Soft-shoaling into Florida Lindsay McRory December 3, 1995 We are starting to see a wide range in the styles of marinas as we head south. At one end, there are the "work" marinas. These marinas are usually used by the fishermen and other work boats. They feature low rates, but are in very poor condition. If a bounty were offered on cockroaches, I'd hunt there. At the far other end of the spectrum are the luxury marinas, primarily for the megayachts. They let the cruising riffraff in if they have the room. Most of the yachts that stay in these places are over 65 feet and most have paid crews. The rates are very high, but where else do you get a free bottle of wine with dockage? We almost never see the owners of these floating palaces. There's a theory that the cost of a boat is inversely proportional to the amount of use it gets. We have verified that theory a couple of times now. In the middle of the marina market is the "cruisers marina." These typically feature reasonable rates, clean facilities, and lots of room for transients. Some of these marinas have free book swaps where you "take a book, leave a book." And there are usually games and kids' toys hanging around for anyone to use during their stay. And there is a lot more socializing going on in these marinas. At times it's tough to walk down the dock without having three or four conversations with people along the way. So that's the marina market. The other option is anchoring. On Thursday, November 31, we anchored for the first time of the trip--a cozy little place called Cattlepad Creek along the Georgia coast. We wondered why we hadn't anchored before. It was warm, and we watched a glorious sunset right off our stern. This area has a terrible reputation among the Intercoastal veterans for being shallow and unpredictable. In Florida the Intercoastal Waterway is used more by commercial boats, so dredging is more frequent and that makes for more predictable going. We were one mile from the St. Marys River, which is the Florida state line, following a highway of day marks on both sides of the waterway. Hard to go wrong here. I was just thinking, "Geez, this isn't so bad" when it happened. The bow went down, the stern came up. We were right between two markers, right in the middle of the channel and came upon a section with only 3 feet of water. Another sailboat traveling behind us attempted the channel closer to the starboard side. No luck. Stuck in the mud. I would have thought that the third boat behind us would have noticed our predicament and at least slowed down, but no. So now we were three. We hit an area of soft shoaling, so I wasn't concerned about damage to the boat. The tide was rising, so in time we would all be off. The unknown was, where the heck is deeper water? The charts revealed nothing. It was supposed to be shallow all around us except where we were. We waited about 20 minutes and then drove Hakuna Matata forward through the shoaling to see if we could push through it. We only found more shoals The boat to our starboard backed off and tried the far starboard side. In fact, they swung so far to one side they went outside of the channel markers. It worked. We followed. I forgot to have a beer when we crossed over the state line into Florida. Instead, I treated the diesel engine to two new primary fuel filters and two new secondary filters. Hakuna Matata is fitted out with two RACOR primary fuel filters plumbed in parallel, with selection valves. Having them plumbed in parallel means I use one filter at a time. If it gets plugged or water gets in the system I can switch to a different tank and filter without shutting the engine off. These are the filters that have the glass bowls and drains on the bottom so you see what's coming up from your tanks, and sometimes it isn't diesel fuel. The glass bowls contained nice clean diesel fuel--not a hint of dirt, water, or algae. As soon as I drained the filter canister, a big wad of black sludge fell out from someplace above the glass bowl. This dirt should have been in the bowl where I could see it, not hiding above. A bit of mystery, but an important lesson. I will not trust those bowls as much as I used to. We're now contemplating installing a vacuum gauge before the fuel-injection pump. This would give me a clear idea when the filters are clogging up or when there is junk in the fuel line. I have never heard of this being done on a boat engine, but it makes sense. There has been a lot of cross-training aboard lately. Denise has been docking Hakuna Matata and doing most of the navigation the last couple of days. Kita and Wesley have been doing more rope-handling and gear storage. Tonight we reviewed VHF radio operation. As we have no telephone with 911 emergency telephone service, we are teaching the kids how to turn on both VHF radios, change to channel 16 and make a call. Better entertainment than "The Simpsons?" I wouldn't go that far, but the kids are learning something valuable.