Day 19 - Nov 14, 2013
Rewind and replay time. Today we revisited the 6 mile section we back tracked three days ago. The storm that caused us to seek shelter has finally moved on. Temperatures are still at record lows. This morning the temp was 33F with northerly winds making it seem even cooler.

We get underway about 1100 hrs. Timing the Hell Gate trouble spot …again. The tide at Isle of Hope was at dead low and we had to transit some extremely low water for about an hour before reaching the Vernon River. We arrived at Hell Gate just after 1300 hrs when the tide was only about 1 hour past low. We delayed entry and allowed four trawlers to proceed ahead of us. We waited until they completed passage and then entered the cut. Water depth was tolerable until we reached the turn in the cut. Water depths dropped to less than 5 feet. We were able to throttle back and “search” our way through.

Once through Hell Gate we picked up speed for a while. We were running ahead of schedule so we bypassed the designated anchorage for today. We were able to continue on to Kilkenny Creek, the last anchorage in the area. We turned off the ICW and motored over two miles up the creek, past the shrimp boat docks and arrived at our anchorage for the night. We are now where we should have been 3 nights ago. Maybe tomorrow we can make better progress.

Location: Kilkenny Creek, GA. MM 614
Distance Traveled: 27.2 miles
Avg speed: 5.2 mph
Max speed: 7.9 mph