Day 215
After a peaceful night, we left our idyllic anchorage at Cumberland Island South at 8:15 am in glorious weather – bright sun shining and only a slight breeze out of the north, which made for smooth cruising. The Amelia River changed to the East River when we crossed from Florida into Georgia yesterday. We passed a military installation to our west with two large battle ships in port. Although we were, of course, absolutely no threat, the installation’s security was alert and active, making its presence very known to us via boat. As we cruised, we passed ever-increasing marshlands all around us. We noticed the distinctly pungent odor of marshland as we were walking through it on Cumberland Island yesterday. Very earthy, with just a hint of rot and decay. I asked Steve if he thought it was a good smell or a bad smell, and he promptly replied BAD. 🙂
As we continued northward, we noticed less palm trees on the banks of the ICW and more pine trees. They were Georgia Pines, in fact! Still plenty of undergrowth of Palmetto palms, which I love. We passed a large area called Cabin Bluff, which I Googled online to discover it is a nature conservancy in Georgia. The East River kept getting wider and wider, the further we went until it started looking more like a lake. The sunshine sparkling on the waves was pretty and soothing, even if the water was no longer emerald green, but now a chocolatey brown, instead.
Still on the East River, we headed north into the St. Andrews Inlet, where the ICW opens up wide to the Atlantic Ocean. Google Maps calls this inlet “The Hole”, which sounded ominous to us, and in fact this area can be dicey to cross with its powerful current. We’d purposely planned ahead to cross that inlet at slack tide, when the current is at its least. All this time, we were still cruising just west of Cumberland Island, which is a large piece of land! The wind began to pick-up and we wound up having to go wide to the east around some shoaling in St. Andrews Inlet, which put us out into the Atlantic for a short period of time, which was exciting, and not too stressful, even with the stronger winds.
We continued on into Jekyll Sound toward Jekyll Harbor Marina, where we had reservations to spend the next two nights. We arrived at the marina at 11:30 am and immediately saw Bruce and Linda Higginbotham aboard their little de-masted sailboat, Esther B. They were just getting ready to leave Jekyll Island for Savannah, but held up when they saw us arrive so we could at least talk for a few minutes before they continued on their way. We can’t seem to get together with them for any length of time!
After we got settled on the wall at Jekyll Harbor Marina, we borrowed the marina’s free golf-cart to drive around the island, seeing all the beautiful historic homes and simultaneously being bitten by many no-seeums. UGH!! After being so enamored with the Live Oaks and Spanish Moss on Cumberland Island, I should’ve been ready for Jekyll Island to kick it up a notch with those two things. Instead, I was even more amazed with the trees I saw here. We were only allowed to keep the golf-cart for an hour at a time, so we took it back to the marina before we were absolutely eaten alive by the bugs. I vowed to apply OFF bug spray liberally before I left the boat the following day, as those non-stop bites were maddening!
Position: N 31° 02.778, W 81° 25.359
Distance traveled: 28 SM
Total distance traveled: 3024 SM
Total marina nights: 192
Total nights at anchor: 22
Locks today: 0
Locks Total: 27