Jekyll Island, GA

Here we are in Georgia now. No more Florida. This morning we left from Fernindina Beach, FL after filling up the water and fuel tanks. When we arrived at Fernindina yesterday, it was fairly early - 11:00 a.m. - as we only had to travel 10 or so miles from Alligator Creek. After not getting much sleep the night before with the high winds, we decided that an easy day was deserved. Despite the wind blowing like stink yesterday when we went to grab our mooring, we managed to have one of our best performances ever. The current, the noise and the smell from the paper mills in Fernindina make this anchorage a little less than desirable. Additionally, the grocery store is almost 2 miles away. However, we were very excited when we arrived at the mooring field and Norm and Linda, from Ariel (from NEB, RI) offered to drive us with their rental car. So of course, just picking up a few things ended up being over a hundred dollars worth of stuff. Gotta love it when you get those rides. We hadn't seen Norm and Linda since November when we bumped into them back in Deltaville, VA on our way down. (Well, we did see them just briefly as they were anchored in Daytona across from the restaurant where we met Ray and Helen for dinner last week.) They high-tailed it right to the Bahamas and got there before Christmas. They stayed over there all winter. Pretty funny how we keep bumping into the same people.

On our way up the ICW in Georgia we went by Cumerland Island and saw wild horses just grazing down by the water. I din't take a picture because they were too far away to get a good shot. (Besides, I still have no way of downloading the pictures from camera.) We could see the horses okay from the boat, but we got a much better look at them through the binnoculas. There were a three horses hanging out together, then another horse a litte ways away from them. A 1/2 mile up we saw a couple more. They were all very good looking horses. None of them looked mal nourished or anything. It's pretty cool how they can live free out in the wild, and live off the land without anyone bothering them. I always feel bad for those horses pulling the buggies with tourists in them around cities. They always look so hot and sweaty and miserable. We saw that in St. Augustines,FL and we'll see it again in Charlestown, SC. Sometimes I have much more compassion for animals than people (oops, did I just say that!) Okay, well I guess I'm digressing.

Besides the water being really brown, Georgia's ICW route seems really beautiful. (Actually, the water has been really brown since we got into central Florida.) The wildlife so far is great. At least being back in the US we've seen tons of dolphins. We didn't see any in the Bahamas - although we did see many other cool fish, rays and sharks.

We will hopefully be in Charleston, SC by Saturday. We are now at latitude 31 and we need to get all the way up 42 - just 11 more degrees to go! But we also need to get another 10 degrees east on the longitude end. We're getting there :).