Along the Very Different Georgia Coast

. . . FROM BEAUTIFUL CUMBERLAND ISLAND TO THE MARSHES OF GLYNN

Carina left Florida's waters on Thursday, motor-sailing to Cumberland Island, Georgia. We arrived Thursday night anchoring between the big island and a tidal mud island. The eight-foot tide was the largest we'd ever seen, revealing broad mud flats. 

North of Fernandina Beach, we heard a boat named Say Good-bye radioing others. How many boats could there be named Say Good-bye? We'd met Ralph and Celeste on their boat north of Columbus, Mississippi, traveling down the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway. They stopped in Florida for several months, and we stopped for several months. In one of those "it's a small world" moments, our paths crossed again, and they joined us at the Cumberland Island anchorage.

Georgia Currents and Winds

Friday morning, we woke early to find that the current was flowing in one direction and the wind blowing in the exact opposite. That had caused the boat to spin and our anchor rode (the line that connects the anchor to the boat) to go beneath Carina, hooking on her wing keel. The danger was that the intense pressure on the rode would cause us to drag anchor, possibly into the mud flat shallows. 

After several anxious moments, we were able to work the anchor rode free of the keel by starting the engine and turning Carina, first left, then right, when it loosened. We then took the dinghy to the island for a tour as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

Carina after her anchor problem was cleared up, seen from Cumberland Island. 

Beautiful, Wild, Historical Cumberland Island

Everything good you may have heard about Cumberland Island is true. It is stunning, is overflowing with wildlife, and steeped in history.

More than half the island looks like this -- palmettos, spreading live oaks 
and Spanish moss. 

Thanks to recent rain, the dead-looking Resurrection fern re-hydrated and is now 

flourishing. The fern can be found on most live oaks on the island.

Tall dunes were at the entrance to the National Seashore itself on the Atlantic 
side of the island. 

The Cumberland Island National Seashore is 17 miles of pristine beach. 

Most of the island is managed by the National Park Service, and access is limited.

Although we've been on the lookout for alligators because we're traveling 
with Gator Bait (Squirt), this one is the first we've seen, floating in a pond
 filled with duck weed on Cumberland Island.

This nesting wood stork on Cumberland Island is part of an endangered breeding 

population. The wood stork is the only stork to breed in North America.

It seemed odd for our tour guide to use the term "feral" to describe the wild horses 

on the island. It turns out that a feral horse is a free-roaming horse of domesticated 

ancestry. About 150 feral horses roam the island.

This tiny church, holding about two dozen people, is where John F. Kennedy, Jr., and Carolyn Bessette were married. He had helped restore the First African Baptist Church in his youth and said that he wanted to be married there.  

The pulpit and the rest of the inside of the church were simple and unadorned. 

It made us see John Kennedy, Jr., in a new light.

The history of Cumberland Island is intertwined with the names of millionaires of the late 1800s-early 1900s -- the Carnegies who lived there and the Rockefellars who sought to protect the island. We ran out of time to visit the ruins of Dungeness, the Thomas Carnegie home, but were able to tour the Plum Orchard mansion, owned by one of their children. Lucy Carnegie gave her son, George, and new bride $10,000 for a wedding present in 1898. With the money, they built the main part of their winter home, adding the wings two years later. $10,000 went a lot farther then than now.

Plum Orchard features ornate capitals and cornices. The mansion has 117 rooms in 21,700 square feet, including the attic and basement. It has an indoor pool and indoor squash court.

Inside the entrance was a hanging lamp personally designed and fabricated 

by Louis Tiffany, a friend of the Carnegie family.

The most valuable lamps were a set of two hanging lamps in one of the many living areas. Louis Tiffany designed them to look like the backs of loggerhead turtles. Cumberland Island is one of the breeding areas for the endangered turtles.

The Marshes of Glynn

Although the trawler looks aground, it's in the channel, just on a different 

loop than Carina was.

After leaving Cumberland Island, we took an alternative route around St. Andrews Sound, snaking through a channel bordered by salt marshes. It was a spooky trip. The alternative route was about three miles longer than a direct crossing, but we avoided the rough waters and 20 to 25-mph winds of the sound. We then continued north on the ICW to a marina at Brunswick-St. Simons Island, Georgia, where we docked for a couple of days. 

In Marathon, we'd laughed at the name of a boat -- Always Something. There is truly always something that breaks or needs to be improved on a boat. We discovered our latest "something" was a broken water pump and -- thanks to our friend, Stan -- ordered a new one from the Catalina dealer at the marina. On Sunday, Kent had switched the pump out in a matter of minutes, and we did boat chores the rest of the time.

The barnacles are up some eight feet above the 

waterline on the pole next to Carina. That shows how high the tides get.

Another view of the mud flats and salt marshes with the tide mostly out 
and the fog mostly in.

It seemed odd that the Brunswick area would have a huge bridge -- 182-feet tall -- honoring the poet Sidney Lanier who lived most of his life elsewhere. Then we found that the county is named Glynn. Add the salt marshes to that mix, and we came to understand the good folk honored him because he honored them with his poem, The Marshes of Glynn. Here's a bit:

Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea?
  Somehow my soul seems suddenly free
From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin,
By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn.

This morning we left the marshes of Glynn behind in a lifting fog to travel north again, this time to the marshes of McIntosh (County). There, Marathon friends Hamp and Denise on Gracie are waiting for us at Darien, Georgia. 

What's Next?

 . . . DOING AMERICA'S GREAT LOOP

Friends at home asked us where we're going next. In early March, we decided to keep on cruising by doing America's Great Loop. The route is a way to travel around the eastern United States on connecting lakes, rivers and waterways. The Loop and its optional courses are shown in the map, with colors indicating seasons. 

At any given time, about 100 or more boaters are doing the Great Loop, most doing it in trawlers -- big, comfortable, diesel-guzzling power boats. The rest of us hardy folks -- about seven percent of all "Loopers" -- are traveling in sailboats.

Our Route

In one sense, every Looper's journey is the same because we all follow the basic Great Loop route on the map. 

On the other hand, it's a unique experience for everyone. It's unique because there is no set starting place -- boaters may begin at any point on the route. There are optional variations in the basic Loop to take, usually based on the size of the boat, such as crossing the Gulf (larger boats) or curving inland close to the west Florida coast (smaller boats). And many boaters take side trips to see the sights they personally want to see along the way. 

Loopers recognize each other by flying the white burgee (flag) for the American Great

 Loop Cruising Association. When a Great Loop is completed, the boater gets a gold 

burgee. Those of us doing the Loop for the first time have a lot of respect for those 

that fly the gold flag, knowing what it represents. 

Carina draws just 4'6" so we are not limited to where we can go by depth. We are limited by height. As a sailboat, we'll lower our mast and store it on a frame on deck in order to get under the low bridges between Troy, N.Y. and Georgian Bay. Because there are many exciting things to see and experience there, we'll take the far northern route, spending about a month in Canada. Carina's mast will be raised when we reach the Great Lakes and lowered again at Chicago until we get home.

Crossing Our Wake

What matters ultimately is "crossing our wake" (ending where we started) on the official Loop route. Carina will cross her wake, and we will finish our Loop on the Tennessee River at the point we turned south on the Tenn-Tom Waterway.  Although it looks like a lot of area to cover, we should be through with our Loop in mid-fall. 

Doing the Loop wasn't a long-time retirement dream of ours. We were influenced by good friends Stan and Annie who have done it twice and have encouraged us and other friends to go. When we left Chattanooga, we had our concerns over such a long trip. But by the time we sailed to the Keys, we were ready for the excitement and adventure of long-term cruising to continue. 

Hooray! Carina's On the Water Again

. . . AND WE'RE BACK ON OUR FEET

If we seem to have suddenly disappeared, it was partly planned, partly unplanned. An unplanned stomach bug shared by us both, followed by a planned visit home, kept us from posting.  We're both healthy now and are reassured that the house is still standing. Best of all, we had a chance to be with family and many friends. We are thankful for the friends we were able to connect with and just wish we could have seen everyone.

When we left St. Augustine in early April, we motor sailed to the free public docks in downtown Jacksonville. Our long-time cruising friends, Stan and Annie, met us at the dock and we all shared a wonderful evening. 

It was heavenly! We started smelling the wonderful aroma of roasting coffee for a 

couple of miles before we found the source -- a large Maxwell House plant on the 

outskirts of Jacksonville. 

A downtown restaurant center is out of sight on Carina's port side. A fabulous view 
of downtown Jacksonville is everywhere else.

At night, downtown Jacksonville is beautifully lighted. Each bridge is lighted in a 

different color, it seems. As still as a boat may seem, it's not really still, as you can 

see. Hopefully, it gives you the impression of the city's beauty despite the blur. 

Carina at the Jacksonville city dock with a blue and red 
lighted bridge and railroad bridge in the background.

After leaving Jacksonville, we traveled up the St. John's River to Green Cove Springs Marina. It's more of a boat yard and dry storage facility than a marina with docks. However, 

it suited our purposes, and we had Carina pulled from the water. 

Carina waits her turn to be lifted from the water at Green Cove Springs Marina. She was put on supports "on the hard," as it's known. We then rented a car, filled it with things that weren't needed on the boat, and drove home for two weeks. 

When we returned from Chattanooga, we were able to repair the bottom paint, varnish the wood inside the cabin and make other improvements -- all while living aboard. We were in the company of about 50 other boats being worked on at the same time. One by one, those boats will be moved to the marina's dry storage area. Many people from Canada and the northern U.S. spend winter months in the Keys or Bahamas, putting their boats into dry storage for the rest of the year. Green Cove Springs Marina is considered relatively 

protected from hurricanes.

Kent rolls on the first layer of bottom paint to repair bare patches. Eventually he put three layers on those patches. Bottom paint is specially formulated to keep barnacles -- our nemesis -- and other growth from attaching to a boat's bottom and slowing 

it down. Even with good bottom paint, a boat in saltwater has to be scraped monthly.

Stan, Kent and Annie together just as we were leaving. They welcomed us to Jacksonville and saw us off from Green Cove Springs, and in the middle, showed great hospitality to us travelers. We look forward to sailing together when they get the engine on their Catalina, 
Kokopelli, up and running again.

Carina is returned to the water. The marina's Travel-Lift is like a rolling hangar for boats. It's driven like a car through the marina -- a large, awkward car maybe. When Carina was on the supports, the Travel-Lift was driven to her front and sides. The straps were put around her belly, and she was raised up. Then the Travel-Lift was driven to the launch site where she was lowered. It took longer to put the dinghy in the water than it did to put Carina in.

We immediately headed to Sister's Creek past downtown Jacksonville. While running our usual 2200 rpms, the current helped push us a few times to 10 mph from our more typical 6.5 mph!   We'll tie up to a free dock at the Sister's Creek community park for the night. Once again, we'll be rocked to sleep by the rhythm of the boat in the water. We've missed it.



Next: Doing America's Great Loop

St. Augustine for Dummies

. . . A WHIRLWIND RUN THROUGH THE TOWN

Yes, the dummies are us. In our day onshore, we made a whirlwind run through St. Augustine. Here are the highlights:

St. Augustine Old Jail

Sheriff Joe Perry -- an actual city sheriff in the early 1900s -- oversees the St. Augustine Old Jail. Standard Oil billionaire Henry Flagler, who adopted St. Augustine and made great investments in it, built the city a new jail (because he wanted the property the old jail was on). The outside was ornate enough that visitors thought it was a hotel and knocked on the door wanting a room. Those visitors wouldn't have wanted inside if they'd known what was there.

Prisoners at the old St. Augustine jail had an average life span of two years. Women cooked, cleaned, and gardened. Men served on the chain gang. If prisoners misbehaved, they were put in the big bird cage (next to Deputy Deborah Doright) for 24 hours, and it was hung from a roof for public ridicule. It gives a new meaning to the name Jail Bird.

The Oldest Wood Schoolhouse in the U.S.

The oldest wood school house in the U.S. looks really, really old. We're not sure why the anchor chain is wrapped around it and the anchor nearby. Maybe it's to keep it from blowing away in hurricanes? Maybe it's because education is the anchor of our society!

Castillo de San Marcos

The walls of the Castillo de San Marcos are 18 feet thick at the base tapering to nine feet at the top. It replaced a succession of nine wooden forts the Spanish built on the same location.

The fort is constructed of massive blocks of coquina (ko-KEE-nah). Coquina is a natural limestone composed of broken shells that solidified into a mass when mixed with sand and cemented with calcite from the shells themselves. The coquina for the Castillo de San Marcos was mined from barrier islands near St. Augustine. The fort took 23 years to build.

Life for Spanish soldiers was hard. Their barracks were plush though compared to the cells at the old jail that prisoners used some 300 years later.

Kent was fascinated by the cannons on the roof of the castillo. This one looks ready to fire onto the harbor and Bridge of the Lions.

Spanish soldiers were also smaller than most people today -- about Jane's size, to be exact. She explored the sentry tower that was a perfect fit.

Flagler Memorial Church

The Flagler Memorial Church is an awe-inspiring church along the lines of cathedrals in Europe. This view is just a small portion of the church. The Flagler family attended church here and made major contributions to the building fund.

Lightner Museum

We weren't sure what we'd find at the museum. What we found were Chicago publisher Otto Lightner's ecclectic personal collections of natural history, art, crystal and glasswork, and furnishings. The building the museum is in was built by -- you guessed it! -- Henry Flagler as the Alcazar Hotel and later sold to Lightner.

Of course, Kent's favorite exhibit at the Lightner was the shrunken head.

Jane's favorite exhibit was the Tiffany dragonfly lamp.

The piece we both liked was the folk-art style hooked rug with a not-so-nice, but humorous poem about in-laws. It does not apply to our in-laws.

The Bridge of Lions One Last Time

As we toured on the trolley, the reason for the name for the bridge became clear -- the stone lions at the base of the bridge, both ends. 

We enjoyed our quick visit and wish we could have seen more -- the lighthouse, Flagler College, and even the Fountain of Youth. As a place to visit, St. Augustine has a lot to offer. We'll be back.

We are pushing now to reach Jacksonville tonight and then on to Green Cove Springs Marina on the St. John's River tomorrow. Plans are to go home for two weeks, come back to do a little work on Carina -- like putting a new zinc on our prop -- and start the last two thirds of the Loop. 

Racing Old Man Winter in Florida

. . . NOT OUTRACING OLD MAN WINTER. WE HAVEN'T.

Mr. Heater, our portable propane heater, has been fired up several mornings to take a hard chill off the cabin. We try not to think how warm it still is in Marathon.

Here are our travels in photos:

Bob and Trish were outstanding hosts during our visit to Vero Beach, their second home. They even had Yellowhammers waiting for us when we had dinner with them! They helped us get a phone repaired, took us to the grocery store and showed us the town, parks and beaches. Vero is very impressive. Here Kent, Bob and Trish were looking for manatees in a small inlet.

Live oaks were everywhere in Vero Beach, nicknamed Velcro Beach because people just passing through find they can't tear themselves away, like our friends Bob and Trish. Live oaks are sprawling trees with limbs made for a tire swing. The limbs often are the garden bed for Spanish moss, ferns and other hot-weather plants.

Our first night away from Vero Beach was spent in the gorgeous Eau Gallie Yacht Basin anchorage. Our new boat buddy, Gary (and Alex, the dog) on ToTo Too, whom we met in Marathon, showed us this peaceful anchorage with low or no tides and protected all around from the winds.

The Titusville Bridge anchorage had a beautifully lighted bridge nearby that looks like birthday candles. Coincidentally it was Kent's birthday that day.  

The next day was a long traveling day, so we started shortly after sunrise. Nobody is stirring yet on ToTo Too as the sun peeks above the trees.

On vacations to Daytona Beach, Jane's parents took her and her sister, Judith, to hunt seashells in the shadow of the Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse. Now it's open to the public to climb and explore.

Gary and Alex, the boat pup, left us at Palm Coast Marina where they'll stay for the spring and summer. Before retirement, Gary had worked as a precision grinder for the aerospace industry, grinding instruments to within a millionth of a millimeter. We didn't know that degree of precision was possible before talking with Gary.

Dorothy, we're not in the Keys anymore. In South Florida, manatee zones are year-round. In North Florida, the zones are just in the summer. Manatees can't deal with cold temperatures and even get frostbite if not in protected waters when a cold front moves in. Soon we'll be out of manatee country entirely. Although we've only seen one in an aquarium and one in the wild, it's been good to learn how Florida is protecting them and educating boaters. Now if the power boaters would only listen and slow down!

Before reaching St. Augustine, we tried out a new marina -- Marineland Marina, owned by the city of Marineland, Florida -- so new it wasn't even in the Skipper Bob marina book. The people were super helpful and accommodating, the facilities were great, it had free laundry, but it had one major problem -- no Internet! Of course, we could get 53 TV channels, amazingly.

Easter Sunday, we arrived at St. Augustine. To reach here, we traveled through the Matanzas Pass that people had warned us about. Probably thanks to their warnings, we had no problems with those shallow, shoally waters. St. Augustine is the oldest city in the U.S. and has the oldest mission church, the oldest wooden schoolhouse, and the oldest house.

The Bridge of Lions is a bascule bridge that connects the beaches on the barrier islands with downtown St. Augustine. A bascule bridge is also called a drawbridge. Most in Florida have set schedules to open twice an hour, although some in more rural areas open upon demand. Sailboats must identify themselves on the VHF radio and politely let the bridge tender know they are waiting for an opening. We consult books and charts on board to learn where the bridges are for the day so we can plan to be at them close to scheduled openings. Most bridges look plainer and have plainer names than the Bridge of Lions. 

North of the bridge is the Castillo de San Marcos, an amazing fort built by the Spanish in 1695. The flags of five countries have flown over it, but it was never overrun or defeated in battle. The ownership of the fort changed only through treaties.

Traveling without stopping now and then to see the sights is no fun, as we learned on the Florida west coast. That's why we stopped at Camachee Cove Marina for an extra day to become tourists at St. Augustine. (Carina is the second sailboat on the right.) We're making a quick stop to smell the roses and hoping Old Man Winter passes us by.

Next: A Whirlwind Look at St. Augustine