Hilton Head to the Fabulous Barrier Islands

After a great Thanksgiving week in Atlanta with our daughter and her new family, we re-boarded Salty Paws in Hilton Head on Monday am. We had read about St. Catherine's Island, 7200 acres managed by the NY Zoological which has utilized the land since 1974 for the breeding and saving from extinction some vulnerable species. These include lemurs, giant tortoises and zebras! One can access a small section of beach at low tide, but otherwise the island is private. We anchored in this beautiful spot and although we sadly did not spot a zebra, the sunrise quest was exciting.



The next day, we crossed Sapelo Sound to enter Blackbeard Creek, off the ICW. Blackbeard Island is a National Wildlife Refuge, and unlike St. Catherine's, is accessible to boaters. Sorry, sailor friends, but our 2' draw (boat depth below the surface)  allows us to go all kinds of places that sailboats with a 5-6' draw just can't go, and the Blackbeard dock is one of them.  The guide states that the island has about 150,000 visitors a year but we highly doubt that. First of all, the island is hard to get to. It is about 10 miles from the mainland and does not have ferry service. We anchored off the dock and when we went ashore, the park ranger barely acknowledged our presence, telling us that we were on our own. He did tell us that there were quite a few alligators living on the island. For a northern girl, this is very disquieting news!




Alligator tracks - actually their
tails dragging.

We set off on our hike on a sandy trail through a forest of live oaks and saw palmettos. I did stop to look, but mostly was on the lookout for strange creatures.  Now I understand how visitors to Maine from "away" are terrified of bears and moose. 


The eerie beauty of the Boneyard on Blackbeard Isalnd

The day was about 78 degrees and sunny with virtually no humidity. After a fairly short hike, we arrived at the beach, known as the Boneyard.  Again, photos can't convey the beauty. We arrived at mid tide. The beach was wide and easy to walk on. Not a soul in sight. The only prints we saw were animals', likely small alligators, feral hogs and lizards. We also saw hatched sea turtle eggs. The beach is littered with old uprooted trees, smoothed by the weather. We walked along the beach for about 3 miles, picking up whelks, cockles and sand dollars (I couldn't stop myself), and occasionally saw litter that had washed up. You know those congrats balloons they sell at the grocery store? Yeah, they might end up on a deserted island.   Most of the ICW between Mass and NC had been lined with houses. The South Carolina and particularly the Georgia coasts are pristine, very lightly touched by humans, and magical.



The one animal we did see on Blackbeard.

So many choices of islands to visit on this fairly short Georgia coast, but we decided to go into Brunswick the next day. I will let Bill tell you about our boating experience getting there... Blackbeard Creek empties out in the Atlantic at Cabretta Inlet, and that route would save us over 20 miles.  The charts show mudflats at low tide.  Could we make it through?  I spoke to a couple of hunters at the dock who were getting ready to participate in Blackbeard's semi-annual deer bow hunt.  They said that yes, there is more than enough depth at or near high tide.  We just needed to go slowly and keep a constant eye on the depth.  We left first thing the next morning, one hour before high tide.  The creek had more than 15 feet of depth until we finally rounded the last bend to open ocean.  Now we had crashing waves on both sides of us and a 50 foot corridor of very choppy water in the middle.  Our depth meter got down to 7.5 feet, but no lower, as we slowly motored out through the chop.

Finally, after a 1/2 mile we reached 13 feet of depth and were in a good shape after an intense 30 minutes. The route took us by the southern end of Sapelo Island and its beautiful lighthouse.

We both thought we'd heard people speak well of Brunswick, possible the only place in the USA that in its history was part of 5 different countries!  It was time for a marina, meaning fuel, water, pump out, laundry and showers. We went into the long Brunswick River which apparently is known as a hurricane hole. This is an area along the coast that is considered to be a good place to ride out a hurricane. We walked into Brunswick and found it to be a depressed town of old buildings and many For Lease signs. The marina has over 300 slips, and many boaters spend months at a time living on their boats here, waiting for favorable weather to venture out wherever they're heading. It's quite the social club, with boaters getting together for happy hour 3 times a week. Many of the boats in the marina were many times bigger than ours. We talked to one couple who are living on their 55' boat with 3 state rooms and 2 full bathrooms! Another couple has a 45' boat they bought earlier this year after never having had a boat before. "We don't really know much about our boat yet." Might as well start out big! Maybe we should be watching out for these huge boats on our way south.

We set off early the next morning for Cumberland Island, just 20 miles away.  We arrived mid-day to another magical island, mostly owned by the wealthy Carnegie family until they worked out a deal with the National Park Service in 1972 to make it a National Seashore site.  Our visit included a tour of the Carnegie mansion at Plum Orchard and a 2nd day with a lovely 9-mile hike around the mid-section of this 17-mile island. 

 

We saw many armadillos and white pelicans along with 5 feral horses, who have populated the island for over 300 years, having been left here by the Spaniards.  Blackbeard and Cumberland Islands both have a number of alligators, but we are still waiting to see our first.  It might just be a little too cool for them to be up and about.

The Cumberland Island beach is 17 miles long, beautiful, and almost as special to us as Blackbeard.  The trail across the island included many live oaks with hanging Spanish moss and saw palmettos.


We left Cumberland mid-afternoon to make our way to Florida.