Windy Monday

Windy Monday

Monday December 7, 2020

We are still anchored behind Cumberland Island in Georgia.  Perhaps we should have taken more notice of the exodus of boats this morning....

At about 11 am the seas were pretty bumpy and we decided to take the engine off the dinghy.  Mike was brave enough to go down into the dinghy to loosen the bolts that hold the engine onto the stern of the “dumb dog”.  He came back up feeling a tad off color.  Most of the afternoon it was blowing 15-20 kts, enough to kick up chop in the anchorage.  We each took some seasickness meds and had a nap.  Around sunset the wind picked up to 25-30 kts. We collapsed the bimini to reduce the windage on the boat.  

Now we are trying to ignore the strange list to starboard.  I think this is the result of strong current that is not aligned with the strong wind.  Usually the current dominates, but when the wind gets up, the result is some kind of vector sum that leads to heeling. All that physics from high school and college gives us a way to talk about what is happening. 

Whilst it feels uncomfortable we should be just fine. We are anchored on the west side of a channel in about 10 feet of water (16 feet at high tide) with 90 feet of chain out. There is a sand bar to our west, and whilst it provides little protection from the wind it should limit the fetch of wind driven waves. We’ve been here now for 48 hours and multiple tide changes and we haven’t dragged to this point. Tonight we’ll sleep in the main cabin where there is less motion than up in the v-berth.

Now if the wind would just drop back a bit ...

Gloria

30 45.353 N, 81 28.553 W

I didn't take any photos today but here are few additional shots from our walk on Cumberland Island yesterday ...

Gloria - Cumberland Island

Amazing old gnarly trees on Cumberland Island. The trees are "salt pruned" - meaning their growth is stunted at times by salt spray resulting interesting shapes.

Feral horse on the salt marshes (B&W)

This is one of the jelly fish that Gloria described in her blog about the sail down the Georgia coast. This specimen was washed ashore on Cumberland Island - it's about 6 inches diameter