The C's Grand Sailing Adventure: Georgia Isles: Blackbeard, Simon, & Jekyll

11/07/2012 =>Georgia Isles: Saboo Island/Blackbeard’s Island

0830; Dear lawd, its soo cold!! My phone is stuck on its home screen for NJ weather, and I promise you its only 10 degrees warmer up there than here! Not to mention, I am on a sailboat with no heat, ha! Today we set out for Saboo Island, also known as Blackbeard the pirates’ homebase; not sure what to expect!

1330: We dropped the hook in the anchorage…and saw..nothing! Trees lining both coasts and an empty ferry dock. We rowed to shore to explore (and let Salty take a walk). Immediately, the island gave us the creepy, scary movie feel: narrow road over marshes into deep forest, empty rusting out cars lining the sides of the road, no humans, no animal sounds! Further down the road we encountered a street sign for a wildlife refuge on the island, maybe that is where all the quiet is from…doesn’t explain the cars though!

creepy island

11/08/2012 =>Georgia Isles: St Simon’s Island (anchorage)

0900; Georgia’s stretch of the ICW is renowned for being shallow/shoaling/misleading markers…basically it’s all sorts of messed up. We were to cross a particularly tricky area called Mud River. We planned it correctly to reach it just before high tide, which for once this trip what we planned to achieve actually worked out! We crossed some 11’ areas, which if it was low tide would mean 4’ or less of water, insane!

1530; As the days are getting shorter and shorter, we decided to anchor just outside a marina in St Simon’s to take advantage of the whole day of paid dockage the next day. We rowed into the marina for showers and reservations for the next day. The marina is host to many large boats, both sail and motor. We came across a HUGE 100’ cruiser named Bolero. Our boat was originally named Boloreo, so of course I mentioned to Mike that this was supposed to be the boat we bought! Ha.

11/09/2012 =>Georgia Isles: St Simon’s Island (marina)

0730: we wanted to get into the marina bright and early! They offer use of their courtesy car for 2 hours and we desperately need to restock the boat! I was excited to see a Harris Teeter located on the island! We ran in there with high hopes of good quality with lower prices, and our hopes were quickly dashed L. Upset with the cost, we moved onto the other 2 grocery stores with a bit more success. Both Mike and I are amazed at the high price of groceries in the south! I guess we just figured it would be cheaper than up north.

When we got back to the boat, I watched a 38’ sailboat come into the dock behind me. We had just gotten our bike/Salty cart out for a bike ride. As the boat tide off, a little blond boy hoped off with his father onto the dock. He looked over at our boat and the bikes and got immediately excited: “Dad! They have a kid on their boat, look”…sadly, I realized he was talking about Salty’s kid cart!! Haha! Mike and I helped them finish tie off and introduced ourselves. The boat’s name is Night Music, the couple are Nick and Stacy. Along with their 4 yr old son Ethan, they have been travelling for the 8 months from Tennessee! Insane to think about doing this with a ¾ yr old!

We packed up our “child” and began our bike ride around St Simons. The island has a main bike trail through/along the major roads to all the main attractions: Main Street, beach, shopping, etc. We took the trail to the Main Street to hit up the Lighthouse and fun stores (junk stores are soo fun to walk into!).

It has been forever since we have done our cruising “duty” of getting ice cream at every port, a problem I felt we needed to rectify instantly! A really cute and homemade ice cream shop was just the ticket! Mike fell in love with their Root Beer Floats while I indulged in homemade Praline ice cream! So good!

After dinner, we met up with Night Music for some drinks and conversation! They have an interesting life being full time cruisers with a 4 year old! As the only “stop” we had planned in the Georgia Isles was our next location, Stacy suggested Cumberland Island afterwards for a real “wild” forest beach with wild horses! Of course I want to go! They have already gone north on the ICW and were traveling back South in hopes of making it to Grenada, so they know all the good stops! They too have run aground, but the scary kind: they showed us pictures of the boat sitting on its side in about 2’ of water! I would have freaked out and been hitching a ride with whatever boat passed us by!

11/10/2012 =>Georgia Isles, Jekyll Island

0800: Woo Who! Fresh muffins and the daily paper delivered to our boat this morning! Awesome J. We took a quick ride to drop off our Red Box rental this morning before setting off the dock! Early morning bike rides, sans Salty are quite nice! Not to mention the weather is starting to feel more like GA in the fall than NJ in the winter! Yea!!! I think I may even wear shorts today, ha! Our trip to Jekyll Island was not far at all! We left at 1200 and arrived at the anchorage around 1300. The island has 1 marina and 1 anchorage: the anchorage is not rated highly and has many moored boats (heard this one before). After searching for a good spot, we realized we are too far from the dinghy dock! There was a little bit of a beach not far, so we decided to “skip” the island, only going to row to the small tree lined shore to let Salty out later. Unfortunately, the anchorage had other ideas. Mike and I went to take naps/read and by 1500, we were already dragging anchor into the ICW channel…great…We called the marina for a space and pulled in a long face dock: this dock set up reminded us of Delaware City with lots of transient sailboats all lined up end to end. Plus side, being in the marina entitles us to their courtesy bikes, pool and…hot tub J!!! With only about 2 hours of daylight remaining, we quickly hoped onto the bikes to go explore as much as possible!