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.