Happy Boataversary, Lailia (part 2, going south-2022)

Charleston to No Name Harbor, FL

Sometimes you have to cast off from the dock.

We left St. Johns Yacht Harbor on January 15, 2022. While John had spent several weeks in the wild with Lailia, I had only been out on her for short cruises here and there. 

I feel as if we have a pretty intricate history with Port Royal Marina – we looked at a boat there in early 2019

John stayed there in the fall of 2019 while he waited to get water bled out of Lailia’s fuel injectors.

It was also our first dock heading south.  What took 90 minutes by car took an entire day by boat – but going slow meant lots of time to check out birds and dolphins.

Our second day of adventure included a small craft warning. 

It was a pretty “snotty” day.  Lots of stuff fell down below, a door slammed on my hand, and I vomited. (Snotty is worse than sporty, although I don’t like either.). Port Royal Sound still makes me a little anxious.

We returned to Port Royal Marina and I seriously considered going back to Johns Island.

Thankfully, the waves smoothed out by the next day

The first time we spent the night together on anchor was in the Herb River, just outside of Thunderbolt, GA.  We tucked into that spot for a couple of days while I did some work on Zoom.

It took about 43 days for us to get to No Name Harbor in Florida where we made our crossing to Bimini. 

We probably passed under 40 bridges (there were 10 one day).  They went from delightful to annoying as we traveled south.

There were some pretty cool spots to go ashore, too.  You can see how we got warner as we moved south.

John also fixed a bunch of stuff, including a water pump as well as other things we don’t even remember.

A normal day of travel for us was around 50 miles;.while we anchored most of the time, we did manage to enjoy a few marinas especially in Fernandina Beach, St. Augustine, and Ft. Lauderdale.  Some anchorages were pretty remote while others, like West Palm Beach, were filled with lights and lots of boats.

We stayed in No Name Harbor, just outside of Miami, waiting for a good weather window to make the jump to the Bahamas.  While we were waiting, we used the water maker for the first time, replenished provisions and had our boat hull cleaned by divers.