Home on the Ranges

Today we went through 12 ranges on our way south down the Intercoastal Waterway. I spoke a bit about ranges on Journey's facebook page, but for our non-sailor friends, a picture is worth a bunch of nonsensical words, so....

 Now, in this first picture you see what looks like a orange sign, with a white stripe running right down the middle, top to bottom. In the second photo, you notice there are actually two signs, and they are not directly over one another because Journey has already begun her turn, and left the range.

The trick is to line the sign posts up so that when you are seeing them like the first pisture or risk running aground. There may be lots of open water around, but it's all shallow outside of the range. Now how do you do this, when some of these ranges are over a mile long and the signs are that far away when you start? Simple: look at the lower photo again. The bottom sign is off to the right. Move the boat to the right until the signs line up again. (you would never want to get this far off of the proper alignment in a real range, you'd be aground.) Al and I are partying on Miss Ruby tonight here in our anchorage, along with Partner Ship, so I will leave you with this navigational "lesson of the day". We are just above Jekyll Creek in Ga. for the night.