Shifting Gears: Cumberland Island

We arrived at Cumberland Island on December 7th. The first night we stayed in the Brickhill River. I read that other boaters were reporting that the docks on the island had been closed to dinghy traffic due to damage left over from storms during this past hurricane season. It was still possible to take a dinghy to shore, but you would have to beach it on the island. We left mid morning from our beautiful anchorage and made the 14.1 mile trip over to the Ice House museum dock anchorage. There were about 10 boats already in the anchorage, but there was plenty of room to find a spot.

We got the dinghy down and went to shore. Within minutes of landing on the beach near the docks we were greeted by a very friendly ranger that told us that we could not land the dinghy within 100 yards of the damaged docks. He told us that the process to repair the docks was underway, but they expected it would take over a year with all of the government red tape. Have I ever told you how much I dislike government bureaucracy? This situation had it in spades. The dock certainly did not look dangerous, it was just some contractor that deemed it dangerous, so that they could win the lucrative contract to "repair" it.

In the mean time boaters had to wade through a very muddy shore line that had razor sharp oyster shells to get to shore. The tide in this area is about 6 feet, so at high tide you were on the rocks and at low tide you were wading through some of the stickiest, gooiest mud I have ever seen. We took a quick look around and returned to the boat. Our visit was not off to a good start.

I spent about an hour when we got back to the boat cleaning the dinghy and flip flops from the muddy mess. I know how much Kim wanted to see this place, so I went to work on a plan of attack for the following day. I watched the shoreline closely the rest of the day and determined that the perfect time to go to shore was about 2 hours before high tide.

My plan was to set a stern anchor on the dinghy about 50 feet off shore and then run a long line to a tree on shore. As the water rose with high tide the dinghy would be in deep water, but then come back down on the falling tide. That would give us 4 hours on shore, which should be good enough take a long walk around. High tide was at 10 am, so we were up early and on shore at 8 am.

We had much of the island to ourselves in the early morning. That is other than the wildlife.

We were greeted by some of the local wild horses.

We saw groups of the ponies throughout the day. They are fairly tame and just walk around eating the grass.

The live oaks on the island are beautiful.

Cumberland Island was used as a retreat by the rich and famous during the 19th and 20 centuries. Catherine Greene, widow of revolutionary war hero General Nathanael Greene built a 4 story mansion in 1803. A century later, Pittsburgh Industrialist Thomas Carnegie and his wife Lucy purchased the island and built their own mansion and called it Dungeness. Many other homes were built on the island for their children. The mansion burned in 1959 and the island was turned over to the park service in 1964.

Kim and I decided to take a 4 mile loop walk around the island that included seeing the Dungeness ruins and the buildings that acted as infrastructure for the mansion and then a long walk on the beach and then through the middle section of the island back to our starting point.

The gables from the garden

This is the oldest building on the island. An original structure from 1803. It is a tabby construction.

Dungeness Mansion ruins in the morning light.

Kim standing at the gate

I love big live oak trees.

I saw a large flock of wild turkeys as we walked around the working part of the area. Many of the buildings are in use today by the park service.

This is a dorm for some workers.

We then took a long walk on the beach. I must say it was one of my favorite beaches ever! The sand was firm and easy to walk on. We saw two other people the entire time we were on the beach and the shells were very cool.

You know you are going to get a Kim on a beach picture.

This sea buoy had washed up on the beach.

I just like this shot of Kim in her element.

Lots of birds on the beautiful beach.

There were some beautiful shells on the beach.

From the beach we walked inland through the Sea Camp camping area.

The sun trough the Spanish moss was beautiful.

When we arrived back at the dinghy, it was right where I was hoping it would be. We saw two other dinghies up on the rocks, hopefully not damaged. It really is a bad situation that could be avoided with the use of a little common sense.

Anyway, we ended up having an awesome visit to Cumberland Island and would love to go back and tour more of the ruins and learn more of the history.

It was from there that we had plans to take a short trip to the town of St. Mary's, Georgia. We had heard good things about the place and wanted to check it out. I will tell you all about that visit in my next entry. I will close this one with an awesome sunset shot from our last night at anchor at Cumberland Island.