Return to Cumberland Island

Return to Cumberland Island

Wednesday 8th December 2020

Yesterday was a tough day. It was just so windy and bouncy in the anchorage that we gave up on our plans to go ashore. However, by this morning things had calmed down substantially and although cold (close to freezing) it was a cloudless, clear day. We hopped in the dinghy and went back to Cumberland Island and this time we took a walk northwards up the island on the “main road” … a flat, sandy dirt track, surrounded by huge live oak trees adorned with Spanish moss. After a couple of hours we reached Stanford beach and enjoyed sitting on a log in the sunshine eating our sandwiches. There was nobody on the beach for as far as we could see in either direction, just lots of gulls, terns and brown pelicans. Our route back took us down what is called the “parallel trail” which winds its way initially through pine woods and saw palmetto palms back to the towering live oaks. We had seen a few interesting birds on the way out, including a yellow bellied sap sucker, but the return leg was a treat. First we saw a nine banded armadillo in the undergrowth next to the path and later spent about 20 minutes watching a pair of pileated woodpeckers feeding close by (see photos below).

We had been contemplating bringing our bikes to shore and cycling up the road to the northern part of the island. However, there is a large section designated a wilderness area in the center of the island and it is closed for three days to allow hunting of deer and wild pigs. So we think we will enjoy our last night here at the anchorage and then move on to Fernandina Beach tomorrow. It’s only 4 or 5 miles away and we can spend the day there before heading offshore again southwards on Thursday.

Mike

30 45.353 N, 81 28.553 W

Pileated woodpecker

Nine banded Armadillo

Woodland fungus

Shell

Saw Palmetto

Windy Monday

Windy Monday

Monday December 7, 2020

We are still anchored behind Cumberland Island in Georgia.  Perhaps we should have taken more notice of the exodus of boats this morning....

At about 11 am the seas were pretty bumpy and we decided to take the engine off the dinghy.  Mike was brave enough to go down into the dinghy to loosen the bolts that hold the engine onto the stern of the “dumb dog”.  He came back up feeling a tad off color.  Most of the afternoon it was blowing 15-20 kts, enough to kick up chop in the anchorage.  We each took some seasickness meds and had a nap.  Around sunset the wind picked up to 25-30 kts. We collapsed the bimini to reduce the windage on the boat.  

Now we are trying to ignore the strange list to starboard.  I think this is the result of strong current that is not aligned with the strong wind.  Usually the current dominates, but when the wind gets up, the result is some kind of vector sum that leads to heeling. All that physics from high school and college gives us a way to talk about what is happening. 

Whilst it feels uncomfortable we should be just fine. We are anchored on the west side of a channel in about 10 feet of water (16 feet at high tide) with 90 feet of chain out. There is a sand bar to our west, and whilst it provides little protection from the wind it should limit the fetch of wind driven waves. We’ve been here now for 48 hours and multiple tide changes and we haven’t dragged to this point. Tonight we’ll sleep in the main cabin where there is less motion than up in the v-berth.

Now if the wind would just drop back a bit ...

Gloria

30 45.353 N, 81 28.553 W

I didn't take any photos today but here are few additional shots from our walk on Cumberland Island yesterday ...

Gloria - Cumberland Island

Amazing old gnarly trees on Cumberland Island. The trees are "salt pruned" - meaning their growth is stunted at times by salt spray resulting interesting shapes.

Feral horse on the salt marshes (B&W)

This is one of the jelly fish that Gloria described in her blog about the sail down the Georgia coast. This specimen was washed ashore on Cumberland Island - it's about 6 inches diameter

Cumberland Island

Cumberland Island

Sunday December 6, 2020

It’s great to be anchored 200 yards off the shore of Cumberland Island. Once we left Cotinga, it only took us a couple of minutes in the dinghy and we were safely tied up to the dock on the south west corner of the island. Cumberland Island is the biggest of Georgia’s sea islands; it’s 17 miles long and about 36,000 acres - a little longer and twice the area of Manhattan. 

A brief history …

There have been people associated with the island for 4,000 years but the vast majority of the island remains undeveloped. In 1806 Nathanael Greene, who was a revolutionary war hero from Rhode Island, started to build a mansion out of “tabby” (a shell based mortar) at the south end of the island. He died before it was completed, but his wife Catherine Littlefield Greene finished the project and named it “Dungeness”. This building was burned to the ground in 1866, but in 1884 Thomas Carnegie, brother of steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, built a new mansion on the same site. He also died shortly after its completion. His wife Lucy then remodeled the property into a 59-room mansion based on a Scottish castle. She and her 9 children used it as a summer home and the estate had an additional 40 smaller buildings to house the 200 servants! In 1959 this latest version of “Dungeness” also burned to the ground. By this point in time the Carnegie family owned 90% of Cumberland Island and through their donation and the work of numerous environmental groups it came into public ownership and was designated a National Seashore. One condition of Carnegie donation was that the family horses be allowed to roam free on the island.

Cumberland Island is absolutely beautiful. It’s a mixture of salt marsh, ancient live oak woods draped with Spanish moss, barrier island sand dunes and pristine beaches. Can you imagine an undeveloped beach that is so long that you can stand in the middle of it and not be able to see either end because of the curvature of the earth? Today we took a 5 mile walk, recommend by the National Park Service, that takes in a little of all these areas. We saw several of the famous feral horses as well as deer, raccoon, dolphin and a wide variety of birds. Highlights amongst these were several pileated woodpeckers, hooded mergansers, Carolina wren, Forster’s and Royal terns, Wilson’s and piping plover. It may only have been 5 miles but we were ashore for almost 7 hours. If the weather is reasonable we will go back tomorrow.

Whilst the anchorage is good it’s quite open and not very protected from the wind. The current also runs very strongly. There are two cold fronts coming through over the next couple of days and one review we read of the anchorage said that it could get really nasty with strong winds over tide. Think washing machine! The winds aren’t predicted to be too strong and should blow across the current rather than against it, so hopefully it won’t get too bad.

Mike

30 45.353 N, 81 28.553 W

The main street

Cumberland Sound side of the island

Feral horse on boardwalk from beach

Feral horse in salt marsh

Salt marsh

Black vulture

Dungeness ruins

Trying to look on the bright side

Trying to look on the bright side

Saturday December 5, 2020

It doesn’t come naturally to me to concentrate on the positive.... As I was thinking about today’s blog I realized that it was likely to sound like one big whining complaint.  Yesterday as we were walking around St. Mary’s we stopped into the small “Magic Market”.  It had a modest selection of things but we bought some heavy items such as beer and tinned tomatoes.  We also got some milk and eggs.  As we were less than a mile from the dinghy dock the carry wasn’t too bad (possibly also because Mike carried everything except the eggs!)

This morning we set out for the Winn Dixie.  Knowing that the grocery store was more than three miles away we tried to be more sensible than our last outing in Georgetown!  We stuck to the items on the list.  I must say that I was very happy to have purchased some things at the “Magic Market” yesterday.  We needed our lunch and a rest once we got back on board. 

After checking the tides and currents, we set off on a short jaunt to an anchorage behind Cumberland Island.  As we came up the channel behind the island we saw a few of the feral horses on the shore (one of the attractions of Cumberland Island).  We got anchored in time to see the sunset.  Now we hope to be able to visit the island tomorrow and enjoy the national seashore.

Rhode Island has a connection to Cumberland Island in that Nathanael Greene purchased a tract of land here.  His widow Catharine built a mansion here called Dungeness (later destroyed by fire).   

Gloria

30 45.353 N, 81 28.553 W

The National Parks ferry that bring visitors from St Mary's to Cumberland Island. If you miss teh ferry and are not booked in to camp you must arrange a private contractor to pick you up and return you to St Mary's

Our neighbors watching the sunset in the Cumberland Sound anchorage

It was a beautiful sunset!

St Mary’s on a warm day

St Mary’s on a warm day

Friday 4th December 2020

St Mary’s, Georgia has a reputation for being friendly to boaters. In fact there is a long tradition of boaters gathering here to celebrate Thanksgiving. In part cruisers have congregated here in the late autumn because their boat insurance wouldn’t allow them to go south into Florida until December 1st and the end of hurricane season. However, I think that it also because this is such a lovely town and the people seem so welcoming. The anchorage itself is great with lots of room and good depth. The current runs strongly through here, but the holding is excellent and the town provides an easily accessible dinghy dock at the waterfront. Given all the positives we are a bit surprised to find that there is only one other cruising boat here in the anchorage (seen in the picture below). Maybe everyone else has already moved on. We bumped into Ron and Yvonne, the owners of the sailing vessel “As You Wish” at the dock this afternoon. Originally from Atlanta, they have made St Mary’s their home base and have been here since June preparing their boat for longer term cruising.

We wandered around the town this morning in T-shirts and shorts as the temperatures approached 70oF. It was lovely but wont last long as a series of cold fronts are due to move through the area in the next few days bring northerly winds and cooler temperatures. The town itself is quiet and pretty – a little like a smaller version of Beaufort, SC. We did a little grocery shopping at a local store and then found a café that was serving lunch outdoors. As it was so warm today we felt we should indulge, but after eating Carolina pork BBQ buns with coleslaw and fries we barely had enough energy to get back to the boat before falling into a food coma! Let’s just say the rest of the afternoon was a lazy affair! 

St Mary’s is the departure point for trips to Cumberland Island, which is a National Seashore park. We got some useful information from the park headquarters and saw a number of people ready to board the ferry with gear for a camping trip. We ourselves plan to go over there with Cotinga, anchor behind the island and use the dinghy to go ashore at the National Park docks. It looks like a great place to visit - maybe we’ll head over tomorrow or perhaps the day after - we just need to time it for decent weather.

Mike

30 43.017 N, 81 33.176 W

Sailing vessel "As You Wish" at anchor off St Mary's, Georgia in the early morning

Young man and his puppy in the town park St Mary's

Yellow crowned night heron ... this is the first time we have seen both yellow and black crowned night herons congregating in the same place.

Lizard on a pipe next to our lunch table

Odd thoughts on the overnight passage

Odd thoughts on the overnight passage

Wednesday December 2 – Thursday December 3, 2020

Wednesday morning in Beaufort was very cold.  When we came to take the oars off the dinghy prior to deflating it, the metal stung our hands.  I started to think we were crazy to be undertaking this overnight voyage.  It seemed that no amount of clothing would be able to keep us warm.  Once we got underway at noon, the warmth of the sun was helping to dispel the chill. The air still seemed cold to me.

We sailed the outer part of the channel leaving Port Royal inlet and continued sailing down the coast of South Carolina and Georgia until the dropping wind reduced our speed to about 3 knots.  We had some 96 nautical miles to cover on the offshore section and felt we needed to make more than 5 knots to arrive in daylight with favorable current at the entrance.  If we travelled much faster than 6 knots we would arrive at St. Mary’s inlet in darkness—never the greatest!

River of Jellyfish

Once we turned onto our correct course, we started to notice large numbers of jellyfish in the water.   Every couple of feet there was another jellyfish (not the translucent ones we know up north but brownish in color).  The shocking thing was that this river of jellies went on for more than an hour—probably nearly 10 miles.  In one of those David Attenborough wildlife documentaries, he talked about what is left in the oceans once all the fish are gone—Jellyfish.  It’s hard not to be a bit disturbed by what we saw....

Ship Sandwich

As we neared Tybee inlet (leads up to Savannah) we saw, on the horizon, a parade of large commercial shipping.  We were concerned about one inbound container ship in particular.  If we could maintain our speed (while sailing) we thought we should be able to cross in front of this vessel.  What we weren’t paying attention to was an outbound container ship...

It was starting to look like Cotinga might become the filling in a ship sandwich!  We had to start motoring (at high revs) to get across the shipping lanes.  I was very glad that we still had daylight at that point. (As Mike points out, even in the dark we wouldn’t have had any trouble spotting these vessels on the radar!)

As for the cold

Darkness fell and the night seemed very long.  While it wasn’t exactly warm, it was not nearly as cold as I had feared.  Mike admitted that he had on a T-shirt, a light fleece, a heavy fleece, a hooded sweatshirt, a puffy jacket AND his foul weather jacket... Interestingly, as we motored into the St. Mary’s inlet we noted a precipitous drop in temperature.  Motoring into the north wind was no help either!

Once we were anchored near the town of St. Mary’s (Georgia), we ate a celebratory breakfast.  We noticed a strange humming sound that seemed to be emanating from the mast.  Much discussion, concern over the rig and general commotion resulted.  We thought it might be the backstay (too tight?) but as we had not adjusted it we were baffled.  Then Mike remembered that he had put in a reef overnight (wind gusts to 19 knots) and pulled the boom down with the vang.  The result was that the topping lift was drum tight and vibrating in the wind. That’s one less weird noise to worry about.

Gloria

30 43.017 N, 81 33.176 W

Additional note from Mike:

The first half of this passage was amongst the best we have experienced. Winds were light , the seas were really flat and we were making adequate progress under sail. The sunset was spectacular and I enjoyed using the camera and tripod for some shots after dark. I also saw the best moonrise I have ever seen. It was my turn on watch and Gloria was in the cabin resting. I looked over my shoulder and saw a red light – my first reaction was “crikey” a red navigation light really close, how did that vessel sneak up on us? But it was the moon, one or two days past full, starting to rise above the horizon. Gradually the full face of the “man in the moon” appeared crystal clear, slightly squashed, tilted to one side and bright red. His chin dripped molten red onto the horizon as he finally emerged. I have never before seen anything like this … and in case you’re wondering I was not using a scopolamine patch!

As Gloria mentioned the winds dropped and went astern in the late afternoon and we ended up motor- sailing for a few hours, but after midnight they strengthened from our port quarter and we sailed on a broad reach the rest of the way. Inevitably as the winds picked up so did the seas and the last few hours were quite bumpy. 

Sailing at sunset off the coast of Georgia

The sun sets behind Georgia

Sailing under moonlit skies - on a clear night with almost full moon you can see reasonably well. The lights inside the cabin are red to preserve night vision (we don't keep them on)

Gloria bundled up in cockpit ... and under strict instructions not to move during the 1 minute exposure! Red lights from the cabin, blue from the chart plotter and green from the compass light and autopilot controller

The sun rises through the clouds as we enter the St Mary's Inlet (Cumberland Sound)

Beaufort, SC … pronounced “Bew-Fert”

Beaufort, SC … pronounced “Bew-Fert”

Tuesday 1st December 2020

It continues to be windy here except now it’s bright and really cold. Last night saw temperatures down to 37oF and tonight’s forecast is for close to freezing. We plucked up courage in the mid-morning and took the dinghy into the marina and spent a few hours walking around town. We were keen to visit St Helena’s Anglican church which is a beautiful white building surrounded by an atmospheric graveyard. We were met by a Docent who told us a little about the history of the church and city as a whole. Carl grew up in Rochester, NY but spent most of his life in Atlanta. We were struck by his enthusiasm for the town of Beaufort and his church. This is a lovely town with a long and rich history. It was originally founded in 1711 and prospered initially as a shipbuilding town. But it’s real growth and wealth was based on indigo and cotton; it prospered as a slave society and at one point had about 1000 white people and 9,000 slaves.  After the civil war the discovery of phosphate rich deposits in the river beds led to a new economic foundation but that collapsed after a devastating hurricane in the 1890. More recently the area has become home to military establishments such as Paris Island and the Marine Corp Air Station in Beaufort and had become a tourist destination and golfing center based around Hilton Head. 

It is wonderful that so many of the historical buildings have been preserved and there are many plaques outlining the history of the area. Everyone we met has been friendly and welcoming, but at times it feels uncomfortable to enjoy visiting a place that is so clearly founded on slavery. There don’t appear to be many of people of color in evidence. From what we read, there was a period of about 30 years after the civil war when the community was lead by the majority former slaves. However, Jim Crow laws brought an end to that and in the years that followed most of the black people left the area. We were shocked to read that it wasn’t until 1970 that the school district became fully integrated. Downtown Beaufort is now a desirable and expensive place to live, but how do you talk about the history and appreciate the current town without ever acknowledging that slavery, the basis for this prosperity, was wrong?

Tomorrow we are planning to leave around noon, head south down through Port Royal Sound and then sail offshore overnight to St Mary’s on the Georgia – Florida border, so we won’t be posting the next blog entry until Thursday evening. We’re a little nervous about how the passage will go because it is so cold … but we can’t face multiple days of navigating seriously shoaled water in the Georgia ICW.  On arrival we hope to spend a few days visiting the town of St Mary’s and exploring a little northwards to Cumberland Island, GA before moving on south to Florida.

Mike

32 25.749 N, 80 40.818 W

St Helena Anglican Church, Beaufort, SC

The inside of St Helena church. The church is in excellent condition, both inside and outside, and has packed services on a regular basis

Church organ

Church blinds - abstract negative