January 29/30 - Fernandina Beach - Tiger Island

On our way to the Florida/Georgia state line, (the first time), we spotted a perfect beach to strand the Arc on at high tide to do some painting and bottom maintenance.  We arrived before sunset and anchored out until the tide was just right. The Captain was up quite a bit of the night getting the boat in position so we would be left standing on the twin keels in just the right spot when the tide rolled out.  The next morning at low tide, we set to work immediately to take advantage of every bit of the 3-4 hours we had until the tide rolled back in.  It was quite a sight to see!

 

Carter is painting the last section of the starboard rubrail with the tide lapping

                                   at his feet. We still had another 1/2 hour on the port side.

We sanded, wiped down with acetone, and painted the freeboard all in one session.
Looks so good!

Day 2 - Second coat of paint

The Captain decided that he wanted to move the boat up the beach by a couple of  boat lengths to be on a little harder ground the next day so that afternoon/evening he maneuvered the boat into the new position. But somewhere in the process the dinghy got loose and  decided to drift off on it's own shortly after we got settled on the bottom!  Carter noticed it immediately and since the Arc was hard aground and wasn't moving, Carter jumped into his wet suit and onto the surfboard to rescue our wayward dinghy before it got caught up in the main current.  Since we were right beside the inlet at the FL/GA state line, it was heading out to sea.  But due to quick action, this catastrophe was diverted.

On to the task of the second coat of paint

Good view of the twin keels.

Good time to inspect the zincs, rudder, prop and scrape off a few barnacles.

  All is well under the waterline.

The work was done so we explored Tiger Island while we waited for our departure time.

We departed Tiger Island on the 4:00 pm high tide cruising down to Amelia Island where we enjoyed a nice dinner out at the Amelia Island Yacht Club.  The next morning we weighed anchor and cruised out with the early morning tide (7:05 am) heading south toward St. Augustine.  

We cruised a total of 30 miles this day and arrived at Jacksonville Beach at sunset.  Along this stretch is where we had an experience we have never had before.   We were attempting to cross under the McCormic bridge heading into a pretty strong current. We were working our way through nicely, moving slowly but surely in the strong current but when we were almost out the other side we came to an abrupt stop. We were at full throttle and weren't moving an inch. This in itself was particularly unusual, we were just in a current that was moving faster than we could go, but what happened next was the strange part. As Carter eased off the throttle to back out of the bridge channel we came to a complete stop in the middle of the bridge. The motor was off and we weren't moving backwards any more.  We were caught in some kind of vortex!  Carter had to put the Arc in reverse to back out, even thought the current was rushing past us. It was bizarre!  Into reverse and we backed our way out from under the bridge.  The whole episode was a bit nerve racking so we found a place to drop the anchor and called it a day.