Scott here! Today was a planned long day, not our longest, but a long day none the less. I was up before first light to get the dinghy ready for first light to talk Jazzy for a walk. We soon after our return.

As you can see below much of the trip was pretty boring. Jazzy was not all that excited! We thought about staying another day on Jekyll Island but the weather was crap and we knew we wouldn’t have had the opportunity to have fun, so we might as well travel.

The wind went between nothing and 15mph or so. No big deal. It only got wavy at one point when the ICW was close to the ocean. Otherwise, waves were no big deal either.

This is a screen shot of the wind. The blue line is predicted, and the black line is actual. It wasn’t nearly as bad as it was predicted to be! If you are curious the app is “Willy Weather.”

We passed all our short stop anchorages and stopped at our first-choice spot. It was deep! 20′ and with that we need to put out 140′ of anchor rode. The river we were in (Big Tom Creek) was only 400′ wide. Obviously we don’t want to get right next to shore. We dropped the anchor 3 times and couldn’t get it to set. We decided to move to a different location. We went a short distance (less than 1 mile) to another small river, Tom Creek, I think is the name. Same issue. This area has one more anchorage. I am not a fan of anchoring next to the ICW, but it is our last option in this area. This anchorage is called Rainbow Bend. We found water that was only 15′ deep and were able to set the anchor right in the middle of 4 crab pots. Finally, we found home for the night!

There is a pretty good current and with the wind out of the west we should hardly move. It took a little bit to find our spot to drop anchor as the wind and current was pushing us, but we only needed one time.

I think the issue of the anchor not setting was not enough anchor scope. I didn’t put out 140′ with a 7:1 ratio. So, when we set the anchor we were actually puling it up instead of sideways. Deep water anchoring in a river just isn’t easy. That’s OK, we have a good spot.

Enough of the jibberish. How did the plan go?

Plan v ACTUAL
Date: April 3, 2024
Nebo Link: Click here
Spot Link: Click here
Crew: Captain Scott, 1st Mate Rita, & K9 Jazzy
Start at: 7:30 am ACTUAL 7:40 AM
End at: 4:00 pm ACTUAL 4:14 PM:
Total Time: 8:30 hours (7:57 hours travel time plus time to anchor) ACTUAL 8:36 hours
Distance: 71.6 miles 75.1 miles

This all makes sense. Started late, ended a little late as well, especially with our docking issues.

After a Jazzy walk and dinner we are working on our plan for the next few days.