The Barrier Islands and Reflections



Our dock at St Marys.  Most always we are the smallest boat!

We’d heard about the little town of St. Mary’s, Georgia. It is on the St. Mary’s river dividing Florida
 and Georgia, in the southeastern corner of the state. The dockmaster is 86 years old and works 7 days a week. He doesn’t answer radio calls or the phone, so we took a chance on getting dock space. The marina is home to the ferries taking visitors to Cumberland Island. Several ferries left and returned both days we were in the marina, loaded with people off to camp, hike or beach on this beautiful island. We had been on the island on our way down last all, and enjoyed an 8-mile hike that featured wild horses, armadillos and stately live oaks around the former Carnegie mansion. 

In St. Mary's, little shops and restaurants cater to the Cumberland Island tourists as well as the town residents, making this a busy little town.  We biked around the quaint town, and went in the large, old cemetery at one end of town. We saw markers from the early 1800s including a small section of Acadians, some  of whom settled in this area after being driven out of Canada by the British. We will definitely return to St. Mary’s someday. 


Molly bicycling by the former Jekyll Island Club.

Graveyard Beach. Not as isolated as the
Boneyard on Blackbeard so Molly tried
to make it as unique with her dance.

After 2 nights, we set off for Jekyll Island. This island was purchased in the late 1700s by a French family and sold in the late 1800s to a group of wealthy families who called themselves the Jekyll Island Club. The State of Georgia bought much of the Island in the 1950s.  There are some beautiful mansions and some concentrated residential development on the island, but the State passed a law that no more than 35% of the island can be developed, leaving lots of beautiful open land. We borrowed old fashioned single speed Schwinn bikes from the marina(we had sold our bikes in St. Mary’s) and rode on a bike path around the perimeter of the island, about 15 miles.
One of the prettiest parts of the ride was through a marsh filled with beautiful birds.

There was a heavy fog on the water the next morning, so we waited until it lifted. Shortly after setting out, we entered a thick fog bank and had almost no visibility for about 2 hours. We motored slowly, turned on our radar and hit the horn at regular intervals. The unnerving part for me was having to cross a big ship channel.  Being in the fog in a boat is a strange experience, but we have had many foggy sails in Maine, so we

Finally the fog began to lift.

knew what to do. In time, the fog lifted to a gorgeous and mostly wind free day.  We wanted to head back to Blackbeard Island that we had so loved on the way down.

Cabretta Inlet at low tide.

The weather and tides allowed us to enter Blackbeard Creek through the Cabretta Inlet from the Ocean.  The channel is unmarked, and it was somewhat scary for me (not for Bill, of course!) with waves crashing on both sides of us, but we made it through without incident.  Our anchoring spot was a mile or two up the creek, between Sapelo and Blackbeard Islands.  During the afternoon we took our dinghy down near the southern tip of Blackbeard and walked two beautiful miles on the beach and then circled back on the inland side along the Creek. 

 

I wasn’t thrilled as what turned out to be a bushwhack that featured cactus, tall marsh grass and some mud. Without saying this to Bill, I was thinking that we might be invading the privacy of some hibernating alligators.

Walking the sand roads on Sapelo Island.

Once back at the boat we got the phone number off the internet for JR Grovner, one of the descendents of slaves who lives on Sapelo Island.  Sapelo first became the home for a number of former slaves after the Civil War, and this history reminded us of much, much smaller Malaga Island in Maine.  Now, many of the descendants can no longer afford to live on Sapelo because of the increase in property taxes.  Most of the large Island is still wild, however.  Mr. Grovner was unable to give us a tour on the private island, but he did give us permission to visit.  In our 9 mile circular walk on the sand roads we passed two houses, the African Baptist Church, the ruins of the Chocolate Mansion, a former cotton plantation, and an ancient Native American shell midden, which has been carbon dated to be over 4,000 years old.



Former slave cabin at the Chocolate Mansion. The building was made of tabby, a common 17th century building material
made of shells and limestone.

Irrigation canal that served the
Chocolate Mansion plantation.





Main fireplace of the plantation house.





Indian midden known as the shell ring.






Last night for Molly at anchor
 

We got back to the boat late, and were challenged to make it north through the Creek back to the Intercoastal Waterway as the tide was going out.  We anchored 25 miles north in Redbird Creek, observing both a beautiful sunset and sunrise before going on to Hilton Head, where our boat will spend the winter.

Do not trust this nun to mark
the channel.

Nor can you trust this can.

On our full day of cruising we commented on how few boats we were seeing in comparison to our trip down.  First it is winter, and, secondly, the ICW, which is supposed to be 12 feet deep at low tide, went down to 4 feet in one section as suggested by both the red and green channel markers lying in the sand.





Our boat in now "on the hard" at the
Hilton Head Boathouse.

On the final day of our adventure, there is some time to reflect on this experience. Over dinner at the Hilton Head Boathouse we both came up with the same top four memories of our trip – going through the 8-10 foot breaking waves off West End, Grand Bahama, coming into the picture-perfect anchorage at the Exuma Land and Sea Park in the Bahamas, exploring Boneyard Beach on Blackbeard Island and the friends we have made.  We have had a lot of great laughs. Boaters are wonderful people, open to making new friends, willing to help each other out of jams, and always ready with a few snacks for cocktail hour in the cockpit. They also share a sense of adventure and love of storytelling that is delightful.

We learned that one can live reasonably comfortably in 125 square feet, privacy is overrated and you won’t starve if you have enough rice, oatmeal, potatoes, cabbage and peanut butter aboard.  This adventure will be hard to top, although we are working on other ideas, and we are so thankful to have had this opportunity. Thank you all for following our journey.