Jacksonville to Beaufort

After much planning, mind changing, we moved the boat to Beaufort, SC*.  At first I was going to have the boat shipped to the gulf coast and use it on the gulf coast for a while before starting the Loop.  However I decided that shipping was too costly and would eat up to much of my cruising kitty.  So the decision was made that we would sail her up to Beaufort.  I found a delivery captain to help me with this, since it would be my first overnight passage.  

And so the Great Loop adventure begins.  I began looking at the route and charting a course.  As the time approached for the journey I was eager, nervous, and excited, did I mention it would be my first overnight passage.  We watched the weather window and decided that we need to make start our passage on Monday so that we would be there by Tuesday AM.  Storms were predicted for Tuesday evening in the Beaufort area (and boy did it).  This meant had to get out of the marina Sunday afternoon in time to make the 4:15 PM bridge opening in downtown Jacksonville or we would have to wait until the next morning for the bridge opening.  We made the bridge opening and traveled 26 miles to intersection of the St. Johns River and the Intracoastal Waterway where we anchored and spent Sunday night.  The next morning we headed out to the Atlantic Ocean. It was an exhilarating ride on the outside from Jacksonville to Beaufort, about 116 NM in about 20 hours.  The winds held steady at 10-15 and the seas ran 2-4 feet.  All in all a pretty comfortable ride. 

We kept a eye out for whales, dolphins or turtles, but only saw one pair of dolphins.  The sunset was incredible that night and then we settled in for the overnight shifts for watching through the night.  It was a pretty quiet night out on the water.  We stayed close enough to land that you could see the glow of the cities as we passed them.  I passed my time looking at google maps and figuring out what city was causing the glow on the horizon (we had cell signal for most of the trip).  As we approached Savannah I could see several ships lined up in the channel entering Savannah harbor.  I perked up and was paying close attention, I wanted to make sure we safely navigated between the ships as we would be crossing the channel.  Three hours later when we reached the channel, those ships had cleared and there was only one left in the channel, it sure looked at lot closer than three hours away. 

We made the Beaufort river inlet about 4 AM and started up the channel, sunrise wouldn’t be for another 3 hours. We made our way to Paris Island and anchored there at about 8 AM to wait for a favorable tide.  We took a nap and then about 10:30 we hauled anchor and headed to Beaufort with the rising tide. 

Note*:  There is a Beaufort, NC and Beaufort, SC however the pronunciation is very different.  In SC they pronounce the Beau like Beautiful as in Beautiful Beaufort.  In NC the Beau is pronounce like Bo like Bofort.