Monday, April 25, 2016

Valona, Ga to Montgomery, Ga

Miles Traveled 51.6
Total Miles Traveled 3290
Day 228

We weighed anchor before sunrise this morning, a picture perfect morning on the Great Loop!




Looking out into the Atlantic Ocean at St Catherines sound.



The reason for our early start was to get through a shallow pass known as Hell Gate at high or mid tide.  The tide in this area rises and falls 7 feet every 6 hours and some reports show areas of 3 foot depths within the pass at low tide, “Moni Jean” has a draft of 3’ 8”.  Hell Gate is a man-made canal behind Raccoon Key and between the Vernon and Ogeechee Rivers; the Atlantic Ocean is on the other side of Raccoon Key.  With a falling tide, extremely strong side-sweeping currents from the river can push a vessel off course. 

Raccoon Key



We pushed our Cummins diesel a little harder today, high tide was 11:31 and we exited Hell Gate at 12:06 without any issues.


We saw several dolphins today, and one jumped completely out of the water in front of the boat.  We also saw two giant sea turtles but couldn’t get the camera in time.






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