Laying Down New Tracks Through The Backroads

Thunderbolt to Brunswick  |  10.2 Hours  |  71.3 Miles  

Crossroads has made six trips up and/or down the east coast since she became ours in July 2016. We prefer to make longer runs in the open water of the Atlantic Ocean over trudging through the ICW. This year's weather, however, has not been favorable to hop offshore. When route planning last night, we realized that we had never before traveled this section of the ICW. Today would be all new to us. We slipped off the dock at first light and watched the sun rise while on the Wilmington River, both part of the normal routine. Instead of turning left and heading offshore as we'd done in the past, we turned into the Skidaway River and proceeded to take the "back roads." Without a previous track to follow on our chartplotter, extra attention was required to maneuver the many merges, twists, and turns of the ICW. We saw the Skidaway Bridge three times from multiple directions will traversing all the switchbacks. Large bodies of water were connected to each other by smaller cuts with imposing names such as "Hell Gate." The several sounds we crossed were all choppy, stirred up by the wind that was gusting in excess of 30 knots. Much of our travels took us very close to the Atlantic. We agreed that if the ICW was this breezy, the Atlantic was no place to be. The flag flying from our stern whipped all day and took a beating. The air temperature was in the low to mid 40s and the windchill made being outside very uncomfortable. 

From inside the pilothouse, however, all was good. The sunshine kept us warm and the Carolina blue sky and cloud formations made for beautiful scenery. We only saw four or five other boats all day, the most notable one being that of the Coast Guard. The patrol boat zipped by us on our port side and soon turned around and began to follow us. We had done nothing wrong and definitely had nothing to hide, but just as when a police car pulls behind you on the interstate, you feel guilty. They tailed us for an agonizing five minutes before finally passing us. Whew. Our only other notable observation was a lone cow grazing at the water's edge of an uninhabited island. How did it get there? Did he have any friends with him? Such are the things we ponder when we become anxious to call it a day. We finally pulled off into an oxbow of the Mackay River around 5:00. The only man-made object visible was the Lanier Bridge towering above the grasses in the distance. It was a long day. If we were crows, we would have flown a mere 49.5 miles. Since we traveled the backroads, we logged a long 71.3 miles. The good news is tomorrow will be a shorter day and we'll cross into Florida. Better news would be that we can jump offshore and knock out a good chunk of straight-line miles. Looking at the forecast, that won't happen anytime soon.