Time, Tide and the Magenta Line

11/17 – 11/19 - To say that Georgia has a huge tidal swing would be an understatement. Traveling in parts of the ICW in Georgia are only recommended on a rising or high tide. Unfortunately, you can’t travel everywhere at high tide. This makes for an interesting journey. The journey the last 3 days has been beautiful. When we were through this area northbound in the spring, we had rainy and foggy weather. The scenery was very nondescript – in fact, it was hard to see anything. This time, the weather has been gorgeous and we’ve gained an appreciation for the beauty of the low country.

With that said, we must also say that some of our travels were challenging. When anchoring in Walburg Creek, we exited a different way and found extremely low water (less than 1 ft under our keel.) We went through areas named Hell’s Gate and Little Mud River, both of which had very thin water in a couple of spots. When anchoring in Frederica River we exited the southern end and found a lot of shoaling and our depth gauge dropped to 5 feet (we draw 4 feet). The Jekyll Island area proved interesting as we went through that area around low tide. A little while later in the Cumberland Sound area we ran across a trawler that had been aground for 2 hours before finally getting off on a rising tide just as we arrived. Seems they had followed the magenta line on the chart. Unfortunately, as most of the guidebooks and online sites tell you, the magenta line is not right on the charts. They stress that you should honor the marks. He had failed to do this and ran aground. (Note to non-mariners: The magenta line is the line on all charts that indicates the recommended route to take on the ICW.)

We reached our destination for the day (Cumberland Island) around 3:00. We settled in and then took the dinghy down and went over to visit our friends Dan and Biddi on Biddi and the Beast. We last saw them in Annapolis at the boat show. It was great catching up on each other’s adventures of the past month.

Cruising down the ICW

Passing Hell's Gate - Very shallow water

As we passed by a small creek, we noticed a sailboat aground.
Looked like maybe the anchor drug during the night and the
tide went down and the boat was in the marshgrass in the morning