Yikes it is cold! When we woke up it was 41 degrees inside the boat. Getting out of bed is awful when it is this cold as you know this is the warmest you will be all day. The diesel engine agreed that it was too chilly to do anything and did not want to start. Eventually it reluctantly coughed its way to life and we set out. Once we got going it was a nice sunny day, if we wore enough clothes and huddled under the dodger. We are in the swamps of Georgia, which is prettier than it sounds.
Our goal was to anchor in Cattle Pen Creek for the night. When we were just around the corner from the entrance we got a call from the "Cattle Pen Creek Yacht Club" confirming our anchoring reservation. We had a nice get together with the crews from MUTUAL FUN, SIMPLE PLEASURES, LEE-ANN, and ATTITUDE.
Monday, Nov 7
We had a nice surpise in the morning. Randy radioed that he had left some electronic charts in our dinghy. We tried them in our chart plotter and they worked. It is a treat to have GPS charts again instead of just paper charts. We spent a lot of the day following a tug boat that was pushing two barges which made the navigation even easier.
Last night we were talking about what a small world this is and how everyone has mutual friends. In the course of a random conversation it turned out that Gary and Janet know our friends Scott and Kitty, and that Sharon grew up in the neighborhood that Bill's sister Robin used to live in. Anyway, today Bill called a powerboat that passed us on the radio to complement them on the boat. The boat's homeport is Belfast, Maine. After a few more sentences about Maine and Saint George and Tenants Harbor the other captain asked Bill if he knew Stuart Farnham. When he said yes, they worked together at Lyman Morse, and had worked at Wayfarer, the next sentence was "Do you want to talk to Mike King, he is right here."
At one point we were watching pelicans fly by in low level formations that would make a fighter pilot jealous and said we wished we could see young pelicans learning how to fly. They must make some spectacular miscalulations when flying inches above the water. About an hour later a squad of pelicans flew by and one broke formation and flew through our rigging. It misjudged its wingspan and the distance between our forestay and shrouds by about an inch and clipped a wing tip. It just wobbled in the air, then flew over to a navigation marker and made itself feel better by displacing a half a dozen cormorants.
We anchored for the night in the South River and had happy hour on LEE-ANN with MUTUAL FUN, SIMPLE PLEASURES, and ATTITUDE.
Tuesday, November 8
Today was a day when we were worried about shoaling. Skipper Bob's book and the updates on the website are littered with "caution, shoaling' warnings. We headed out at 7:20 so we would have a rising tide for most of the morning, then at least a half tide heading into Jekyll Creek. The warnings that there will be zero feet of water at mean low tide are alarming. Because we timed the tides we had an easy run with plenty of water. In the afternoon we went ashore and walked around the island and went by the millionaires mansions. We had dinner on board POLAR PACER with MUTUAL FUN.
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