Saturday

April 8th, 2017

DID I SAY:

REDUNDANCY?

As we always do first thing in the morning is bring all the electronic gadgets up to the flybridge...

Both iPads, MacBook Air, cables and such...

Oh, Oh....we left the Dual 160 GPS up on the flybridge and Joell says there's a problem:

That rain we experienced somehow got past the Sunbrella fabric on the flybridge and into the GPS receiver...

Surprised to see so much water in this little unit...

Destroyed the circuitry totally...

Time to break out the extra GPS pieces and get creative.... 

Back up, and running, minus one expensive GPS unit (Gary, can I borrow yours?)... live and learn..

Lets get going....

Following the Atlantic ICW today and we had a new experience...

Not a great experience but a new experience...

Following two sail boats that we came up on and asked them for a pass.

The sailboat called "The Edge" warned us that this was the shallowest area and we happened to be at low tide so we stayed behind and followed...

According to the vhf chatter the sailboats were talking about, they were both dragging their keels through the mud until they came to a dead stop...stuck in the mud...

We take only 3 feet of water and so drove right past them for about 50 feet and didn't like what we saw on the depth finder...

The Depth Finder stopped reading and giving us our depth...

Next, we lost steerage and slowed to a crawl....

Backed the engines down to idle speed and was only able to steer the boat by throttling either the right engine or then the left engine...

Checked the water behind the boat and nothing but mud churning up....

Looked to the side at the muddy banks and we were still moving, barely, so we kept turning up mud for about 50 yards....boy did it finally feel good once we were back in 10 feet of water....

No damage and no overheating...

Mikee don't likeeee!

Now that's skinny water...

A little history about that area.  This area was one of the primary territories for Francis Marion (known as the Swamp Fox)  during the American Revolution.  He earned a great reputation for harrying the British and then disappearing into the swamps.  Several forays by the British to capture him ended in failure.  The ICW area we are currently passing through looks like swamp.  It is also known for it's rice plantations, so you can get a picture of what it looks like.  We were told to shine a light at the shore after dark to see all the alligator eyes.

Currently at anchor just off the ICW...

is it cocktail hour 😁