18 April 2014

Here we go to St Simon’s Island. I’m now attuned to tides and currents and figuring out where the inlets are to let the water flow in an out. So as much as the rivers were a mess with rains and “pool levels” the ICW has it’s own challenges with the tides.

We drove at a constant 1,800 RPM, which should be 8.1 knots. Today we went from 12.4 knots !!! to 6.6 knots with an average of 7.7. It makes travel times hard, but I’ve been using 7.8 as my estimate rate for the last few days and it has worked out.

Susan’s on the down side with her dolphin friends. The ones in South Florida come and surf and leap along with us. The ones here skim the water, give her the eye and then go back to fishing. She thinks it’s because the water is cloudy they can’t see her waving at them. Lots of pods, but “meh, another boat” attitude.

Got to Jekyll Creek about noon, and the sky opened up. I wanted to run out and spray Simple Green, but thought I’d drown in the process. It was like a car wash for 15 mins and then blue sky, go figure.

Landed at Morning Star Marina, one of the 5 we will stay at on the way home. (It’s a cash bonus thing) They are super nice here. They have cars for loan, a nice bonus!

And we are in a new state, hello Georgia!

We grabbed 5 boats for Looper Docktails. The real surprise was meeting the crew of “FloatBoat Too”. They are 6 time Loopers, they did it without being part of the Looper group. They are very nice people, and we learned a lot. We also met the Loopers on Plane2Sea, this is their second stop on the Loop. We gave them advice “Do what you want to do”, “Don’t live by a schedule” and “All Looper advice is suspect”

Dinner in the downpour was smoked fish and a movie. Love when we have internet!