November 18th- Isle of Hope to Duplin River/ Sepelo Island GA
With our cooler filled with Brunswick Stew, we departed Isle of Hope Marina around 8:00am. The day was pleasant with the usual mix of motoring and sailing through the various rivers and sounds we traversed.
We had the Crescent River as our destination but after consultation with Rhiannon we decided to push on a little further to the Duplin River. We hadn’t anchored here since our first trip south on Catalpa. It’s a good anchorage with a conveniently located ferry dock for Ollie’s evening commando raid. Technically, you are not supposed to land on Sapelo Island without a permit but noone seems to mind.
Some scenes from Sapelo Island.
Evergreen anchored on the Duplin River.
Big sky.
November 19th- Duplin River to Cumberland Island GA
We were up before dawn and had our anchor hauled up by sunrise. We needed to put many miles under our keel to make Cumberland Island in daylight. Today we had two very shallow spots to deal with. The first being the Little Mud River. We actually hit the Little Mud at low tide which is not really the correct tide for getting through the river. Recently, I learned how to download, current, Army Corps of Engineer surveys to my navigation tablet. This was unbelievably helpful for getting down that shallow river.
Sapelo Island ferry dock.
House out in the middle of nowhere.
Today couldn’t have been any better. I was very sceptical about making Cumberland Island by night fall. King Neptune was helping us today. It seemed we always had a favorable current and the wind at our backs. We had no problems getting to the Island before dusk.
Happy boy to be back on Cumberland.
Evergreen anchored off Cumberland Island Georgia.
November 20th and 21st- Cumberland Island GA
The Island is a national park. It’s one of our favorite places to stop along the ICW. Horses, deer, armadillos, and pigs run the park. For some reason we saw less horses this time but the island is big. I imagine they must roam around, foraging for food. All the grass on the island is very short due to feeding. We debated how long to stay due to an approaching front. It’s hard to move on when you are in such a beautiful place. Eventually Rhiannon decided to push ahead. We’ll probably catch up with them further down the road to the Bahamas.
Some scenes from Cumberland Island.
I actually had a standoff with the light grey horse. Eventually I got a picknic table between me, Ollie and the horse. He then lost interest.
Armadillo. He let me and Ollie approach. Ollie was great with this. Amazing how he seems to understand things.
Submarine! This was very cool. It was passing by the anchorage on the way to the Kings Bay submarine base.
Escort tugs. One was moving along in reverse.
One of the main attractions for Ollie is the beach. He got a lot of exercise. I managed to catch this action sequence during ball. He can still really jump!
Ready to launch.
Take off!
Another armadillo.
Dungeness Ruins.
November 22nd- Cumberland Island GA to Sisters Creek/ Jacksonville FL
We still had decent weather yesterday but I probably should have changed anchorages in the afternoon. I knew we might have some weather issues on the horizon but it’s hard to move on when you are having wine and hors d’oeuvre s after a nice day. The wind and opposing current made life difficult on Evergreen this morning. Eventually we got the dinghy on deck and retrieved our anchor. Time to go! We both got very little sleep after 3:00am.
Today was grey and rainy. We didn’t see many boats moving. We anchored for the night on Sisters Creek in Jacksonville Florida. Tomorrow we’ll head to St Augustine. We managed to get a mooring reservation for a few days.
Evergreen anchored on Sisters Creek.