Coastal Georgia

 In my last entry, we had arrived in Georgia. We were just a few miles from Savannah in the Herb River. We were being blessed with some very settled weather. We had almost no wind and the temperatures were very mild. We had totally missed Georgia in our trip north this past May/June. We had sailed on the outside from St. Augustine, Florida to Hilton Head, SC. We had heard both good and bad about this part of the ICW. It is about 40 miles further to stay on the ICW because it is very curvy as it winds and twists through the rivers along the coast. It is also very beautiful with lots of natural scenery and wildlife. We are all about new adventures, so we wanted to do it. 

Our plan was to do less than 30 miles each day by leaving later than normal and arriving early and enjoying our surroundings. For a while as we left the large city of Savannah we saw some homes along the waterway, but soon it turned into marsh lands as far as you could see.

One of the beautiful home in Isle of Hope, a small community just outside of Savannah.

Our next stop was Kilkenny Creek. We were the first boat to arrive at this nice spot. You would never know that Richmond Hill, the home town of our friends Bob and Shiela, was just a mile or so away. Later three other boats joined us, but there would have been room for about 30 boats in this wide creek. 

This was our view for much of that day. Glass smooth water and lots of marsh land.

We had some cloud cover that evening, but it was still fairly calm and we had a restuful night.

I was up early the following morning to catch this beautiful sunrise over the calm water.

Kim raising the anchor as we leave Kilkenny Creek.

We had another very easy day and we cruised along in the calm weather. Our next stop was the Duplin River. It is a cut just off of the inlet at Doboy sound, behind Sapelo Island. There is a ferry landing there, so we went up the creek, just beyond the landing. There were two other boats there when we arrived. They were traveling about the same speed and distances as we were. We only talked on the radio, but never met. That is the way it is along the ICW, this time of year. 

Our anchorage in the Duplin River. We ended up having 4 boats in there for the night.

We had a nice sunset, so I have to get a picture. 

Another one with the dishy up on the foredeck.

OK, just one more.

We had traveled 31.3 nm the previous day to get to Duplin River. We had been given a very gracious offer for the following night. Bob and Shiela that I mentioned earlier, have a slip that is in a marina that was about 27 miles in front of us on St. Simons Island. They had offered to let us stay in their slip for a night or two. We meet such amazing people in this lifestyle. We headed out on that morning, expecting to make that our next stop. I had talked to Bob, the previous night and he warned me about some very strong currents at the marina. We had to go in on an incoming tide. We had great current behind us as we continued out trip south. I had looked at the tide tables and knew that the right tide would not happen until about 3:30 pm. We were making such good time, that we were going to arrive at around noon. We looked at all of our options and decided to keep going. We had another very calm day and we really wanted to get across the notorious Saint Andrew sound in this settled weather, so we decided to pass on the free slip and pressed on to the north side of Cumberland Island. 

We had an interesting ground fog as left Duplin River 

We saw this very nice house out on this island all by itself. The only access had to be by boat.

We passed by the bridge at the Brunswick, GA inlet. All of the very tall masted sailboats can get under this one.

This is the north end of Cumberland Island. There is a small tower by the cliffs of sand.

We dropped the hook in Brickhill River, which goes up into Cumberland Island. Wow, what a great spot!

Check out how calm it was. This is the view out the front.

This is the view astern at the trees on the island. There was a controlled hunt going on the day we arrived. 

That evening we were treated to a beautiful sunset out the front...

And a beautiful moonrise out the back. What an awesome day!

We ended up traveling 42 nm that day, but now we were in a place that we were really looking forward to exploring. Cumberland Island is a National Seashore. It is run by the National Park Service. We have been to many other National Seashores and have never been disappointed. In my next entry, I will write about our time at Cumberland Island.