day ten - picture perfect

I wake to see a woman on a paddle board.  I take a few photographs of her.  Tuck away the sleeping gear and break down the boom tent.  As I'm getting ready to sail the woman passes by SPARTINA.  I tell her I had taken some photographs, ask if she would like to have them.  She gives me her phone number and I text her some images.

Sail off anchor at 6:55.  Wind out of the south but my tide app shows I should have a helping ebb tide for a hour or so.  It is slow steady tacking down Skidaway Narrows, sailing to just beyond the channel markers then coming about for the next tack.  I am pleasantly surprised with our progress.

It is a pretty sail with marsh and trees lining the Narrows.  We slip under the bridge at 8:20 at slack tide.  Soon I can feel the flood tide.  

I get a text on my phone from the paddle boarder.  She says thank you and tells me her name, wishes me well.  Then she texts again with photographs of SPARTINA sailing out of the anchorage at Isle of Hope.  Just beautiful.  

photo by Kelli

9:40 on the Moon River, making 3.4 against the flood tide.  More wind and it is getting chilly, put on foul weather pants.  Slip on to the Burnside River, one boat ahead coming up the river and one off the stern.  I slide to the side of the channel to let them pass.

11:00 fall off to port and sail onto the Vernon River making 3.7.  11:30 I've got a helping tide and making 5.5 towards Ossabow Sound.  A small sailboat with a broken mast sits up on the marsh to the south.  A handful of tacks to make it through Hell Gate, the cut behind Racoon Key.  Turn up the Ogeechee River and that helping tide is now an opposing tide.  

Excellent wind but against the tide we make just 2.4.  A crab pot float is nearly buried in the rushing tide.  1:20 surrounded by upwelling water.  SPARTINA is pointed in the right direction but the boat slides back and forth as water rushes up from below.  I don't understand it.  The wind fails, we motor out of the confused water.  2:00 back in swirling water.  

Low hazy overcast, choppy brown water and a tide line to starboard.  2:20 cross another tide line as we enter the Florida Passage.  Cross the head of the tide and sailing comfortably, 3.6

Anchor down on the Bear River at 3:35.  Early enough that I can relax under the boom tent.

Calm winds in the evening, the running tide point SPARTINA's bow to the west.

21.53 NM

Beef Stew