Day 183, Year 10: Hanging Out Behind Cumberland Island
Date: Saturday, April 11, 2015
Weather: Overcast, Upper 70’s F, Winds 5-10 SW Going NW
Latitude: 30 46.021 N
Longitude: 081 28,288 W
Location: Cumberland Island, Georgia
Miles Traveled: 262 nm

After a thorough review of various weather sources this morning, we decided to stop here at Cumberland Island to avoid NE winds tonight and tomorrow. Tonight they would have been only 10 knots, but tomorrow they increase to 15 with gusts to 20 during the day north of here and that just didn’t sound like fun. A cold front came off the coast of the Carolinas today causing the offshore weather a little further north of us to be not so inviting right now. But by tomorrow evening the NE winds should dissipate and then we will head north to do two more overnights (two days and two nights) that will get us ‘almost’ to Little River. Since we won’t be leaving here until sunset tomorrow, we should arrive south of Myrtle Beach in the Georgetown area on Tuesday evening, anchor for the night, and then continue on to Little River on Wednesday. At least that is the plan at this point. Part of me just wanted to continue on and bash into the NE winds, but the Captain made the decision to stop. It is so nice and calm here and we will get a good night’s sleep and a day of rest before continuing on. And hopefully we will avoid NE winds. So it was a good decision.

We must be creatures of habit. We stopped here on our way south, so I think we thought we should stop here on the way back north. When we entered the pass leading into here on New Year’s Day we had wind against current and it was a ROUGH entry. Coming in the pass today was nice and calm, but leaving tomorrow night we will definitely have wind against us. We are going to try and time it so we go out at slack tide, but that doesn’t always work. Hopefully it won’t be too rough. Our friends Ed and Lynne on Constance entered the pass here on Thursday at 2:30 in the morning and thankfully they had a smooth ride. We talked to them today as we were coming in. They are only 5-10 miles from here at a boatyard in St. Mary’s, but there was no way for us to visit today. So close, yet so far away. They are leaving early in the morning and driving in a rental car to Florida to pick up their car. Constance is already out of the water and they will leave her here while they spend time with family in Michigan and New York this summer. So we will just have to plan a summer get together somewhere between New York and Cape Cod. Our traveling buddies this winter, Lee and Lynda on Sea Turtle, spent last night north of St. Catherine’s Island which is a little south of Savannah. They are making 60 miles a day in the Intracoastal which is fantastic for waterway travel, but it is a long slog north from Palm Beach to Little River. They have been traveling for nine days now, but I’m not sure just how many days they have to go to get to Little River. It might be possible that we’ll arrive around the same time.