| We sailed out of St Mary's Sound leaving Cumberland Island to the south. The day was gorgeous with 10-15 knots of southeat wind. As the day wore on the winds picked up a bit as well as the swells. Fabulous sail. Around 17:00 we turned into St Simons Sound and motored up to Jekyll Island. We dropped a hook there in sight of the bridge into Brunswick. They call this area the "Golden Isles" because of the color of the marsh grass in the fall.
The next day we decided to go into the ICW because a) St Simon's channel is about 8 NM long before you are beyond the breakers and b) the winds on the Atlantic were predicted light. The Georgia ICW connects through a zillion islands and rivers. I can see where you could easily get lost in there. Blackbeard and his buddies must have laughed whenever someone came looking for them in that maze.
While most of the Georgia ICW consists of broad rivers with 20 feet deep midchannel or wide sounds leading to the Atlantic, sometimes we travel through some very dicey narrow places. The picture on the left doesn't show so well but this was a moccassin bend with an exposed sand bar 10 feet off our port side and the bank 10 feet off our starboard side. We turned through that at low tide with 20 feet of water under us.
Each time we passed a tide line, the dolphins would be feeding. Sometimes up to 20 dolphins were diving and breathing everywhere around the boat.
That night we stopped at Dog Hammock just next to Blackbeard Island. Steering through the shallows and grinding against current is a little tiring - both mentally and physically. The night was gorgeous - no lights but the stars. At around sunset another ketch parked just aft of us for company. We had seen them before at Cumberland.
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