How High’s the Water Momma?

Nine foot high and risin’…

Spring tides like this make us nervous and vewy vewy careful

The putt-putt of a motor in the distance was reason enough to set down my bowl of cereal and walk out to the bow of the boat. Star Dust was anchored in Blackbeard’s Creek off the Intracoastal Waterway in Georgia, in a spot too narrow for another boat to pass without fouling our anchor line.  Both shores lay within throwing distance and the slender ribbon of dark water was full of crab pots. To seafood lovers, crab pots mean good eating.  But to boaters, well…crab pots are floating mines looking for enemy propellers to defeat.

Sunset at anchor - Blackbeard’s Creek, Georgia

A small and low-sided working boat came into view and the two men aboard went about their business of hauling in crab pots.  Experienced hands, they skirted our anchor line no problem. “Hey there! Good morning,” I called out as they passed.  But they were all work, with just quick nods in response.  Every crab pot they pulled had two or three crabs fidgeting and working their claws, then disappearing into a large well on the stern of the boat.  If those were typical harvests, it explained the numbers of crab pots, and I figured that the extreme tides of Georgia had something to do with the abundance.  

Crab pots are attached to round floats like the pink one on the boat deck. The long line between trap and float tangles with boat propellers

Shifting from 2-foot tides in Florida to 9-foot tides in Georgia was a growth experience. You can never totally trust your navigation charts in shallow areas, and it’s a heck of a difference in chain length for anchoring or timing boat travel with the direction of strong water flow.

It wasn’t the biggest tidal range Glen and I had ever experienced, though. Sailing in Maine years ago, it had taken a while to get used to dropping anchor in 18-foot tides. But New England is famous for its tidal range, and it was not uncommon to see boats left high and dry on a slab of algae-covered rock during low tide.  Georgia seemed an unlikely place for the second highest tides in the Unites States, and its thick, black mud far less able to support the full weight of a grounded boat.  If we misjudged the tides, I wondered how far down our propellers and rudders would sink into the stinky, thick bottom of the salt marsh they call pluff mud in Georgia.

There was no explanation for the sudden and extreme tidal shift in our waterway guide, which made me think everyone else knew the reason except me. In Brunswick, Georgia a man named Holt, who was born and bred in the low country, gave us a down home explanation. Holt’s family had been rice farmers back when slaves worked the plantations, and the man knew a thing or two about local waters. “Right here,” he said, pointing downward. “ Right here in Brunswick, where you’re astandin’, is the westernmost place on the east coast,” said Holt.

It took a few seconds to absorb his words. Westernmost in the same sentence as east coast was a little confusing. Then I pictured the navigational chart and how our boating route had been curving to the west/northwest since we left Florida.

“You are standin’ smack dab in the middle of a giant funnel called the Georgia Bight,”  he told us.

Georgia Bight — westernmost part of the east coast of the United States

Water funnels in from the Carolinas and Florida

I raised my eyebrows. “Bite?”     

“Not like a dog bite, the other kind.  It’s spelled like might but with a B. The might kind of bight is a curve in the coastline,” he said, smiling at his own joke.

Holt went on to explain that because of the curving coastline, water is pushed into what amounts to a funnel from the Carolinas and Florida, forcing water to “gather on top of itself,” creating 6–9-foot tidal changes.

“The most extreme is during a full moon or the planets are aligned or whatever,” says Holt. “That’s when it gets over 9 foot.”

I wasn’t accustomed to thinking much about the tides. In my sailing days, the biggest force on the ocean was wave energy, driven mostly by wind strength.  But along the inland waterways of Georgia, the ruling natural force is the tide.  I thought back to the salt marshes we’d passed where rice had been cultivated. High tide was like a heart pumping life through the vital organs of the salt marshes, irrigating rice crops and feeding nutrients to crabs, oysters, and clams. Then at low tide, birds and mammals come to the mud flats to feed on stranded marine life.

Birds love to feed on tiny crabs in salt marshes

Picturing those trapped creatures, I thought of grounded boats we had heard on the VHF marine radio calling for assistance from Towboat US.  We had come close to needing a tow ourselves, underestimating the strength, direction, and duration of the tide.  Glen’s quick reversing of the engines let us escape the black, muddy bottom that day with little more than bruised ego and an adrenaline rush.  

Extreme tides are a caution for boaters, but according to Holt they can be an advantage for those who know how to work it. Blackbeard’s Creek was named after the infamous pirate, who used the meandering tidal rivers, inlets, and barrier islands to strike at ships and then retreat to shallow Georgia salt marshes on a falling tide.  

“Blackbeard buried treasure in those marshes,” said Holt. “He bragged about it. Gold bars and coins would have survived though and sometimes at low tide you see folks with metal detectors, lookin’ for it.”

Pluff mud has a sucking power that would put a Dyson vacuum to shame. You can’t take a step without sacrificing a shoe or two to its gooey, vise-like clutch. Within a single step, ankle deep can become mid thigh or worse. Like quicksand, pluff mud draws you deeper the more you struggle. I could not imagine men with metal detectors looking for Blackbeard’s gold getting very far in the sticky, pluff mud of the salt marshes. But that doesn’t mean there are no riches. Crab fishermen in the Georgia waterways pull up bounty of a different kind.

The Eating Kind of Bounty

Sometimes you have to look for treasure where you least expect it and wherever you can find it.  I hope you are able to take time out to find treasures wherever you are and invite you aboard Star Dust to share adventures big and small as we travel the Great Loop. xo, Julie