Departed Stuart, Florida on Friday afternoon, July 8, 2011, intending to quickly fuel up and then wind our way out the St. Lucie River on a rising tide. The goal was to arrive at the shallowest area at the highest tide: The Crossroads, 7-1/2 miles from Stuart, where the shallow and shoaling St. Lucie River's shallow and shoaling inlet to the sea intersects the shallow and shoaling Intracoastal Waterway. We planned to turn left at The Crossroads and spend the afternoon and early evening driving 26 miles north along the ICW to Fort Pierce, Florida, because unlike the St. Lucie River inlet, Fort Pierce Inlet is deep and well marked. We'd spend the night at anchor somewhere off the ICW near Fort Pierce, then take that inlet to sea and sail about 250 miles north to Brunswick, Georgia, north of the hurricane zone, where we'd wait out the rest of hurricane season. Our only difficulty was our departure time from Stuart: the day's high tide occurred in early afternoon, meaning that if all went well we'd juuust make it to Fort Pierce by sunset.
Alas, we got off to a flying stop.
We made it from our Sunset Bay slip all the way to the Sunset Bay fuel dock before a brief but strong lightning storm cell had us sweating out our options. We waited at the fuel dock about 1-1/2 hours, watching our good timing of the tides slip away, until the lightning had passed over and it was again safe for the marina workers to pump fuel. I was worried about two things: one, we'd be approaching The Crossroads on a falling tide; and two, the lightning storm cell that had just rolled over Sunset Bay was moving in our intended direction of travel.
We're not much for lightning but after examining our alternatives we chose to push on. The first 7-1/2 miles from Stuart to The Crossroads were -- stimulating. Big lightning was crashing all around us, loud, close and often. The air sizzled. The clouds were dark. Cold sheets of rain drove down on us. It was as if we'd never left Panama.
Conditions improved after a couple hours' travel, though, as the front of the storm cell finally passed over us. We rounded The Crossroads without incident and followed a 65-foot power boat into the confines of the ICW. Travel along the ICW requires continuous attention to the depth sounder and the height of overhead structures, but in these parts the overheads were not a problem for us. All the bridges we passed under had 65' vertical clearance, and the power lines that cross the ICW at the town of Ankona had a reported 59.7' vertical clearance (we always assume our 54' mast-plus-antennas does not exceed 58'). The problem for us was that we discovered that 2 of the 4 reported possible anchorages along this section of the ICW had in reality low-tide depths of less than 6' -- suboptimal for our 6'3" keel. So we kept pushing along to Fort Pierce, fairly confident we'd still make it to a well-established achorage just as night fell.
Once at Fort Pierce, and in failing light, we were dismayed to find that Possible Anchorage #3 was completely taken over by a commercial barge. However, Possible Anchorage #4 was just around the corner over by the north bascule bridge, and we saw at least one boat there that was our size - always a good sign when investigating shallow-water anchorages. Most of the sailboats here were derelict and/or unoccupied - less of a good sign - but we slowly stepped off the ICW, nosed in to the anchorage the distance of about two boat lengths, found less than one foot of water under our keel, and immediately dropped anchor. It was after 8pm, daylight was almost gone, and we'd successfully avoided getting struck by lightning and running aground. Because of the storm cell the temperature was actually sort of cool, promising a decent night's sleep. We celebrated with an anesthetizing martini followed by a late spaghetti dinner. And so to bed.
m