First Ocean Voyage !

Elixir at rest in her slip at Delegal Creek Marina in Savannah

It all started on the last night of our Vacation.  After a week and a half of enduring cold weather on board Elixir, the last day turned out beautiful!  It was calm seas and 74 degree temps.  The night sky was awash with colors as though some unnamed painter had placed them there.  But of course, we had not planned to be out that day so the only great day of the vacation was wasted in port performing maintenance on the boat.  Some would say that maintenance is never a waste, but with Elixir only having been operational for a short time, I like to take advantage of every nice day to test out her capabilities.

Weather Channel said the next day (our travel day back to Albany) was going to be even better!  No rain, sunny skies, moderate wind, and 76 degree temps!  OK, enough is enough.  We talked it over and decided to stay one more day and take advantage of that great weather in the middle of November!

Ft. McAllister battle embankments

 But where to go?  Since it was a Sunday, the Fish Tales Restaurant we had tried to cruise to before would be open for lunch.  Yes, I double checked.

The problem was, low tide would hit just as we would return from the restaurant.  In case I haven't mentioned it before, we can not arrive or depart at low tide due to a sandbar that blocks the entrance to our marina.  So we had to kill at least two hours.  Well, we had yet to go out into the open ocean, so now is as good of time as any!

The day started out cold and dreary, but the Weather Channel said it would clear into that beautiful day, so we cruised down the ICW making our first trip through Hell Gate, a very narrow passage with sandbars lurking on either side just beneath the surface and out of sight, but not out of reach of the bottom of your boat!  We fell into a convoy of six other boats: four sailboats, one Kady-Krogen trawler, and one 65-70 foot yacht.  Following in their path, we made it through just fine and stayed with them until we reached the Ogeechee River, were we turned up-river.  After about an hour, we passed Ft. McAllister State Park.  I don't know the history of the park, but judging by the embankments and cannons I'm guessing it was a civil war fort.  We have made a note to make it a future destination to learn more about it.

view from Fish Tales

A little further up the river, we arrived at Ft. McAllister Marina.  The marina lets you tie up for free if you are having lunch at Fish Tales, which worked out since that is what we were doing!  We got there a little early and beat the crowd, which soon arrived.  The food was good and the view was great!  We will definitely return again.  After eating, walking the dog, and checking out all the boats in the marina, we headed back down-river.  The trip back only took half the time because we were running with the current.

wide open sea!

This time we bypassed Hell Gate and continued on out into the Ocean.  Our first time at sea!  We were amazed at the difference between the inland waters and the ocean.  The breakers were so loud that we could hear them over Elixir's engine even at a mile away!  The swells were very different from any waves we encountered in the ICW.  She would rise up on a swell without a hint of upward motion and then suddenly drop.  Instead of constant up and down, she would twist and turn and jerk as if the sea was trying to decide which way to throw us!  Marie and I both looked like we were drunk.  Abby had no problem with it because she just went below and curled up on the settee.  The great weather the Weather Channel had promised us never materialized and we were cold and wet under dreary skies, but all in all Elixir handled it very well and we had lots of fun.  Unfortunately, dark was soon to be upon us so we turned and headed back towards our marina.  When we arrived at the mouth of the creek, the sun had already set and we could only see by the remaining light of dusk combined with the rising of a full moon.  Even pushing it to that late, we passed over depths of only 4.5 feet (we have a 3.8 foot draft), so we could not have timed it any closer!  We continue to gain confidence in Elixir and our ability to handle her and plan to take many more trips in the future!

Our First Cruise

The miles of marshes Georgia is famous for
can be seen in the distance

Today we took Elixir for her first cruise.  Maybe mini-cruise would be a better term.  We originally wanted to travel to the town of Darien, Georgia, a days cruise from Savannah.  We would stay two nights visiting the town's waterfront and then return.  But before we were to leave, I discovered excess water in the Lazarette.  I knew this meant the drain was plugged, so I jumped down in the Lazarette and cleared the pipe to allow the water to drain into the bilge where it would be pumped overboard.  It drained .... so fast the pipe from the aft bilge to the forward bilge (where the pump is) could not handle the volume of water and so it spilled into the engine pan where there was standing oil (OK - I knew I should have cleaned that up the night before).  So suffice it to say that instead of going to Darien, we had to clean out all the oily water from the bilge.  With inclement weather due in several days, we missed our window for the trip.

Ok, so plan B.  About two hours up the Ogeechee River is a restaurant that can be reached by boat.  I decided we could go there to have lunch.  But after all my meticulous planning to make sure the tides, currents, and times would all match up and then plotting the entire trip into our chart plotter, Marie asked what their hours were.  Leave it to a woman to ask such a silly question.  So I looked it up on their web-site and..... they are only open for dinner!   Who would have thought?   Marie, I guess.

One of the beautiful homes along the Savannah waterfront

Elixir at our condo

Now I had to scramble to come up plan C!  So we decided to take our boat all the way....home.  Sort of.  We have a condo in Savannah to stay at when we are in town.  It is 20 minutes by car from Delegal Creek Marina where we keep Elixir, but up the winding rivers at trawler speed, it was a 3 hour trip.....one way!  So we did what anyone would do when they want to go out on the boat.  We went home and had lunch!

I thought Elixir looked pretty good sitting at the large empty dock belonging to the condo association.  You would think we would keep her there where we could just walk from our condo to the boat anytime we wanted.  But the association says she is too big.  And so the dock just sits empty.  Oh well, we enjoyed the trip anyway and just neglected to tell anyone we tied up there for a couple of hours while we had lunch.

What a life!

After a nice lunch, we cruised back to Delegal Creek Marina where we were greeted by an influx of sailboats and trawlers seeking protection from that storm I talked about earlier.

This was also Abby's first trip on the boat and she took it all in stride.  She found it so relaxing that she spent most of the trip sleeping!  Just like everyone's kids, we kept trying to get her interested in what was going on, but the only time she got excited was when we docked at our condo and a log drifted by.  She was sure it was a sea serpent and would not stop barking at it!

All in all, Elixir's first little cruise was a great success and the start of many to come!