We’ve really gotten used to overnight passages on this trip north so with a nice weather window we left Dania Beach, FL Tuesday morning and did an overnight passage off shore up to Fernandina Beach. After 33 hours underway we anchored just inside the channel. Fifteen minutes earlier and we would have arrived before the storm hit. As it was, we came in on a lightening storm which made for a quick anchor and a great show of lightening and jumping stingrays. The benefit of longer passages offshore like this is that we covered in 33 hours what would have taken us four days on the ICW anchoring out each night. And we didn’t have to deal with one bridge opening!
The next morning was a quick trip up the coast to St Simon’s Sound and Brunswick Landing Marina. Getting ready to leave the anchorage in Fernandina four dolphins slowly approached us on the port bow just to say hi. They really are attracted to the sound of the engines. A quick look up and a 4-5 foot stingray decided to jump completely out of the water not once but twice. We didn’t get any pictures of all the critters because by the time we would have retrieved the camera they would have been gone. Next time.
We have come to expect large ships to be anchored out offshore as they are inactive during this pandemic. Outside of St Simon’s Sound we came across the Emerald Princess II which is a Georgia gambling ship.
Coming into St Simon’s Sound from offshore we were able to get up close pictures of the M/V Golden Ray, a 600 ft car carrier that overturned in the channel in September of 2019. It is being cut up in place and removed piece by piece. The ship had 4200 cars on board and a crew of 23. All of the crew were rescued. The same cannot be said of the vehicles. Estimated loss is $70-80 million for the vessel and $80 million for the contents.
Brunswick Landing is a nice marina with a big social presence. We’ve been here before and really enjoyed it but this time was a little different. In spite of the coronavirus pandemic people here are socializing at the free beer party each evening, getting together on each others boats, no masks in site, very little social distancing and it’s down right scary, at least for us. We have pretty much stayed on the boat and as soon as the weather gets a little better we’ll be on our way north.
As for the origination of Laa Dee Dah? Brunswick is the airport we were at when the phrase LaaDeeDah was inserted into our lexicon. Check out the story of how our boat got it’s name in an early post for the whole story.
