June 24: More St. Simon's and Goodbye to Judy

Friday commenced with a long walk on the south beach of St. Simon's. Our friend Judy led us  on a route beneath the Island's fishing pier, which was bristling with fishermen of all shapes and sizes. A couple of them were catching large netfuls of something, but we couldn't tell exactly what it was. They (the fishermen, not the things in the net) seemed very triumphant.

The Lodge at St. Simon's

Our beach walk ended at The Lodge, a long, Low Country-looking hotel nestled down amid live oaks and marsh grass. This was where Judy had wanted to take us the evening before for sunset bagpipe music. Seeing it made us wish we had summoned up the energy to do so. 

We turned back at The Lodge. Somehow the rocky trail we were following took us away from the beach and into someone's beachfront backyard. A young man came out and told us struggling oldsters that we were on private property, and that we should climb back down the rocks to the "real" beach. All we wanted to do was get back to the beach, just not via the rocks, which looked a little unstable. Nevertheless, we complied, but were rather resentful and suspected that he'd be really sorry if one of us ended up with a broken ankle on his rocks.

Neptune Park at The Village of St. Simon's Island

Having reached the beach successfully (although not particularly gracefully), we backtracked to the pier and walked through the village around St. Simon's Lighthouse. What a great little beach town! Lots of friendly local shops, even smaller kiosks, galleries and restaurants, surrounding pretty waterside Neptune Park, set under more spreading live oaks. In addition to waterside picnic areas, the Park included a fantastic public swimming pool and mini golf course. Both were brimming with families having fun together, although we did notice more moms at the pool and more dads on the mini-golf course. (Miniature golf is a game that is fondly referred to in our family as "sweat golf." Guess the moms figured that, when the kids want mini-golf, it's the dad who should do the sweating, and not the mom.)

Judy hosted us for a late lunch at Sea Island, which is a country club-type resort surrounding The Cloisters, a very old and famous hotel. Sea Island is private, a small beachy buffer island that shields the northern part of St. Simon's from the Atlantic. Part of Sea Island is an even more private golf course, whose entrance we passed on our little tour. (Sort of like a double-private area, Judy told us with a little laugh, for golfers who really like their privacy.) 

After lunch at The Cloisters, it was time for us to race to Brunswick and deliver Judy to her husband, Alex, so that the two of them could head to Savannah for a business conference Alex was attending as Baxley, GA's city attorney. The Johnsons headed north in Alex's car. We headed south in Judy's car. Before long, after cell phone consultation, we both turned around and met again, as all of us had neglected to transfer a certain tote bag from Judy's to Alex's car. (It contained their registration materials for the conference in Savannah.) We're sure the Johnsons would have preferred not to make that last detour, but it gave the Parishes a nice ride on a back road that culminated in the parking lot of a restaurant in riverside Darien, GA. It was a nice side drive for us, actually. Registration materials duly transferred, we retraced our route to Brunswick and St. Simon's Island as the late day sun illuminated the South Georgia marshes and rivers in a very delightful way.

June 23 Tours of Jekyll & St. Simon's Islands

This is kind of a fun map of the area where we were,
so we thought we'd include it.

Thursday dawned relatively smoke free, so we took the opportunity to wash the decks clean of our Wally's Leg coat of ash. Soon after that, we had company! Judy Thomas Johnson, a friend from high school and college, arrived per our advance arrangements to take us on a driving tour of Jekyll and nearby St. Simon's. What's more, she invited us to use her family's beach house on St. Simon's Island and her car for the entire weekend, since she had to go to Savannah with her husband on business. We decided to take Judy up on the chance to luxuriate on land for a couple of days, and it turned out to be a good decision in more ways than one. 


Judy looks fabulous. She and Kay had not seen each other since their 20th high school reunion in 1991; this year is their 40th! Steve had not seen Judy since probably the late 1970s. She and her family live in Baxley, GA, which is about 30 miles south of Vidalia (yes, Home of the Sweet Onions). Along with other Baxley families, the Johnsons have a tradition of "going to the beach" at St. Simon's. 

Kay and gracious friend Judy Thomas Johnson
at historic Christ Church

We showed Judy around Mulligan, happy to be giving a tour to an old friend, then packed bags for the weekend and headed out in Judy's car. 


The first item on her agenda for us was a circumnavigation of Jekyll Island, which introduced us to its incredibly pretty and unique Historic District. Jekyll, you see, was where America's Gilded Age millionaires en masse had winter getaway "cottages" between 1888 and 1947. Judy lends me a book about the Jekyll Island Club (Splendid Isolation), which made a great read for quiet times during the rest of the weekend. One of the most incredible facts in the book was that, in any given winter during the Jekyll Island Club period, one-sixth of the world's wealth was concentrated on little Jekyll Island on the Georgia coast. Now the whole complex is a giant museum, with the old Jekyll Island Club House as its core. The Club House is also a hotel, as are a few of the millionaires' cottages.

Moss Cottage, Jekyll Island Historic District,
the 1896 shingle-style winter home of
George Henry Macy, tobacconist & owner of A&P

Next we headed to the mainland for a driving tour of the old port city of Brunswick, then across the water again to St. Simon's Island. We stopped for a quick lunch at a place Judy knew, then headed to Christ Church, which was supposed to be open but was not. There were some workmen there though, and Judy just asked them to let us in, which they very gallantly did. One of them told us they always try to accommodate visitors, which we thought was a wonderful attitude for someone going about his livelihood in a beautiful place. We loved the old Episcopal church, which dates to 1736 (although not the current structure) and is surrounded by a live oak-shaded graveyard where some of Georgia's earliest settlers are buried. Like other historic Low Country cemeteries we have visited, it draws you deeper and deeper into it, to read the names and dates and try to piece together family stories.

Our last stop of the day was Ft. Frederica National Historic Monument, where we got in free because the Park ranger at the desk had already closed his register for the day. A bonus for us, who had decided to visit as many National Park sites as possible on our cruise, since our interest was piqued because of Kay's immediate pre-retirement job with the Friends of Chickamauga & Chattanooga National Military Park (a Civil War site) back home. 


We walked the well-marked archeological remains of the fort and its town that were established as the British colonies' bastion to keep the Spanish from encroaching from Florida. We were again reminded of how much history there is on the South Georgia coast, and how far back it goes. As the end-of-day crowd wanes, we were joined by a herd of deer, who looked beautiful moving through the wooded grounds of the archeological site. 

Next we adjourned to Judy's beach house. How we wish we had taken a picture. We meant to, but events just sort of took on a life of their own on St. Simon's, and we missed that opportunity too. The beach house is a very cool place, a three-story home looking out over the north beach of St. Simon's toward Jekyll across the Sound, with Cumberland Island in the distance. Each of the three floors is its own apartment, with two bedrooms and baths, kitchen, dining area, living room and terrace. Judy installs us on the second floor, which is hers and her husband's level. Her husband's two brothers each have a floor as well, and we were pleased to be able to meet her sister in law, Pome, who was in residence when we arrive. 

We end our day with a walk in the rain down the street to another beach house, to visit with two couples who are Judy's friends. She wants to take us to the nearby Lodge Hotel for the cocktail hour Scottish bagpipe concert, but we are pooped after our extensive and wonderful tourist day. The three of us decide to eat in and relax.

June 22 Arrival at Jekyll Harbor Marina

This is the third in a series of posts that follow our course from Thunderbolt, GA to Jekyll Island, GA, before our boat, Mulligan, took a second lightning hit and had to go to "jail" (and to jail she did go -- directly to jail, without passing go and without collecting $200, so to speak).

Okefenokee fallout on Mulligan's transom, which is
usually a nice bright white

We slept a little later than usual on Wednesday, knowing that we didn't have as far to go as we had the day before. When we did emerge from Mulligan's salon, we felt a bit like the ancient Pompeiians must have felt as Vesuvius got going. The deck was coated with a layer of coarse wood ash from the Okefenokee fire. Nasty stuff. And, since the breeze we created for ourselves as we got underway didn't budge it, we just lived with it until we could get docked, with access to pressurized water. 

As we made our way south, we began to see something off in the distance that, from from where were, looked like the Emerald City (but without the green). Once we got closer we realized it was a very, very tall bridge, and guessed rightly that we were seeing the superstructure of the bridge over the shipping channel to Brunswick, GA. The bridge's webbing of cables was shining so that it looked more like a series of glass spires than a metal bridge. We could almost hear those Oz voices singing, "You're out of the woods." 

Our entry into St. Simon's Sound, which is where the shipping channel comes in from the Atlantic, was  hampered by smoke so thick that it was like heavy fog. In fact, we missed our turn into the secondary channel of Jekyll Creek and had to retrace our track to pick it up. This part of the trip was very spooky, with shrimp boats looming suddenly out of the haze in a ghostly way.

Once in Jekyll Creek, we hauled out the dock lines and fenders we'd stowed away when we left Thunderbolt. We hailed Jekyll Harbor Marina on the VHF, and were soon tied up in a face dock slip that was very easy to get into, which was nice. We immediately liked the small marina with its friendly neighbors, cool swimming pool, and inviting little restaurant & bar. As our first evening there came on, we spent a long time chatting with two neighboring live-aboard families: Frank & Lynn Barron, and Chuck & Nancy Willoughby.  

(By the way, when are we going to get better about taking pictures of things and people??? We were so absorbed in the conversation that it didn't even occur to us to get out the camera.)

The Barrons live on a 1959 motor yacht (we never learned her name, and the Barrons just called her "a great old lady"). The Barrons include Charlie, a friendly Pomeranian. His tag said he was a therapy dog, which seemed unusual for a Pom, which can often be a yappy, scrappy  little thing. Charlie has a kid-sized canvas chair on the prow of the boat, where he keeps an eye on everything and everybody on the dock. Frank is an interesting guy with lots of jobs: airline pilot, charter captain, back-up Boat US tow captain, and boat surveyor. Lynn is also a captain and surveyor. It was fun seeing how they make their livings from aboard their floating home. Frank, in his pilot's uniform, was in and out of Jekyll at least twice just while we were there, once to New York and once to Colorado.

The Willoughby's live aboard a newer motor yacht named Passion, out of Alexandria, VA. They have cruised for a year, hopping their own car along with them somehow. The third member of their group was Kaiser, an aging Golden Retriever. Chuck and Nancy told us they have spent every night so far at a marina, because Kaiser hasn't learned to use his astroturf "potty patch." As we chatted, they showed us the potty patch on the dock nearby. Nancy maintained that  Kaiser is close to "getting it," because he is spending more time on the patch. "Yes," said Chuck, "he does enjoy lying on it."

We traded contact information with both these sets of neighbors. (Come Saturday evening's storm, we were glad we did.) When it got dark, everyone adjourned to their various dinner plans. Ours were in our galley. Pasta with shrimp, a salad and good bread. It really is fun to cook in Mulligan's galley, which is nicer, although a little smaller even, than our very small kitchen back in Chattanooga.

June 21 Anchorage at Wally's Leg

This is the second in a series of posts that follow the course we took from Thunderbolt, GA to Jekyll Island, GA. There, at beautiful Jekyll, we had the bad luck of getting hit by lightning for the SECOND time in a year. Both of us are fine, but Mulligan is not. She had to be towed back to Thunderbolt, GA, where, as we are blogging, she is undergoing repairs.

Because of the heat that was forecast for Tuesday, June 21, we got underway earlier than usual. The sun dawned brightly but there was zero wind. We decided to continue our journey southward via the Intracoastal Waterway instead of going outside on the Atlantic. 


We weren't very far south of St. Catherine's when we ran into a very heavy haze. The air began to smell like summer camp the day after a big bonfire. We heard on the VHF that we were being visited by smoke from a huge wildfire in the inland Okefenokee Swamp to our southwest. The weather report said that a huge plume of smoke was spreading out over the Atlantic and affecting the air as far north as Savannah and Hilton Head. 

With the combination of heat and smoke, we opted to make a longer run than originally planned for the day, in order to reach Jekyll Island a day earlier than planned. Instead of ending up on the Darien River, we pushed through to only about 20 miles north of Jekyll, and anchored in a little creek with the funny name of Wally's Leg. 

Sunrise over St. Catherine's as we head out

Our June 21 travels took us through some of the wildest and least inhabited parts of the Georgia Low Country. (Well, least inhabited by anything except for big, mean, biting flies.) Maybe the trip just seemed extra desolate because of the debilitating smoke. The ICW was also shallow in spots, which demanded careful attention to our charts, depth sounder, range marks and channel markers. Gatorade, wet towels across the backs of our necks, and the iPod were our saving graces during this leg of our trip!

Smoke on the water!

We reached Wally's Leg by mid-afternoon and dropped anchor, mopping sweat. Then it was time to relax, shower and read until the sun (and temps!) had dropped somewhat. 


After a couple of hours, we decided to anchor again. We seemed to be dragging, so we cranked the anchor back up and reset it. Same result. We seemed to be drifting back over the anchor line instead of lying out from it. We finally realized that an unusual combination of light breeze and strong tidal current was making it seem like the anchor wasn't dug in securely. We probably would have been fine leaving it where we set it the first time, but we rationalized that it's better to be safe than aground. Also good practice in anchoring, which never hurts. 

June 20 Anchorage at St. Catherine's Island

This is the first in a series of posts that follow the course we took from Thunderbolt, GA to Jekyll Island, GA, where our already long-delayed cruise got cut short AGAIN by an unfortunate SECOND lightning strike to poor Mulligan. The Parishes are fine, but Mulligan had to be towed back north to Thunderbolt, GA, where, as this is being posted, she is undergoing her second round of lightning repairs in a year.

Natural beach on the north end of St. Catherine's Island, 

with its backdrop of lush piney woods.

St. Catherine's is the fourth of Georgia's major sea islands. It lies south of Tybee, Wassaw and Ossabaw in a chain that runs all the way to Cumberland Island, which is located off the border of Georgia and Florida. The map below is the best we could find to show the area we covered in our week of travel. The red star shapes mark our starting and stopping points for Monday, June 20. (For more about Georgia's fascinating Holocene and Pleistocene barrier islands, take a look at: http://geology.uprm.edu/MorelockSite/morelockonline/5_image/GeorgCst.htm)

Note about Ossabaw, just north of our first night's anchorage: If you remember from a previous post, we were to have met up with a Chattanooga archeologist friend, Dr. Nick Honerkamp, at Ossabaw to see his summer 2011 dig there. Sadly, we missed that opportunity. Nick's project ended on June 16, and we didn't get underway again until June 19. We hope we'll get another chance someday. 

St. Catherine's is largely a nature preserve administered by the New York Zoological Society, so the only parts of it that are currently public are its natural beaches, which were wide and white when we arrived, but not so wide when we left on the high tide the next morning. It's always amazing to us original landlubbers to see how the Georgia coastline changes appearance as its tides fluctuate from 8-10 feet every six hours!

Although you may not be able to see it on the map, the northwest corner of St. Catherine's is cut off from the rest of the island by Walburg Creek, which is where we anchored for the night. Walburg Creek can be entered from the north or from the west. We chose the north, because the west leg gets very shallow in places. We exited the same way the next morning, for the same reason.

Our anchorage was in sight of some of the Zoological Society's rehabilitation facilities where it cares for endangered African and Asian species such as kudus, hartebeests, lemurs and hornbills. We hoped to but did not get to glimpse any exotic creatures lurking on shore. Nevertheless, we enjoyed our night nestled in the lee of the island's "high ground"-- and "high" is a relative term when you're talking about the Georgia coast. We rested at anchor sheltered from the Atlantic and looking westward over Georgia's seemingly endless sea marshes.

Once we got anchored for the evening, it was still too hot to cook. Leftover pasta salad and more fresh tomato sandwiches did the trick. After dark, we lazed a while on Mulligan's trampoline, mesmerized by the stars. We always forget how much more intensely they burn and twinkle without the interference of ground light. The celestial light show made that night's anchorage even better, since it's one that human beings experience less and less frequently these days, we hear.

Like Deja Vu All Over Again

It has taken quite a while for us to find the heart to make this post. 

We include a spoiler alert: 

If you don't already know it, the Good Ship Mulligan took an incredible, second direct lightning hit while docked at Jekyll Harbor Marina on the evening of Saturday, June 25. Just two days short of a year since her original lightning hit, which occurred 100 miles north of Jekyll at Thunderbolt, GA on June 27, 2010. 

Lightning may not strike twice in the same place, but it sure as heck can strike the same object twice. We are living proof. Despite this new setback, we want to let you know how our passage to Jekyll went and what we did while at our first destination. It was an interesting few days, and we hope you enjoy hearing about it!

We will follow this post with a series that follow our track to Jekyll. And that will be it for while, as Mulligan undergoes more lightning repairs back at Thunderbolt. They say it will be 8-10 weeks (but that's what they said the first time she got hit!). This time may go more smoothly, if the personal attention of the marina owner and staff is any indication. 

By the way, we were not aboard when Mulligan got hit, so both of us are fine. We got a call from friends we'd made at Jekyll Harbor Marina the day we arrived, telling us about the strike. We hurried back from our digs at a friend's beach house on nearby St. Simon's to find Mulligan dark, with a charred masthead, the anchor light housing lying on the forward trampoline (it is normally at the top of the mast), the glass in the battery gauge smoked over, and the navigation station systems labels and lights lying around on the main cabin floor and even in the galley sink. 

Thankfully, there was no sign that Mulligan was taking on water, so we closed her through-hull fittings and left her unlocked so that marina staff could get aboard if by some chance she started to go down, and returned to our beach house accommodation -- a blessing, since there were no lights, water or AC aboard our boat.

Before we left Jekyll in our rented car, our last views of Mulligan were seeing her hooked up to a tow boat and floating off without us -- back toward repairs at Thunderbolt -- like an obedient dog on a leash. 

Captain Dana Ridland rigged temporary running lights and bilge pumps so Mulligan would be "legal" on the water. Here, he does the final hook-up  for her tow. His boat was small, but it had BIG engines.
He estimated the 100-mile trip to take 20 hours, so he brought a mate.

Mulligan is pulled away from the Jekyll Harbor Marina on her leash

We say goodbye to Mulligan as she passes beneath the Jekyll Island Causeway Bridge
on her way back north to Thunderbolt