Two days of storms swept the world clean. Everything sparkles. The sky is so deep and blue you can almost see stars, the water is a galaxy of tiny suns. I break out a gator for both the chill and the bright burn. By the time we motor out of Wahoo River into a rising sun, a southwest wind comes up from the Atlantic. We raise canvas, cut the motor, and will sail all day long.
Beyond the dividings of St. Catherines Island, the marshes open up wide. Tight creeks relax into broad flat sounds and bays with clear air and easy tacking in the few places we need to. It’s glorious easy cruising. All day we slide through a vast watery wilderness – no docks, no marinas, no hotels or houses. Just sawgrass prairies, palmetto hammocks, and pine forests. We even have the tide with us, riding the current from one island to the next like a magic carpet.
The destination is a small marina on the south end of Skidaway Island. Late morning I get a text message from Saudi Arabia. It’s from my daughter and son-in-law, both teachers there. They have friends in Amsterdam, who happen to be sailors, who happen to be following our progress, and happen to have family on Skidaway Island. The message includes a phone number and says to send our ETA to it. A short time later we have an invitation for dinner at “the club”, from perfect strangers who are several degrees of separation from anyone we know. Marvelous! Now we have something else to look forward to, if we get there in time.
We’re making great progress, peeling off the miles easily. By mid-afternoon we pass the north end of Ossabaw Island and enter the broad Ogeechee River on a strong outgoing tide. The current clashes with the wind, choppy out in the channel, but we find smooth water in the lee of the island.
We skip along the sandbars and mudflats for miles. I use binoculars to scan the north shore to find our next turn. Chart notes say the markers have been swept away, replaced with a temporary buoy. I can’t spot that buoy, but we begin crossing through the chop to where we think it should be. Seeking the sentinel that points to a place called Hell Gate.
This descriptively named slough is a dredged shortcut from the Ogeeche River to the Vernon River. It slips between the tail end of Harveys Island and the head of Raccoon Key, which is really just the fat end of a long tongue of sandbars that extend for miles. The cut is narrow and shallow, frequently shoals up, and sometimes isn’t passable at low tide. Strong currents that flow between the two rivers through the manmade gap can overpower small boats.
We won’t know if we can chance a passage until we get there. Taking this cut, though, will shorten the trip by at least 10 miles, saving two to three hours. But time and miles only require patience. If it’s impassable, we’ll have to go all the way out to where both rivers meet the Atlantic, where there’s sure to be big wind driven ocean waves slamming into the outgoing tide. We don’t want to miss our dinner at the club. We really, really want to take this shortcut.
In the distance, a small powerboat emerges from the tall grass on the far shore. We assume it came through Hell Gate, so we steer for that point and soon spot the small buoy marking the entrance.
We fire up the motor and Doug lowers the sails. We don’t want to get caught in irons or blown off course where even a few feet can make a difference. We’ll go through under power.
It’s almost low tide, which means we won’t have the current to contend with; but the cut just looks like a wet place in the mud. With the bottom visible on both sides we wiggle our way through. A trawler sits in the mouth at the other end, waiting for us to transit. There’s only room for one boat at a time. As we exit the cut, he seems to think better of it and turns away.
This is clearly a very dynamic area. Much of Raccoon Key seems to have gone missing since the charts were updated. Out in the Vernon River, areas marked as shoals are now deep water. In Delegal Creek on the way to the marina, an island on the charts where previous boaters warned they ran aground is just plain gone. It’s all deep water all the way in.
We get docked at the marina with enough time to do a few errands and gat a shower before dinner. Which is good, because we have not cleaned up in days. We surmise, correctly it turns out, The Club will be a bit fancier than the crab shacks we’ve patronized thus far.