We Started April back in St Augustine Florida. We had spent a couple days here on our way down the coast and we really enjoyed it. This time, we spent two nights on anchor before treating ourselves to a slip at the marina for three nights to wait out some storms and gusty wind.
We enjoyed walking the beach across from town and wandering through town. There are lots of beautiful buildings in St Augustine. We met up with another young cruiser boat- SV Seeker V for drinks in town. We hadn’t met them before but it was great to chat with them about their cruising experiences so far.
While at the marina we washed the boat, did several loads of laundry and soaked up the endless supply of hot water! Daisy loved the laundry fresh out of the dryer. It was a nice little re-set before continuing our journey north.
We had what appeared to be a great window to sail up to Fernandina Beach on the outside (ocean not ICW). The sail started out great, then the wind died off and we motor sailed. But then the wind came back, very strong and gusty and shifted more out of the north so we were sailing very upwind. At one point with gusts up to 30 knots Ryan had us turning right into the wind to stop us from healing over so much.
We made it into Fernandina Beach and decided that rather than doing an overnight sail outside to skip over Georgia like planned, we will stay in the ICW and take it easy going north (Erika still doesn’t like overnight passages).
We had a several day stretch of calm, sunny weather to make our way through most of Georgia. We spent calm nights on anchor and enjoyed the state much more than on our way down. We ended our time in Georgia at Thunderbolt Marina where we waited out yet another round of strong storms.
Thunderbolt Marina is close to Savannah which we didn’t stop at on our way south. Just after we arrived to the marina, we grabbed an uber and decided to spend the day in the city before the storms hit. We absolutely loved Savannah! The historic River Street is really nice to walk down. There are plenty of shops and restaurants you can pop in as you wander along the river front.
The rest of the city is also really pretty, full of parks and trees dripping in spanish moss. We would love to come back and spend more time in this city someday.
Once the storms passed we took off north into South Carolina. We landed in Beaufort. We really enjoyed Beaufort on the way south so we spent a couple days wandering this cute little town before continuing on.
Our next stop was Charleston. We spent one night in Church Creek, just 16 miles from Charleston and arrived by midmorning the following day. We have been the Charleston twice before and we love this cute little city!
We wandered through town, got groceries and then made a plan to move further north to Isle of Palms. While we do love Charleston, the anchorage isn’t the best, most of it is fouled and it is tricky to find a good spot. We were glad to have a day there but happy to move on.
Isle of Pams is where we planned to attend an Umphrey’s McGee concert. They are Ryan’s favorite band and they happened to be playing at a beach venue nearby. We found a nearby anchorage and were told the nearby marina would allow us to keep our dinghy there. When we stopped by the marina early in the day of the concert we were told they would have to charge us $20 an hour to leave the dinghy! After searching around all afternoon and finding no other options we had come to accept this price. But thankfully when we arrived before the concert the manager was gone for the day and the nice guy working the gas dock only charged us $20 total! We were super thankful to him and we really enjoyed the concert. The Windjammer is an amazing little beachside venue.
The day after the concert we were up super early to get through a shallow cut in the ICW before low tide. We skipped this section of the ICW on our way south, opting for an overnight passage outside. This section of South Carolina is really pretty and smelled of lilac as we went through, we even saw two alligators swimming right next to the boat. We needed to make it to Beaufort NC to meet Erika’s mom and Chip so that timeline forced us to stay inside and take the ICW.
We ended up running into our friends on Sandpiper who also left from Muskegon. We had a nice time catching up with them in Carolina Beach. We stayed there a couple nights to figure out a problem with hour engine temp sensor and wait out some rain and very cold weather!
We buddy boated with Sandpiper the next two days, first up to Mile Hammock Bay and then the rest of the way in the ICW to Beaufort.
We had great weather in Beaufort and really enjoyed catching up with family for the next several days. We spent time walking through town and through the nature preserve to see the wild horses. We even got a surprise rock launch that flew right over the anchorage!
Once the visit with Erika’s mom and Chip was over we continued on into the Virgina Cut, our final section of the ICW.
We spent the following night at the R.E Mayo Seafood dock. It isn’t a marina but they have dock space for transient boaters. At .40 cents a foot we decided it was well worth it! We grabbed some scallops to cook up for dinner and enjoyed a quiet evening at the dock.
Today is the final day of April and we are making our way north to Buck Island. We were up early and left the dock at first light. This will be a big day, about 80 miles and we should arrive into our anchorage around 7pm. Buck Island will be our final anchorage in North Carolina. From there we will enter Virginia and make our way out of the ICW and back into the Chesapeake.
April 2024 Cruising Stats and Spending
1 reply on “April 2024 Back in the U.S and Northbound on the ICW”
[…] April 2024 Back in the U.S and Northbound on the ICW […]