When your friends need a hand getting their 70 foot motor yacht down the east…
Northbound ’19 – Travel Day 10: St Simons, Ga to Sunbury, Ga
Distance traveled: 67 statute miles
Time underway: 6 hours 50 minutes
Average Speed: 10 kts
Max Speed: 19.4 kts
Fuel used: 77 gallons
On the evening of our arrival in St. Simons we were joined by Sean’s girlfriend, the lovely Liz, who was hopping on for a couple of days. Her value as crew was quickly realized as you will see in a picture below. We awoke to a strong easterly wind pinning us against the dock courtesy of mother nature and a newspaper and fresh chocolate chip muffin on our swim platform courtesy of Morningstar Marina. We enjoyed a leisurely morning of Jasper walking, route planning and engine checks as we killed time until our 12:30 pm departure, a delay necessary to time out a rising tide at two problem areas we knew we would encounter along the way. In an area with a six-foot tidal swing, a couple of hours can make all the difference.


Because of the high winds, the crew thought carefully about the departure plan with Tim at the ready on the stern with our big-ball fender to assure we’d stay off the dock as we pivoted away. OLOH has both bow and stern thrusters but we were reminded on our landing in Cocoa that those tools have limits and “an ounce of prevention…” Once we were away we rejoined the ICW and it was a relatively easy and smooth run in a stretch of the waterway that takes you through a beautiful, winding maze through nature. We negotiated the trouble spots carefully and without issue as we passed through stretches with names like Buttermilk, Doboy and Sapelo. We all had to give a little smile as we passed through the notoriously shallow Little Mud River when, without my usual soundtrack planning, Blondie’s The Tide Is High came up on our playlist.



Because of our necessarily late departure, choosing our destination was a bit of a challenge. While we would have liked to have made it to Savannah, that would have made for a much longer day and challenged us to hit another problem area further north on just the right tide. There are not a lot of options for dockage on this stretch and because we knew there was some potentially severe weather coming we did not want to anchor out. Our fellow journey-people from Arietta arrived at St. Simons on the morning of our departure and mentioned they were going to stop at the docks at the Sunbury Crab Company the next day. We had heard about this place before but since we had never passed through this area we never really considered it. It is also about a seven-mile detour off of the ICW. Once we realized that wouldn’t matter given the need for another late departure from wherever we stayed, we gave them a call and the lovely proprietor, Miss Elaine, told us to come on down. Best decision ever.




We now have a new favorite place on this planet and will be giving Sunbury Crab Company a proper, full write up of its own in the near future. It is us. Magical in its authenticity and simplicity with incredibly kind and warm people in a beautiful part of the country that we were unlikely to have ever found were it not for our boating adventures – which is precisely what we seek out there. We already can’t wait to come back. [Cruisers Note: Sunbury Crab Company is about seven statute miles northwest of St. Catherines Sound on the Medway River. Navigation is straightforward and simple from where you leave the ICW between reds 114a and 116 with plenty of deep water in a wide channel, but be sure to consult your chart or, better yet, the directions on Sunbury Crab Company’s website to become familiar with the path and approach].



A perfect place to take a lay-day to wait out the forecasted severe weather before pressing on to Savannah.
See you out there…
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And that concludes your OLOH instructions. M/Y OLOH back to 1-6.
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