New Day, New State

SHIP'S LOG:

Current Location: New River 32'06.790N/ 080'54.346W

Well, it's "Goodbye Georgia!" and "Hello South Carolina!" It was a trip of a little over 20 miles and it brought me to New River, north of Savannah and just off of Daufaskie Island. It is a quaint little place that has no cars and not lots of modern conveniences, though it does have a championship golf course - - go figure.

The trip wasn't particularly difficult. The toughest things were keeping down the speed and staying in deep water. As you leave Isle of Hope, you eventually run into the pull of the Savannah River and when a mass of water decides it wants to move, it moves. I actually got up over 8 knots according to the GPS . It would have been wonderful if I had had a long way to go, but I didn't so it really wasn't. What made it not wonderful was that this little section of the ICW was full of twists and turns which made for a lot of shoals and sand bars and the current made it a bit dicey staying on course. In addition, there was a lot of stuff floating in the water, palm fronds, water reeds and the like, and they tended top clump together. The clump together around other floating debris - some soft and some hard, like the ocasional log, and they also tended to clump around crab pot buoys making them invisable. In the ICW crab pots RULE! They are the most accurate sign of the where the deep water is and where it is not, and the not part is important. But the palm fronds and water reeds also clump around themselves so that you couldn't tell if they were hiding something important or not.

The current also made turns interesting. You tend to slide sideways through turns and with this you have to be careful for one side of a corner is always shallow and the other is always deep(mostly) and figuring out which is which can be a bit stressful. The whole thing can be something akin to skidding on ice at a real slow speed in your car..

Crossing the Savannah River itself is also a bit dicey as there is a southern branch line with nasty rocks and the main branch which has most of the current. I had to cut accross the river, avoiding the traffic up and down, and "dive" into Field's Cut, an unnatural channel connecting the Savannah with New River. As it is not "natural" but man made, it tends to fill in and does so especially where in joins the Savannah River. It has little or no current and one goes from lots of current to none, from 40 - 50 feet of water to 9, and the point of transition is exciting to say the least!

After that it was a few more miles of trying to stay in the deep water as I wended my way up Field's Cut into New River. I can see Savannah off in the distance and the airport is a mile or so ahead off the river. Planes are coming in and out. Actually this anchorage is a nice little spot. I spent a couple of days here back in November. It was when I left here two days after Thanksgiving that the weather began to go into the crapper. Hopefully it will now continue the other way.

I will be in Beaufort tomorrow all things being equal and will dock at the Beaufort Yacht Club as I did on my way down. It will be another chance to meet "The Outrageous Guy McSweeney" and Dave "Dr. Fix-it" Dixon, two real highlights on this whole trip.