Video Transcript

A perfect Georgia peach sunrise!

Good morning from the Great Loop. Today is cruise day number 12. We’ll be leaving Georgia heading into South Carolina and it should be a long day, we’re planning to do 47 miles. Let’s get this anchor up and get going.

That’s Sun Life Marina. We anchored just past it and we paid the $10 dinghy dockage fee because Publix is right beside it. Not only is Publix beside it, but there’s a few restaurants within walking distance. So that was a really good stop.

Savannah is one of those where you can spend a ton of money and you can definitely do a lot of stuff. We’ve been to Savannah before by van, so we weren’t interested in doing the downtown area personally. We picked more of a rural setting, so to speak, for Georgia at least. Anchorage was great. $0 for the anchorage, $10 for the dinghy dock, right next door to Publix. Hard to beat that. 

Not a bad final resting spot.

We’ll be entering into our third state today on the Loop, South Carolina. We’re heading to Beaufort. We’re celebrating leaving Georgia with a little bit of peach iced tea. We couldn’t find any fresh peaches around, probably out of season. We’re gonna have a peach parfait later as well.

Here’s the parfait. We’re well into South Carolina already, but it was kind of early. We’re now halfway through. It’s 10:30 AM. We should be there sometime around 2 PM. Currently doing 7.7 knots. Got a little bit of current in our favor, so we shall see. Beautiful day out. This is gonna be delicious. 

Swamp Puppy’s first mate Elyse here to tell you that the Georgia coastline has truly stolen our hearts. We do not want to leave! It’s true what they say, to get the full experience of the Georgia coast, the absolute best way to explore it is by boat. The coast of Georgia is only 110 miles long, but it has been so well protected that we truly felt like we were cruising through the golden isles, as they’re known.

We explored Georgia’s coast for one week, anchoring at a national seashore and a national monument. So far we’ve been on the Great Loop for 19 days. We’ve cruised 12 of those 19 days. We spent 17 nights at anchor, and 2 nights at a free dock, so our total mooring fees are currently zero dollars!

We cruised 46.9 miles today and we’ve cruised 375 miles on the Great Loop total. We’ve cruised now through three states, and it’s all been on one waterway, the Atlantic Intercoastal Waterway, which we’ll be on until Norfolk, Virginia.

We’ve typically been starting around 7 AM, but we didn’t start until after noon one day, so it’s really varied quite a bit. We’ve been done cruising as early as 9:15 in the morning and as late as 5:40 in the evening, so there’s been a lot of variation there too.

Our longest day was 50.8 miles and that was when we cruised from Fort Frederica National Monument to St. Catherines Island. Our average cruising duration is five hours, which is the perfect amount of time to enjoy cruising. Too much longer and it starts to feel kind of like work. We found our sweet spot for cruising speed is 6-6.5 knots, or 7-7.5 mph.

All the data I’ve just relayed to you is from diligent but imperfect tracking from NEBO. I’m in charge of the NEBO tracking and Captain Tom takes care of tracking on SeaPeople. Comparing the two, the stats are quite a bit different! But more on that in upcoming Episode 15 when we cross our 500 mile post, drop the hook at an unbelievably stunning anchorage, and give you a full breakdown of our cruising stats and expenses for the first 500 miles. So make sure you’re subscribed and receiving notifications for our daily cruising blogs of the Great Loop. Okay, now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Making our way into Port Royal Sound. This area is very big. It’s 10 miles wide, so I have got to be careful about the wind. Luckily, there is no wind. The burgees aren’t even moving. There’s like no wind today. Just a bunch of wake from all the weekend boaters on a Saturday.

We cruised to the town of Beaufort, South Carolina on a Saturday. So when we arrived it was only to find out that Anchorage A, Anchorage B, and Anchorage C were all full of other boaters who are looking for convenient access to the town of Beaufort. Although we looked for a place to anchor with access to the town, there just wasn’t one. We carried on past Beaufort and into a secluded and beautiful anchorage for the evening.

Thanks for watching!