Monday November 21: Old Ferandina, FL :-)

It was an early start yesterday from the anchorage as we wanted to make it in early to St. Simons Island (about 4 hours away). Our first anchoring out since Steve broke his arm went well and he was able to handle the final securing of the anchor well. Again a peaceful quiet day - this is an island that seems to be someones little piece of paradise :-)

We're still traveling through the mud marshes of Georgia - it's really amazing how much water must go in and out of the inlets to the ocean twice each day. Makes me wonder what affect the moon has on my body if it can affect the oceans the way it does .... Many birds along the waterway during low tide including a couple of white pelicans. While there were huge flocks of these birds as we traveled down the rivers last year, there are very few around the coast. Most fun today: traveling down the Little Mud River. I was just glad it wasn't named the Little Rock River! Shallow but no issues hitting bottom.

Once through that stretch, the river widened up nicely and stayed this way through the marshes until we arrived at our marina. Apparently the cormorants like to stand on the markers with wings open trying to get dry!

The marina here is very nice - made it here in time for lunch and Steve finally was able to have oysters on the half shell. We thought this boat was a bit over the edge: 4 300 horsepower outboards!!

And as advertised, blueberry muffins and a paper delivered to the boat about 6:30 am. The best part was the headlines :-) It didn't really occur to me that we were probably in Jaguar country so it was fun having the Browns finally win one at the end - although it seemed until the very last play that we were indeed going to loose. What were they thinking throwing the ball instead of giving it to the runner that already had shown he was almost unstoppable? No matter - it worked for me!

Up this morning, take the loaner car for breakfast and a quick look at the pier on the island. I love how they keep the seagulls off of the lights! But the tide is going out (the water was up to the rocks at tide) and we need to get going: more Georgia mud today.

First was the passage through Jekyll Creek at almost low tide (not the best plan :-) ) but little did we know that we were following a sailboat that draws 6' 8" of water to our measly 3' 8"! If he can make it, so can we. Of course that's when I heard him call his friends to say he was sitting on bottom. Yikes. I passed him and asked if he wanted us to pull him but he just said it would be nice if I went ahead and could find the deeper water. So I did and he was able to power off the mud and follow us out of the creek. Finally - wide open water again - but lots of sand bars. This is the north end of Cumberland Island.

Aahh - relaxing again with wide rivers and no wind ..... until the mud got me. Rule number 1: you can't always trust the chart plotter to lead the way! As you can see by the track, we hit mud, backed off, hit mud again, backed off again, finally turned around and then went the way everyone else did - over the marsh! Of course the marsh really wasn't there - who knew? So we did all of this when it seemed like it was the boat freeway - so many watching us flounder around in the mud. Oh well .... at least the tide was coming in so worst case: we would have waited for it to float us off.

So we are safely tied to a dock on Amelia Island close to Lance and Mary (Amanzi from Baltimore). They will be here a week getting stuff ready to head to the Bahamas. For us, Jacksonville for a month or so of downtime.