On the Water with As You Wish: June 8 New Teakettle Creek

June 8

Back on the water today after spending the weekend in Brunswick. Decent downtown trying hard to revitalize. Overall, they’re making decent progress. Some nice restaurants, shops, etc. High end rum distillery downtown (too pricey for me, plus I’m not a big rum drinker) and getting ready to open a craft brewery. Their first “First Friday” after Covid -19 was this weekend. Sort of a short event – just 4pm-8pm. But a couple live bands playing, and street blocked off to allow restaurants to set up additional tables outside - appropriately spaced of course. The primary reason for stopping here for the weekend was 2-fold. 1 – the weather forecast was lousy with rain every day. 2- we wanted to get a rental car and use this as a base for moving Martha’s car from Jacksonville up to St. John’s Yacht Harbor in Charleston. Getting the rental car was a bit of a chore as Enterprise is not “picking you up” as advertised during the pandemic. So we had to ride the loaner bikes from Brunswick Landing Marina to get there. It’s nice that they offer these loaner bikes - but honestly, they look like they bought them for $5 from Goodwill and slapped a new coat of paint on them. Nobody’s gonna steal these baby’s!! Thankfully, Enterprise gave us a Nissan Rouge mini SUV and with the back seats folded the bikes fit in to take back to the marina. Also good news after visiting St. John’s Yacht Harbor is they say they will either have a spot or make a spot for us when we arrive. YEAH!!!

Leaving Brunswick in our wake

We left fairly early today to catch some favorable currents. Incoming tide was against us as we left Brunswick at 7:45 but our primary objective was catching the Little Mud River at high tide. Our friends Russ and Jax on “InQuest” had warned us that they came through on a low tide and with their 3.5’ draft had touched bottom a few times. So we were determined to catch this stretch during the flood tide around 11:30. Leaving Brunswick we passed by the Golden Star car carrier that ran aground last year after having an engine room fire while leaving the harbor. Pilot purposely ran it aground rather than potentially blocking the main channel. It’s sitting on it’s side and in the process of being cut into sections and barged off for disposal. All the cars destroyed on it. Thankfully, no environmental damage and all fuel has been removed.

Car carrier "Golden Star" hard aground on it's side

Passed by this unnamed island in the marshes with these cattle grazing.

We decided rather than pushing for a long travel day to just stop at New Teakettle Creek and anchor. It was a 38 mile run. We dropped anchor in the marshes and have the whole place to ourselves. Extremely peaceful. In fact, the only other boat we saw all day was a sailboat going south.

Our only companions for the day - this sailboat going south

Expansive views east and west would be ideal for sunrise and sunsets but we’re stuck in cloud cover and can see rain storms and hear thunder rumbling in the distance . Luckily, no real rain on us so far. I’ll note that this isn’t the ideal time to be heading north through GA. “Feels like” temperatures were over 100 degrees thanks to temps and humidity. A year ago we were in upstate NY and enjoying their seasonal 70’s!! Also, we had to make a game of seeing who could kill the most big green flys swarming the flybridge. At least they’re slow and easily killed. Also, made us think a pilothouse on the next boat might not be so bad.