Easter Sunday

Easter Sunday

Sunday April 4, 2021

From my childhood, I have associations with Easter.  Mostly these involve frilly dresses, hats, little white gloves and more protracted religious service.   Of course, there were some better aspects—chocolate bunnies and delicious meals.  Today was somewhat different from those memories.

To take maximum advantage of the high tide, we delayed our departure until 11 am.  There were shallow sections to be negotiated later in the trip, but more concerning was the crossing of St. Andrews Sound.  At this point the ICW veers eastward essentially into the inlet at St. Andrews.  The general wisdom is never to attempt to transit this area if the winds are from the easterly quadrant and blowing at 15 kts or more.  There are strong currents caused by the large tides (6 ft for this area of Georgia).  Also there is a lot of shoaling in this area so that depths go from 60 ft to 12 ft in a couple hundred yards.  We were somewhat apprehensive as the wind has been blowing from the northeast to east quite strongly for several days.  Thankfully the wind was forecast for 5-10kts from the east and we arranged to be at St. Andrews about 1.5 hrs before high tide so that the wind and current would be aligned. All was well.

Through the section known as Jekyll Creek (behind Jekyll Island) we saw some depths of around 11 ft.  Considering that we were there just at high tide, with an additional 6 ft of water, this area would be a no-go zone for us at low tide.  

Happily, we passed a marina where we saw “Dream Catcher” (the boat belonging to Keith and Eli) safely tied up.  They elected to by-pass the fearsome St. Andrews sound, taking an alternate route through some very shallow creeks. (That was not a possibility for us!)

Having made good use of our delayed start time, our Easter dinner is already prepared just needs a little extra cooking.  We are having what I am calling “deconstructed stuffed cabbage”.  (The weather forecast is for high winds in the vicinity of our anchorage)

p.s. just finished dinner and it was fantastic !

Gloria

31 10.675 N, 81 24.703 W

The following is a link to an article about the salvage operations on the M/V Golden Ray in St Simon sound (see final photo)

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/golden-ray-dismantling-equipment-arrives-in-st-simons-sound#:~:text=The%20heavy%2Dlift%20vessel%20needed,Simons%20Sound%20on%20Tuesday.

Cotinga at anchor off Cumberland Island in dead calm conditions. What a contrast to when we were here in December when there was one day that it was so rough we decided it was to risky to make the 100 dinghy passage to shore and spent the whole day bouncing around in the boat

Dreamcatcher leaving Cumberland Island 

Sunset in Cumberland Sound (photo taken last night)

The yellow structure is VB10,000 a heavy lifting system that arrived in St Simon Sound this week to cut up and dismantle the 656 ft long M/V Golden Ray, a roll-on roll-off car carrier that ran aground and capsized in Sept 2019.