Pea soup to nuts

20121208-200333.jpg

I awoke to a familiar sound that says wake up now! The sound of a boat engine and screw carries right through Escape Velocity’s fiberglas hull like it was in the boat with you, and I knew our ex neighbor in our anchorage was getting a very early start. I peeked through our stateroom port window and it was awash in scarlet light. I could hear fog horns in the distance and we began to hear VHF conversations or sometimes just securite announcements of a vessel entering a particular creek or river.The nervous buzz was palpable. This stretch of the Waterway is often narrow, twisty, and shallow. It’s well marked but if you can’t see anything… At sea, fog is just eerie. There’s little to run into and with a chart plotter and radar it’s relatively safe.

20121208-193714.jpg

By 0730 a curtain of patchy fog had begun to settle in, but we could still see the marker on the ICW. We decided to give it a go. After about 10 miles it was obvious that this was nuts, we were in trouble trying to negotiate all these tight turns, and narrow dredged channels, without any visual clues, due to the heavy curtain of pea soup fog that had blanketed St Catherine Sound, and both plotters were acting up.

20121208-203313.jpg

It was time for plan B! Hey Marce, do we have a plan B? Not exactly. Lets find a creek that we can nose into while blindfold. Good plan. Not 500 feet away she found us a candidate. Anchor down, Marce made breakfast and we waited.

20121208-203734.jpg

By 1030 we thought it looked a little better so we raised the anchor and cautiously poked our nose out into the Waterway. Still very patchy but as soon as we were ready to pull off the ICW again due to a nasty stretch of twists and turns it started to lift in earnest. Now we were way behind and really had to make up time. While I cranked up the Volvos, Marce cranked up the watermaker and helped me navigate the trickier sections. Suffice to say we didn’t see too many boats out today.

We made 58 miles and our chosen anchorage turned out to be less than described in the guide books but Marce came up with another right across from it. Ahhh, nothing but the sound of dolphins breathing as they surface, birds squawking, and more stars than you can imagine.

20121208-203920.jpg

3 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

3 Responses to Pea soup to nuts

  1. Anita

    That sounds like your environs were worth the fog and tight turns! Good navigating.

  2. Karen sherer

    Your descriptions are amazing whew

  3. OOOPS. Been there and done that.
    on WATER MAKER… be real careful about your filters. We ruined our SPECTRA in the Chesapeake making water and not finding we had slugged the filter with fine grit from the waters before any sign of warning on the electronics monitoring it. It was fast. About $2.5 K later – after low readings and lower output – (new Clark pump & membrane… ouch) we have decided not to use watermaker in any river or bays, however clear seawater looks… Guess if its an emergency we would but be careful of the filters and check every few hours… just from our humble experience.
    Remember Murphy’s Law… and that Murphy was an optimist! Have the most fabulous day of your life! E & S

We love to hear from you!