It’s a beautiful day in Florida sun shinning and warm.
Today is launch day I have rebuilt the rudder after the machine shop brought it back to me in many pieces with the shaft back straight again. I am so glad I had put Fiberglass and resin on the boat along with some under water epoxy. I have spent the last two days making a new rudder from what was left. I really didn’t have much to go by but some pieces to judge what it should look like. I also made a change since I had to rebuild it anyway. I didn’t like how tight it fit to the hull of the boat so I made it about an inch shorter than the original. I had taken a photo of the rudder bent but none in the work in progress, I was to busy fighting the bugs and flying fiberglass as I ground on this thing working as fast as I could to get the boat out of the yard.
So in the water we went, I tied the boat to the dock and let it sit and Trina and I went to look at a custom sailboat while we waited to see if the boat would float and no leaks were present. The other sailboat was awesome but way too much boat for me to deal with! An hour went by and our boat was ready to go no leaks and both the inboard motor and the auxiliary outboard started on the first pull.
So we shoved off and back down Tiger Creek, up Emilia River and back to the ICW. It was a beautiful day with light winds, Dolphins all around and a special treat a five foot around sea turtle came by for a short visit. We were going to stop and anchor before we crossed St. Andrews Sound but since we had the daylight we decided to go for it and make our way to Jekyll Island in Georgia. The sound was very quiet as we went through it (it can be a terrible place when it wants to be…) Trina was a bit relieved because the last time we passed this way the Atlantic Ocean was kicking up some six to eight foot swells. I did have to remind her about our last crossing here when I launched the boat into the air off one of the larger swells hehehe.
At the furthest point where we have to round a red marker on the port side Trina yelled “Hard to Starboard!” We barely missed an old piling that would have surely sunk the boat. Thank goodness she was on turtle watch and saw the piling because I certainly didn’t and it wasn’t marked at all. Who would have thought there would be a piling in 50 feet of water in the channel? Well, another disaster averted, no sunken boat and I didn’t have a heart attack…
So we have made it to the anchorage and have had dinner, We now have an anchor alarm and have it set to go off in case one of us on anchor watch falls asleep. Yes we will do anchor watch the rest of the trip I never want to go through that again.
Here are a couple of photos I took of the latest disaster!
