TROUBLE at the notorious St. Augustine Inlet (Calico Skies Sailing, Ep 86)

Our time in the ICW is nearing a close in Southport, NC. A three day offshore jump to St. Augustine FL will save us weeks winding down the ICW through South Carolina & Georgia. We get underway at 1am from our anchorage right next to the Cape Fear inlet.

The first morning we are treated to a gorgeous calm sunrise on the ocean. We reflect on the challenges we have faced heading south this year and are super grateful for such a beautiful calm morning reaffirming why we chose this lifestyle!

With that the wind fills in and we start to set sail. We are a bit rusty handling our sails from a prolonged time in the ICW where we predominantly motored. We get our code zero out and we are sailing at or slightly above apparent wind speed. We aim to keep far enough offshore to avoid most boat traffic but not so far out that we wind up in the north flowing Gulf Stream.

We are greeted by one of the biggest pods of dolphins we have ever seen. We manage to get a GoPro in the water for some awesome underwater shots of the encounter!

It’s a pleasant, passage without issues until we are about to enter St. Augustine inlet on dawn of the third day, that’s when TROUBLE strikes…

0:00 Intro
0:42 1AM Departure for St. Augustine
1:25 Recap
1:51 Incredible morning on the ocean
3:23 “We haven’t sailed in a while 🙃”
6:33 This passage’s routing strategy
7:15 Epic dolphin encounter
8:20 Weather update…
9:58 Giant unlit navy towers in the middle of nowhere
10:41 Not the end to the passage we expected….

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