Both our phones had alerts from all our weather apps that there was fog in the area. Totally clear, though, in St. Augustine. We've boated a bit in thick fog so neither of us were concerned.
Off the ball and on our way, we weren't but a hundred yards from the Bridge of Lions, having just gone beneath it, when we were socked in. We had the radar running, the fog horn going, running lights on, and Russ on the bow watching for channel markers while I drove the boat. The routine was me saying "Red marker coming up in 1/4 mile" and he tells me when he can see it.
I kept a keen eye on my maps, all of them. We use Navionics, Aqua Maps, and a Garmin chart plotter.
And all of them were wrong.
The green shows on the right side.
Apparently it's been moved.
It was on our left.
I was making the turn out of the inlet to head north on the ICW. I just happened to look up and could see a green marker (that all my maps said was on my right) on my left. Confused I slowed, just as out of the fog were people! Russ started yelling "Back up!!!" which he didn't have to because, believe me, I was already doing it. Despite the fact that I could see BEACH ahead, we had over 20 feet beneath us. We never touched anything or anyone. But that was one crazy turn. I'm sure the folks fishing from the shore thought that was odd, seeing a huge boat appear out of the fog.
We had no issues the rest of the trip. The fog lasted about another hour and we did just fine.
We stayed 2 nights here, collecting the bits and bobs Russ needs to fix our electrical issues. New Calex, check! Three Orions, check! Hopefully, we'll run nice and smooth the rest of the trip.
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| What I see in a fog. |
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| To keep the power load off the 12V system Russ plugged in the fridges. |
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| Sunrise in Fernandina |
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