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Tubby's Restuarant

With our time nearly up, we left Savannah and headed home to Brunswick.  An hour and half after we pulled out of down-town Savannah, we made a pit stop in Thunderbolt, GA.  There is a great marine supply store called River Supply located right on the waterfront and we were needing some new fenders so we pulled in for shopping.

Since it was lunchtime, we also stopped at Tubby's Restaurant for lunch.  It is a very popular place to eat among locals and tourists alike.

After Thunderbolt, we continued south and arrived at Hell Gate about two hours before low tide.  Hell Gate is a very narrow cut at low tide.  The depth is only about 4-5 feet and that depth only extends about 10 feet across, so if you are not directly in the channel, you run aground.  Most boats choose to wait until mid tide or higher to go through, so you get a little more depth and a wider channel.

The day was a nice day and it was already the afternoon, so we decided to drop anchor for the night near that little point to the north of Hell Gate.  The next morning, it would be mid tide and rising, so it would be a perfect time to go through.

At first we enjoyed a relaxing time at anchor, sitting up on the flybridge doing nothing in particular.  But then, as though someone flipped a switch, the wind suddenly kicked up to 20 mph!  The waves became very choppy and as we were anchored in the open, the boat began to rock and roll.  We had to move.

Hell Gate

It was only 30 minutes after dead low tide, but the nearest protected anchorage from a southerly wind was on the other side of Hell Gate.  I told Marie that at least it was a rising tide so if we got stuck, we would just wait a few minutes and get lifted off.

So into the gates of Hell we went!  Because it was so shallow (I was reading depths of less than a foot) I was going through at idle speed.  Bad mistake.  With such slow speed, the wind blew us out of the channel and yep, we ended up on the ground!

Elixir back home

At first I tried to power through it.  Another mistake!  I got stuck good.  In fact, at one point I sucked so much mud into my raw water pump that it quit pumping water through the engine!  Not good.

A couple of times smaller boats went by and their wake would lift me up and I could move a few feet, but I was stuck.  We sat there for 1 1/2 hours before the tide came in enough to lift me out of the mud and with lots of cheering, we continued on.

We dropped anchor in a creek just the other side of Hell Gate and had a nice quiet night.

Two days later, after an uneventful remainder of the trip, we pulled into Brunswick, sad to see our trip come to an end.