April 8, 2011.

The trip to Cumberland Island turned out to be an interesting one. Boat speed was terrific as we rode the push for a few hours before getting sucked all the way to the Saint Mary’s River. We hit the shallow areas at high tide so what could be interesting you ask? The GPS went semi blind.

Larry just happened to mention something about the military sometimes scrambling the GPS signal in this area. Can they even do that? It’s been a while but we have been here before and had never experienced anything like that. Until today.

The basic overview was still there, but nothing else. No depth contours and no navigational aids. It was as if we were looking at the wrong scale on the chartplotter. Is it my chartplotter or is it my government? It made no difference as you zoomed in or out, there was no detail on any screen. It wasn’t really anything more than a minor inconvenience but it was back to paper charts and binoculars for us as we picked our way along the ICW.

The details reappeared right at about the spot we’d dropped the anchor the last time we were at Cumberland Island. The disconcerting part was that the approach to the anchorage has some shoaling and we were reduced to dead reckoning with our paper charts. We opted for the “go to red 34 and then hang an east right up to the shoreline”. It all went perfectly and we were soon anchored in 15 feet of water, which is nice because theres a 7 foot tidal swing here.

Today Christy and I walked across the island and did a little beachcombing.
The walk across the island is spectacular with a canopy of Spanish moss covered Live Oaks lining the way. The beachcombing yielded a

few decent Welks, a couple nice Paul Newman Eyes and a spectacular netted Olive Shell.