only bought it a year and a half ago!) and the numbers on the buoys had changed. We nearly ended up going down the wrong river!
We passed Fernandina Beach (I guess the pretty side must face the ocean) and anchored south of it, in Alligator Creek. Chris got up the nerve to dive the transponder for our depth meter (located on the bottom of the keel) and I stood guard with a boat hook in case an alligator got hungry.
We didn't see any alligators and Chris didn't find any muck on the transponder, so our depth meter still isn't working.
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