Hell Gate
Tide changes in Georgia are quite dramatic. They can change between 7 to 9 feet every 6 hours. There were some areas that we need to be cautious of and make sure we went through at high tide to avoid going aground. Another term for this is skinny water. We left the Brunswick Landing Marina around 10:15 AM in order to make it to a certain area called Hell Gate that is Notorious for having only 2 or 3 feet depths at low tide. Our timing was almost perfect.
Ok, it is time for a lesson. Below is a screen shot from our Ipad and Garmin Bluechart. If you click on the picture it should get bigger and much clearer. You can see water depths, markers, orange hazard markers from Active Captain and a small magenta line. Obviously, water depth means a lot to a boater and we look closely at that all the time. The red and green markers are not like the Mississippi River like we are used to seeing. They are typically markers on a post, in the water. If you are on the Intracoastal Waterway, the markers will have a yellow triangle or a yellow square on the marker indicating that the marker is for the Intracaostal Waterway. Why? Because there are many other markers when you come to inlets, other channels, diversion waterways, etc. See the second picture below for a better explanation (I copied it from another website). Occasionally, there are floating markers when there is shoaling and the buoys have to be moved around as the shoal moves. We slow down a little more in these areas.
>Ok, now for the Orange Hazard Markers from Active Captain. Active Captain is a free system for boaters. It is “crowd sourced” meaning that everyone can add information to the system as they encounter new or old hazards. If shoaling is encountered or a boat sinks somewhere, users can post the information to the Active Captain Database via their Ipads or computers and by doing so, they are alerting other boaters of the issue. Great idea! Some markers can be very old and are no longer relevant anymore. As boaters pass those areas we should modify the hazard posting but not everyone does this. We look ahead on our route to see potential problem areas. See the 3rd picture down. I have clicked on a marker and we are able to see some of the text. Notice the text referencing depths of 2 to 3 feet at low tide – that gets my full attention. Also, see that it shows that 83 people have made comments about this particular hazard marker. In those comments, they provide additional information about time of day, high or low tide, actual depths that they saw, their vessel draft etc. I would much rather learn from other peoples mistakes – it is less costly…
Back to the first picture. Notice the thin magenta line. That line marks the Intracoastal Waterway. If that line were not there it would be very difficult to know where to go as you come to other rivers, creeks, inlets, diversions etc. That said, you can’t always count on the magenta line to be correct because channels do move sometimes and they may no longer match up with the magenta line. In those cases, we trust the old Mark 48 Eyeballs to keep us in between the markers themselves.
Ok, lesson is over. Back to Hell Gate. The 4th picture below is zoomed in to show Hell Gate. It is only about 4000 feet long. We were worried about passing thru this skinny spot but due to planning our passage to coincide with high tide, it was a none issue. A little scary, we slowed way down to idle speed and did not experience any current pushing us one way or another and we stayed in the visual middle of the markers, as best as we could. We had 8 or more feet of water under us. No Problem.
Intracoastal Markers
Active Captain Hazard Marker
We made it through fine and ended up at Isle of Hope marina just south of Savannah Georgia at 1:45 PM. We have our van here so we can go into Savannah and tour the area. We decided to stay here for the next five days so we don’t have to be out on the water during Memorial Day weekend. We are also hearing that there’s a tropical storm that is hitting north of us so we just want to stay put and see what happens.
Missing BJ, – well maybe you two too.