Apologies for not updating the blog. Hill and I are making our transition back to the "real world" and our non-sailing time is becoming occupied with other, not nearly as fun tasks.
We are over halfway through the ICW. We made two stops in Georgia - Cumberland Island and Jekyll Island. They were both places that I really wanted to visit. Cumberland Island is a National Park and we spent two days there hiking around the island. It is beautiful and very southern. The interior of the island is covered with huge live oak trees dripping with spanish moss that provide canopy for palmetto bushes. They also provide canopy for about a billion mosquitos. Even coated in Deep Woods Off, if Hill and I stopped moving for more than 30 seconds we would get dive bombed. But it was so beautiful that we didn't mind (too much).
The edges of the island are salt marsh and beach and they are filled with birds and other wildlife. The only access to the island is by boat so once visitors leave on the afternoon ferry, the only people left are park rangers, a few campers, and the other cruisers anchored off the island like us. It was cool.
After Cumberland we stopped at Jekyll Island for a night. Jekyll Island was home to an exclusive club at the turn of the last century and the former club is now a hotel. We were able to borrow a car from the marina to drive around the island and check out the club and old mansions, but the real attraction of the island turned out to be the swimming pool at the marina. It has been 90+ degrees for the last week and Hill and I are dying without air conditioning. The pool was a welcome refreshment.
From Jekyll, Hill and I did an overnight leg to Charleston, SC. I would like to say it was enjoyable but...well...let's just say that offshore overnights are not for me. Some thunderstorms popped up overnight and we had to heave-to for an hour or so to avoid them, which we did. Our XM weather data FINALLY came in handy as the real-time satellite, storm cell, and lightning data allowed us to successfully reroute around all of the storms. But it did not make me long for another offshore leg, and our plan to do another overnight from Charleston to Cape Fear or Beaufort, NC was shelved. The weather forecast for the next few days calls for more scattered thunderstorms, so we are going to stay in the ICW as we continue up. The ICW has its own challenges (I am starting to lose count of how many times we've touched the bottom), but it is protected from the weather.
However, if we hadn't done our offshore leg, we would not have sailed into Charleston harbor, which was fantastic. I've visited Charleston several times, and coming in by sea is far more lovely than by land. In front of us were the old mansions lining the battery, and to our right was the impressive Cooper River Bridge. We stayed in a marina as there aren't good anchorages close to town. Actually, on our second night we left the boat at the marina and got a hotel room to escape the heat. We spent the hottest part of the afternoon in air-conditioned comfort and then went out in the evening to walk around the city and eat some "low country" food. Shrimp and grits - mmmmmm.
We are meeting my mother in Norfolk, VA, aka Mile 0, in 10 days. That's 50 miles per day. We can make it!
