Day 352: Fog and Frustration

St. Augustine Municipal Marina to a random spot near day beacon 7, Tolomato River, FL (anchored)

January 2, 2023

In 352 days of our year of adventure we have not had to deal with the kind of fog that surrounded us for most of the day. This heavy sea fog made the day incredibly stressful and frustrating, as we only had a few hours of clear travel.

Skies were clear when we woke up this morning and headed out.

Within minutes of leaving the fog started rolling in but we could see the sun, so it seemed as if the fog would quickly burn off.

For a moment, the fog was pretty cool – we could see a fogbow (aka white rainbow) as the sun hit the moisture. Visibility wasn’t great, but we could still see.

The fog kept building and was so dense we struggled to see. We had to cross the ICW to get to a safe anchorage (out of the channel). It’s really disorienting to loose all visibility. Strong currents can also move us off of a course. We crept across the channel and anchored.

Normal fog burns off pretty quickly. Yesterday the morning fog was gone by 9:30 so we thought we could eat our breakfast and be off – but that did not happen.

Five hours later, the fog began breaking up enough that we could see the Vilano Bridge. Fifteen minutes after we hauled our anchor we were back in dense fog.

Luckily there was a marked anchorage close by for us to wait it out. About 40 minutes later the fog lifted and we were treated to yet another fogbow.

In six hours we had gone maybe 4 miles; although it was 2:00 we had another 3 hours of sunlight. Clearly, we weren’t going to get as far as Alligator Pass but we hoped to get another few hours of northward movement in.

Within another hour or so, we could see the fog banks building up ahead. It moved in so quickly! There are no marked anchorages on this stretch of the ICW so we found a spot that we could get out of the channel and anchor. (We actually made the decision to turn around to get to that spot because there wasn’t enough depth to anchor ahead of us).

This anchorage was actually kind of eerily beautiful – very calm water and lots of trees. The day was so frustrating that we were asleep by 8:15 – there was no need to make this day any longer.

---

Somewhere around 11:15 I woke up to hear Lailia creaking. John, who has been woken up countless times for noises that I “think” I heard, was a bit grumpy until he realized that what we were hearing was Lailia slowly tilting…as the tide ebbed, we were aground and leaning to our port.

With an hour before full low, John and I kind of turned 90 degrees in our bed (so our feet were against the cabinets) and listened to things slide across Lailia. John got up to secure our watermaker in the cockpit and went to rest on the settee in the main salon while I finished reading a book. Oddly, neither of us was anxious – we were more annoyed. We did get dressed, though, in case we needed to make a quick exit, but even that wasn’t a big deal.

As the tide came back in, we began to get back to normal and headed back to sleep. We have to get out of this spot tomorrow before the tide recedes again so we’re planning on an early departure.

Bright spots of today include learning that there really are things called fogbows and also that I have grown comfortable enough with Lailia that my anxiety wasn’t triggered by Lailia leaning.