The Wildness of the Marshes
Monday 5th April 2021
The coastal marshes of Georgia are not spectacular like the waters of the Dry Tortugas or the rocky coast of Maine, but they are wild and strangely captivating. As we meander our way through the muddy tidal rivers and estuaries there are flat grasslands all around. In the distance you can see higher ground covered in trees and these are the areas that have mostly been developed. There is no one here in the marshes. We see the occasional boat but most of the time today it was just ourselves and seabirds; mostly terns and pelicans (brown and white).
We are learning the importance of tides in navigating these waters. We left our anchorage in St Simons sound at about 1pm with a 20-mile journey ahead of us. We expected the first half to be relatively straightforward but the second half has some very “skinny” water. We use the free website https://activecaptain.garmin.com/ to get information provided by other boaters on potential hazards, anchorages and marinas – It’s really helpful. In this case there were many comments about mean low water depths of 5-6 feet and a couple suggesting even lower. We arrived at these areas about an hour before high tide so we had close to 6 feet of extra water. On the Little Muddy River we saw depths of 11-12 feet for a couple of miles and concluded that the comments on ActiveCaptain were accurate and that if we had tried to do this section at low tide we would have been aground. We have also learned that it is not possible to play the currents. When we set out this afternoon we had maybe 1.5 knots of beneficial current as water flooded into St Simon Sound. Within about 7 miles we were fighting 1 knot of current as we approached Altamaha Sound, where the tide was also flowing in!
We are now anchored just north of the Wolf Island National Wild Life Refuge. It’s wild and quite beautiful! The sun is shining, with no clouds in the sky and there is a breeze of about 10 knots that is keeping all the bugs at bay. It’s a great opportunity just to sit here and appreciate the wildness of these marshes.
Mike
31 22.168 N, 81 19.383 W
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