Day 12 - Fog

We were optimistic on the evening of Day 11 that we would have a good day including an early departure, on Day 12. We had good weather and good tides. This would include ending up somewhere near St Simon’s Island. We were up early and ready to roll only to realize we were thoroughly socked in, fog. We sat until about 8:30 when our neighbors decided to head out, optimistic that it would burn off soon. We decided to follow, slowly. We headed out into Johnson Creek and decided to experiment with the radar system. I managed to turn the machine on…but that was about it for me. Bob quickly went down and got it running and I started following the boat’s progress in front of us on the radar screen while Bob followed the Magenta line (the Intracoastal Waterway line) on the GPS and steering. We were able to see ICW path markers on the Radar and even birds swimming nearby.  All went well and we continued down the creek and out into Sapelo Sound where the programmers of the GPS apparently forgot to add in the Magenta line layer. We could see the boats on the radar screen in front of us and occasionally glanced their tails but we were a bit blind. We also dug out the fish finder and got that turned on. It worked great, no magenta line but the screen was much clearer and between the paper chart, radar and fish finder we were doing great…until the battery on the fish finder went. I was then able to plot a compass course and continue on the old-fashioned way with just a little electronic help. Finally, around 11:30 we managed to break free of the fog and we finally continued on at full speed.

Georgia is notorious for shallow spots in the ICW. Fortunately we hit a good stretch of tides with high tide around noon. This gave us almost the full range of daylight for travelling. We went through the worst stretch in the afternoon, but still saw a minimum of 10-foot depths. We anchored in the evening adjacent a colonial fort, central to the British/Spanish conflict between Georgia and Florida in the 1730s. We ended the evening surrounded by dolphins, eating grilled hotdogs and baking fresh cookies.