Shhh...Don't tell my wife

In my younger days I used to travel all over running my boat alone. I didn't think twice about crossing the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas alone or doing my infamous 50-hour 500 nautical mile trip alone non-stop from Key West to Orange Beach, Alabama. Alas, I am older now, so when I purchased Division Belle the Lovely Laura Lee laid down the law that I could only travel alone in the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW). In other words, I was not to go to sea alone.

Well, this morning I found myself at sea heading from Fernandina Beach to Brunswick alone. To be honest, I have my wife's blessing. After traveling together in the ICW and at sea, she has come to realize that the ICW is exhausting and can risk damage to the boat from grounding in areas not well-maintained. It's also very tiring because one has to drive and pay strict attention all day. In the ocean, you set a course and turn on the autopilot, so it is only necessary to keep an eye out for traffic or obstacles. 

There is an argument to be made that the ICW is safer if, for example, the boat started sinking. Since the water is usually only about 10 feet deep, the boat couldn't sink too far. I would likely stay dry or at least be able to swim to shore. But on the other hand, the likelihood of running aground or hitting something is much greater in the ICW. Overall I feel more comfortable at sea on a nice day than struggling to avoid running aground in the ICW.

Coming into the inlet at St. Simons Sound, I once again passed by the infamous car carrier M/V Golden Ray, which rolled over and sank in the Sound in September of 2019. The ship had a capacity of 7,400 cars and was leaving Brunswick with 4,000 brand new cars headed for the middle east when it sank. Insurance losses were estimated to be $80 million for the ship and $80 million for the contents.

M/V Golden Ray

The cause of the accident has not been officially determined. Car carriers must be loaded properly and a water ballast system must be used properly to maintain stability, but there is no official word yet on what happened here. 

It is known that when the ship started listing dangerously, the pilot intentionally steered it into shallower water and grounded it, which likely saved lives and allowed the port to reopen within days of the incident. All of the crew survived, including four crew members who were rescued by cutting a hole in the side of the ship to get to the engine room.

The removal of the wreck is a massive undertaking. An explanation can be found here and a video on the technique is available on YouTube here. A concern of many is that a major hurricane in the area this year could be environmentally catastrophic.

I'm spending tonight at the Morningstar Marina located on the causeway between Brunswick and St. Simons. Today was a short five and a half hour trip but tomorrow will likely be double that to get all the way to the Hinckley boatyard in Thunderbolt.

Sea Level

A few weeks ago, I went to check on my boat at the Hinckley Marine boatyard in Thunderbolt, just east of Savannah. When I arrived, the entry road to the yard was under water. All of the employee cars were parked along the road a few hundred yards from the entrance, and one employee was directing traffic. He told me the tide had gone down already and that I could probably get through and find a dry parking spot, but getting to the dock and my boat might be a challenge. He also recommended a quick car wash that afternoon to get the salt off.

I tentatively made my way in and found all of the employees wearing tall rubber boots and sloshing around the soaked boatyard. I did manage to park in a dry spot and made my way along a narrow wall to get to the docks. While we all know that sea levels are rising, the experience led me to some reading on the subject. This is not a discussion of the causes of climate change, nor is it political. I simply wanted to find out what is happening right here where I live.

There are tremendous tides in our area, and on the day of this experience, they were much higher than average. In Thunderbolt, the high tide that day, February 20, was 9.8 feet while the low tide was -2.1 feet, a big day to be sure. But the measurement of tides is in relation to mean sea level, a number that is constantly rising. The tide gauge at Fort Pulaski is the only official measurement in the state. It was commissioned in 1935 and, since that time, the sea level has risen more than nine inches, a rate of more than a foot every hundred years. And the rate of rise is increasing. The low projections show a sea level rise of two feet by the end of this century while the most extreme show a rise of more than 10 feet in the same period. Almost all of the increase is attributable to the water rising rather than land sinking.

Someone asked me recently why the sea level would rise when glaciers melt that are already in the sea. It doesn't. Sea level rise is caused by runoff from the melting of glaciers that are on land, and by the expansion of sea water as its temperature increases. There are conflicting estimates of how much is caused by each of these factors, but there seems to be a developing consensus that thermal expansion of sea water will play the larger role long term.

Around here, there are signs everywhere of the issues that sea level increase is already causing. More and more frequently, U.S. Highway 80 to Tybee Island has to be closed as it is under water. Low areas along the Thunderbolt area are also routinely disrupted. A portion of President Street in Savannah is being elevated five to eight feet to prevent flooding.

Projecting the exact time that any area of the country succumbs to what is called "chronic inundation" is extremely difficult, as it involves estimating how trends change in the future. But we do know now that Savannah, along with Miami and New Orleans are high on the list of cities that will be affected the most quickly. For a more detailed study by the Union of Concerned Scientists pointing this out, see "When Rising Seas Hit Home". An interesting exercise is an interactive map published online by NOAA where you can zoom into an area of interest and slide the sea level up as much as 10 feet above its current level. For our area of the world, it looks pretty scary even to see the effect of a one or two foot rise.

Work has progressed slowly on the few projects for the boat. I hope to have it out of the boatyard this week or next.

Logbook summary -- and feeling blessed

Now that the boat is in the local area, I am transferring the scratchy log information I make underway to a more organized spreadsheet. The engine passed the 3000-hour mark on the trip home and the onboard mileage log shows it to have covered 19,867 nautical miles since new, measured by the GPS. I have personally run it now some 649 nautical miles in roughly 100 hours, although for more than half of that time either Paul Hamilton or Jim Trolinger was at the helm. This 13-year-old boat has averaged covering around 1,500 nautical miles a year in 230 hours. For both myself and the two previous owners, the average speed seems to work out to about 6.5 knots. The boat cruises at 8 knots, but the slower average is caused by no-wake zones, docking, shallow areas, etc.

The "shakedown cruise" from Herrington Harbor, near Annapolis, Maryland down to Savannah has been a great opportunity to get to know the quirks of the boat and, assisted by my able crew, a number of mysteries have been solved and issues resolved, or at least diagnosed. With some luck, there will be nothing but maintenance and new squawks to deal with after this visit to the boat yard. I plan to have the varnish re-done in the next few weeks. The much-needed paint job for the upper white portion of the boat will have to await another year's budget.

I am having a blast and feel incredibly blessed to be doing this again. Given my age, it seems to make sense to pursue something I love this much while I am still capable. Now that the boat is back from the cold Maryland winter, I am looking forward to enjoying it with my bride, who has graciously embraced this quest along with me. We began boating together before we were married, and some of our fondest memories are the many great boating trips we have enjoyed from the Gulf coast to the Bahamas to Maine. I have no doubt that new memories will be made on this boat as well. As the song said, "Our weary eyes still stray to the horizon, though down this road we've been so many times".

I have added a few more photos to the album. I will report back when we move the boat up the Ogeechee River to Ford, which should be in a few weeks. Thanks for tuning in.

Back in Georgia

Just a quick note that we have safely delivered the boat to Savannah. We arrived right at noon at the Hinckley Boat Yard in Thunderbolt after spending last night at the Skull Creek Marina on Hilton Head. It is good to be home.