Leaving Florida
March 29, 2024
Yesterday we crossed into our fifth state! Coastal Georgia greeted us with a spiderweb of rivers, marshes, and wide inlets to the Atlantic. With a relatively short coastline, it won’t take long to reach state number six.
This section of the Intracoastal Waterway has some notoriously tricky areas for cruisers, such as the intimidatingly named “Hell Gate” which we will cross in the morning. Many of these aren’t much concern to us thanks to our shallow draft, but we are experiencing a wide range of conditions from turn to turn. While following the tide out of an inlet yesterday we encountered a “rage”, or an ebb tide current pushed by an opposing wind to create steep or standing waves. Counter to intuition, the best path was forward and the waves smoothed as we exited to the calmer swells of the Atlantic and then back again.
The tidal range here is more than 6’, creating powerful currents in places. It also makes it important that we anchor in deep enough water that we don’t wake up surrounded by land.
Last week we wrapped up our time in Florida at St. Augustine. Founded by the Spanish in 1565, it is the oldest continuously occupied city in the continental United States. We enjoyed getting our steps in each day walking the back streets flanked by buildings centuries old.
