Video Transcript

We’re getting a late start this morning because we have to time the tides for another shallow section. We’re leaving Fort Frederica, it was definitely a fun time! It looks really small from here but once you go on land, it’s huge. There’s a huge park there, tons of trees, it’s beautiful. The city here had ~1,500 British people, it was a pre-American town and they used this to fight the Spanish back in the day when Florida and everything was still controlled by the Spanish. Really cool, definitely worth checking out. Let’s get going, we need fuel and we’ve got a long day.

[Elyse, looking at the depth finder] Should we turn around? Holding at 4′, 4.1′, going back up, 4.2′. Ooh, almost 5 foot now!

I’m navigating via Argo and also just instinct. The side, the outer side of the turn typically is more deep and the inner side of the turn is typically more shallow. In fact, if you look, you can see it’s like a low sloping bank on that side whereas this side is kind of more, not a cliff but you can tell that it’s eroding away over here. This side will be deeper and that slope will continue out. Just something I learned over the years from fishing, and it works into this, pretty handy!

We’re on our way to Two Way Fish Camp to get some fuel at $4.99 a gallon. That’s the best we could find around here, everything else was $5.50 or above, pretty much. We’re actually still running the fuel from 2024 when we filled it up before we put it on the hard. We filled the tanks and then we ended up sitting in the boat for a week and a half, running the generator constantly. We had about 3/4 of a tank or so when we left Fort Pierce, FL. Essentially we burned about a half a tank of fuel, or 125 gallons, to get up here. I’m looking forward to having a full tank because then we can really get a better idea of how much fuel we’re really burning.

We were hoping to make it up to North Myrtle Beach to get that less than $4 a gallon fuel price but we can’t make it, so we’re going to get some fuel here at Two Way Fish Camp. But this should work out, it’s 10 o’clock, it’s taking us about 30 minutes to get here. It’s a little bit of an offshoot, but we’re going through the Altamaha Sound and there’s some really low spots right after that and so we want to be there at 11:30 AM or later. That would be a midway and a rising tide, so it’s working out so far.

I can see the marina now! We’ve arrived at Two Way Fish Camp and they have a sailboat that they’re dropping out of a travel lift right now and I guess that’s also where the fuel is. I can’t see it from here, but we’ve got to kind of pull into more of a travel lift spot. We’re just waiting for that boat to come out and then we’ll go in and get some fuel and see how this goes.

We ended up getting 168.5 gallons of diesel at $4.99, for a total of ~$840. Now, we looked at other fuel prices, and everything was $5.40 or above. That was the other cheapest, $5.40, most of it was $5.60, $5.80, and Elyse even found several that were close to $7. One that was above $7 a gallon! So the fuel prices are pretty insane right now. Obviously, we would like to pay less than $4 a gallon but such is life.

Our fuel gauge was reading a quarter and it was just starting to tick to be under a quarter and so I estimated that we had maybe 50 gallons left. In reality, we have a 250-gallon tank and we put 168 in, so we had, well, way more than 50 gallons left! I’m happy about that, it means that when it reads pretty low it’s more on the fair side, we have more diesel to go. I was worried it was going to go from a quarter to just empty. It’s hard to know how accurate fuel gauges are until you get a little experience with them.

The Two Way Fish Camp was perfect. It was like an old country store, it reminded me of growing up in the middle of nowhere in orange groves and dirt roads. Everybody was super nice, the prices were good, and they had information about fishing. Like I said, everybody was so nice! So, can’t complain. We had a wonderful experience and the prices were cheap. They even let us get water. We’re full on water, we’re full on fuel, and we’re heading north!

Alright, we made it back onto the ICW. We’ve been on it for a little bit and we actually came out right behind Wildfire, Chris caught our lines when we were back in Jacksonville at the Sisters Creek dock. Really nice of him to give us some tips on tying up the spring lines. We just passed them, going into the sound now, it’s looking beautiful. We’ve got a good time period, it’s 1 o’clock, so by the time we get out of the sound to get to that skinny water we’ll basically be hitting the low water at high tide. It worked out perfectly! It took a little bit longer than I thought to get fuel, but that’s how it goes. But I’m glad we left earlier than we originally planned.

I saw some dolphins over here!

Yeah, they saw the camera and they were like, oh time to hide.

Are you serious?

We are still cruising, we made it through the Sapello Sound, if I’m saying that properly. The wind was a little bit rougher and the swell was non-existent, pretty much. It was actually a more smooth ride than going through St. Andrews Sound even though St. Andrews Sound had no wind. That just goes to show you how bad St. Andrews Sound really would be (which was in a previous video).

We’re going along St. Catherine’s Island now, there are supposed to be lemurs over there. You cannot go ashore but you might see some lemurs if you’re lucky! We haven’t so far. We were originally planning to anchor right here on the south side of St. Catherine’s but once we got here it’s pretty exposed and the wind is currently coming out of the southwest and so it’s just going to be not comfortable. We found another anchorage and decided to push on for another hour and get a little bit more protected.

We’re still cruising! This is our longest cruising day yet. It is 4:20 PM, let me look and see how long we’ve been cruising. It’s currently 4:23 PM and we’ve been cruising for 7 hours and 56 minutes. We’ve already done 42.3 miles and we’re doing another 6 so we’ll be close to a 50 mile day. Our average so far has been 6.3 knots. We’ve just been cruising along. We got to speed once just for fun, other than that, we’re just chugging along saving fuel. We did have that detour that took us quite awhile, so that time includes us going into get fuel fueling up going inside to get some snacks, because Elyse needed some snacks, and getting back out of there. So, longest day on the water yet, but it’s hard to complain. What a beautiful time!

We got the anchor dropped on night 15 of the Great Loop. We traveled today for 7 hours and 33 minutes. That’s how much we were moving and we covered 48.2 nautical miles. Our average speed was 6.4 knots, our max speed was 14 knots and the total time was 8 hours and 50 minutes. That’s the time we basically crank up the engines and start moving until we set the hook 8 hours and 50 minutes There’s a difference between the moving time and how long it took because we stopped at that dock and got fuel, and sometimes you’re just sitting still. We had to stop and wait for a cruise ship to go by, so that’s not moving time.

Anyways, it was another beautiful cruise. This is our longest day yet, 48.2 miles – so close to 50! We could definitely go a lot further if we wanted to just burn fuel. We could go pretty fast, but no need. Slow is cool, right? And it’s just so fun, we’re absolutely loving it.

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