Kilkenny? Don't Tempt Me!

At 4:30 on Monday March 29, we pulled into the Kilkenny Marina on Kilkenny Creek at mile 614 of the ICW.  Trust me, this place should be a last resort.  Gay won't get off the boat.

To catch you up on our trip, we finally passed under the Bridge of Lions (actually hailed as Bridge of Liars by one of the boats--more on that later), at the 8 am opening on Saturday 3/27.  We traveled about 8.5 hours to get to Fernandina Beach covering 61.25 statute miles.  We had a great dinner at a little restaurant called Espana.  Fernandina is certainly on the list of places to stop when in the area again.  On this leg we ran into several sailboats in a convey, including Galina and Arden (we met Arden on our way into St. Augustine) and kept up chatter throughout the next few days as we were all on a march north.  We were the 3rd Beneteau 393 in that marina that night (pretty amazing considering there were less than 400 of them produced). 

On Sunday, we had a short day as the weather threatened and we did not want to continue through some very shallow spots at low tide.  We stopped at St. Simon's Island and stayed at Morningstar Marina.  What a great place.  When we woke up Monday morning, there were muffins and a newspaper in our cockpit.  We covered only 40.7 statute miles in about 5 hours that day.  Ken had his own experience kissing the bottom in Jekyll Creek, so now we are even.   Docked next to us was the catamarran Symmetry owned by Larry and Roberta Jones of Merrit, NC.  Larry recognized Gay from seeing her around Oriental this fall and Gay saw Roberta's Oriental shirt and we exchanged Oriental stories.  With the early stop, Gay made gluten free brownies. 

On Monday we went from St. Simon's to Kilkenny Creek and stopped in a marina out of some time warp.  Ken called it the Bates Marina.  We covered 62 statute miles in a little over 9 hours.  We had numerous instances of very shallow water, often times, 5 feet less than that shown as lowest low tide on the charts.  Ken ran hard aground at the spot where marker 131A was supposed to have been (it was missing) in Johnson Creek between miles 624 and 629.  It was a very low, low tide.  Gay went around the boat poking an extended boat hook to find the bottom and we were able to power off after much effort.  No speed gauge from that point on in the trip! 

Tomorrow Hell Gate.  After kissing the bottom last week, Gay has gotten fairly adept at sniffing out enough depth to squeak through in most areas (while she is at the helm in shallow depths, she watches only the depth meter and Ken has to tell her if she is going to run into anything--like a crab pot or marker).  But even she did not want to hit Hell Gate at the end of this day.  Hence Kilkenny.