A pause at Jekyll

18-19 November - Some towns make an effort to welcome boaters. Others seem oblivious, and a few even seem outright hostile. St. Marys, GA sets the standard for hospitality. The town has opened its doors to boaters and for the last few years thrown a Thanksgiving feast for the visitors. Not wanting to miss that, we decided to pace our progress, and with palms and dolphins greeting us around every bend, it was time to slow down.

Jekyll Island is a trail-laden state park, an ideal spot to break out the folding bicycles. We loaded them into the dink and assembled them on a nearby public dock. The trails are fabulous, taking you through woodland, swamp, beach and golf courses. We did a little provisioning and decided we needed to break out the golf clubs as well. Jekyll was once a retreat for the likes of JP Morgan and the Rockefellers. Many of the 'cottages' and the club house have been restored and are fascinating to see. The Sunday brunch at the club is a worthwhile luxury.

The golf courses are gorgeous, yet public and reasonably priced ($59 for 18 holes including cart). The challenge was getting our clubs to the course. We decided to try to bike to the course... with our clubs slung over our backs. We got about a third of the way there, but they kept sliding off and we were getting pretty sore and tired. We mounted the clubs on the bikes and walked them. It didn't hurt but they kept sliding off the bikes. When we came to a road, a maintenance truck stopped, and we thankfully got a ride, with all our gear, to the course. Ed and Sue from Homestead, FL, nice folks and good golfers, rounded out our foursome. Lora and I stank, but it was fun. Fortunately, Ed and Sue had a shiny new truck that fit us and our stuff, so we were back on the boat in time for cocktails.

The first couple of weeks had pretty much been a sprint to get south, so a few days at Jekyll Island was quite welcome. We used the extra time to do what boaters do.... boat projects! First came the watermaker. Although we've had Synchronicity for over a year, the watermaker had yet to be re-activated. Even though I'm an engineer, the watermaker always seemed a bit like black magic to me. Simple in theory, but chock full of tubes and pumps, the desalination process works simply on the reverse osmosis (RO) principle.... forcing water through filters under pressure to take out salt and impurities... yielding a very high quality drinking water. We were so scared of screwing it up that we had the RO membrane stored by professionals since last winter. But since we were finally spending a lot of time in clean water it was time to hook it up. We bought some distilled water to do a fresh water flush (yet another slog with heavy stuff on bikes), and then held our breath. Chug, chug, whirr! and after about 5 minutes the POTABLE WATER light came on. We were makin' water!

Having a watermaker changes things. Suddenly, you are not tethered to marinas after so many days to fill the tank. With all the low energy systems on the boat, coupled with the solar collectors, Synchronicity can stay off the grid for a long time. The limiting factor is often fresh water. It's a beautiful thing to be flush with fresh water.

The next challenge to tackle was the Raymarine Sirius weather data system. This is a nifty high tech capability that downloads weather data from the Sirius satellites and lets you view it on the E-Series chartplotter. It's great to have up to the minute weather, including radar, buoy data and forecasts graphically presented right at the helm. The challenge here was running cables throughout the boat. So we decided to take this one in stages. First, we fished the antenna cable down the radar arch into the engine room. Fortunately, I found twine left by Tropica, the original installer, that let us pull the cable through with little problem. Then we had to run it behind the guest berth cabinets where we mounted the receiver unit. Power wasn't too much of a problem, as Manta had conveniently left an uninstalled 12V outlet cable right where we needed it. The big hassle was the network cable. This required pulling out both berth cabinets, the range in the galley, and the master head cabinet.... all in search of the SeaTalk HS LAN cable. The little culprit was tucked between the electrical panel and master head. We pulled it back through to the berth and connected the SeaTalk coupler. After activating the Sirius service, and the data started coming through. Hooray! All in all, it took 3-4 work sessions of a couple of hours each, and we learned more about the boat. That was a lot better than the $900 an installer in Annapolis wanted to charge us for installation! Total cost: Sirius SR-100, $725, cables $100, misc (including dropping two drill bits overboard) $25. Then there is a $29.95 monthly subscription fee.

19- 23 November - Since the weather looked good, we decided yet again to go outside for the next leg... St. Marys. Shoals at St. Andrew Sound continue for several miles, and here we almost ran into trouble. The chart showed red buoy which looked out of place with the line of the other buoys and the depth contours. I followed the line of greens out as we left the sound. I looked for a red but didn't see it. But about 4 miles out, the depths suddenly fell to 6 feet. The sea was pretty calm, but I was not happy about being in the Atlantic with 2 feet of water under the boat. I stopped and called Lora to bring the paper chart, and thought about doing a 180. But was that the best route? The paper chart showed the red buoy, too, so I got out the binoculars and looked back. There it was! I'd been blinded by the morning sun and missed it, fueled by my assumptions from looking at the chart. Knowing where the channel was, I elected to take the shortest path to it. Sure enough, it got deeper quickly, and within a few yards we were back in 12 feet of water. Lesson learned: don't assume quirky buoys are chart errors. Sort it out before you go.

As this was a short run, we quickly reached the St Marys inlet to find a bustle of activity. The unmistakable shape told us it was a nuclear sub. Not surprising since Kings Bay sub base is just inside. There was a hive of Coast Guard patrol boats buzzing all around. We were hoping to sneak in the channel first to get a closer look, but weren't surprised when asked, nicely, to stand off until the 'deep draft naval vessel event' was over. Why can't they just say "wait until the sub passes"? We got close enough for a good snapshot, though. Looks like the crew was glad to get some fresh air.