Jan. 10

Feeling rested is a good way to start a day.  I received a call from Diane Cantor, the executive director at the Savannah affiliate of Habitat, explaining that she was beginning her last week there and would be moving to Lowell, MA.  She was apologetic unnecessarily. Our pace had gotten us to Savannah earlier than expected and I had not called her last week when I should have.  She very kindly said she would contact one of their directors to see if she could have us met so I could get back to our car.  Shortly I got a call from Hap Boyd, a part time structural engineer and part time mathematics professor, who said he’d be happy to drive over to meet us at the bridge over the Skidaway river where we had decided to take out.  This landing appeared to be the last boat ramp on the waterway for the next 60-70 miles.  The coming section from there until St. Mary’s would require rowing several miles away from our course to find even a marina.  Heather read a warning to power boaters saying that they should be sure to fill up with fuel before beginning this stretch.

The row away from Thunderbolt and its marinas, a Hinckley service yard, and the swift current that had left an indelible mark in my memory, my back and my hands, from two days ago, was swift as this time I was rowing with the tide.  But we needed to leave the Wilmington River in about three miles and turn into the mouth of the Skidaway River.  From the chart I’d had no way of knowing which direction the outgoing tide might be going since the other end of the Skidaway also opened into a large body of water.  I maintain that this information, perhaps shown as an arrow vector whose length also indicated the maximum speed of the current and the direction that of the incoming tide, would be very useful information to boaters, especially those who care about currents that move almost as fast as they could! But, as I swung along at my natural pace it occurred to me that I was alone here.  The other boaters on this river could turn the throttle on their smoking, fossil fuel burning, wake building, noisy, floating palaces just a hair more and they would have compensated for this 2-3 mph current.  With their power such minor natural shifts in their environment were not relevant. 

Needless to tell you that the Skidaway was flowing the wrong direction.  We managed to find some slower moving water on the insides of the turns and gradually made progress. Heather tied one of her stern lines to a large mooring for a rest that gave me a break to eat lunch. Taking a break while rowing into a strong current is comparable to putting one’s hands down in a boxing match and just accepting the blows of one’s opponent.  I find it difficult to do this. We watched the bridge we were trying to get to gradually become closer and finally spotted the ramp.  I had called Hap as soon as first saw the bridge and he showed up soon after we had pulled our boat up over the noodles we used as rollers to protect it from the abrasive concrete.

Hap got me back to Thunderbolt quickly and Heather had only a short wait.  We packed up and headed for dinner with our maps and charts to study our options.  I was not ready to simply head into the void ahead not knowing that there would be a place to stop when I was too tired to go on. The marsh grass does not look friendly to set up a tent on. The only stopping points for the cruising boats appear to be four small marinas several miles off the ICW or anchorages on side streams that were shown on the charts. It seemed we had no choice but to drive around this section until we perhaps had an escort boat that could anchor and take us aboard to sleep on its decks at night. We would have to search for this and I did not want to spend time doing this and not rowing.  So we ate our dinner and headed for good old I-95.  The hour and a half it took to suddenly find us in Jacksonville went by in a wink. That is to say, Heather drove and I slept! We were leaving a gap in our journey we’d have to fill in later when I had gained more strength and when there were at least four days in a row we could be out of reach.