The end of the fun and games...but Florida is in sight.

We made it. Whew. We are in (on?) Jeckyll Island, Georgia. More specifically, we are tied up to the dock at the Jeckyll Island Marina, about to get some groceries. The wifi is weak, so sorry about no picture this time. But here's the word. After Charleston, our first day took us to Tom Point Creek. I think. The creeks are little creeks, just like you might imagine, surrounded by marshland. Or basically, just cutting through endless marshland. No trees. No buildings. No anything. Just a little swatch of water bisecting an endless area of what some might call swamp. We throw the anchor out and tell ourselves it was a good 25 miles! We will get up again and do it tomorrow if we can. After that, we navigated some of the nastiest shoal areas in Georgia, paying close attention to the nine foot tide (!) and timing our departure so that there might be sufficient water not to run aground in these treacherous areas. See the previous complaint about lack of US Army Corps of Engineers personnel thanks to war in Iraq = no dredging. From Tom Point Creek we got to Bass Creek. Repeat above description. From Bass Creek we got all the way to Skull Creek. Now this was actually great, as there was a marina we could dinghy to a little ways off. We did so, and found out we were at Hilton Head. We took a nice long walk. Heaven. OK, back on the boat in the morning, and our motor won't start properly. The preheat (glow plugs) function will not engage. Claude has a look at our electrical as I have a feeling this may be due to a short. YIKES!!! There is a burned out live wire which was inappropriately attached to the fuel line. The what? The fuel line? What kind of idiot would attach an electrical wire to the fuel line? Claude wants to KNOW~! Wayne says, well the guy who put the engine in I guess....Wayne won't let me identify the business entity responsible for the engine installation, but perhaps it could have been done differently. We have dodged the bullet here. Claude pulls a bunch of wires, gets us out of immediate danger, but there is much to be done yet. At least the boat won't burn due to a spark from a corroded, live wire attached to the gas line. Merci, Claude. Next day we are on the trail again, to the Wright River. Throw out anchor. Read. Repeat. Next day on the trail to Kilkenny Creek. This is the day before Thanksgiving. There is a marina at Kilkenny Creek! We are so excited to be pulling into range of civilization that I am distractedly jumping around on the boat and SMASH my foot. Nice gouge. Luckily, the resident RN stopped the bleeding, cleaned it and put on a good bandage. That will take a while to heal, but whatever. We try to figure out where the marina is, and decide it is probably the long dock with several boats tied up. We try to call on the radio, but no one answers. Just as we are going for it ourselves, a guy who looks like he walked straight out of "Deliverance" saunters out of the "marina" office and says, "bring 'er on in...". I say thanks and throw him the bow dockline because jumping out of the boat onto the dock with this foot is a really, really bad idea. The marina office sells groceries. Cans of "Beenie Weenie", cans of cocktail franks, cans of boiled peanuts, Dinty Moore beef stew in individualized portions. Pop. Beer. Chips and candy. That's it. There is a God and there is a restaurant within hobbling distance, so Wayne, Claude and I have a pre-turkey day decent dinner. Nice food. Regrettably it gives Claude serious indigestion and keeps him up all night. We try to take off the next day (Thanksgiving) but the Sound is all whipped up and we are DENIED. The dinghy tries to fly off the boat. We are NOT losing another dinghy, so we turn around with our tails between our legs and head back to the safety of Kilkenny Creek. Thanksgiving dinner is macaroni and cheese. It tastes REAL GOOD after that experience. OK, next day is nice and we make it to Wahoo River. See description for creeks. Repeat. We think we are going to make progress the next day, but again, we get to the first Sound and it cannot be crossed due to waves, wind, and weather. Back to the anchorage. We meet up with our friends on Grayling, another sailboat, at the anchorage who are taking refuge there as well. They are kind enough to turf off some pre-prepared Indian food to us as we are basically out. Lovely lentils and potato stew. Actually we still have some rice, black beans, and corn so we keep the Indian food for...tomorrow. OK, the next day we get up at the break of dawn, no not even. It is 5 am and we are up. We need to leave at first light to make the Sound before the wind whips it into a frenzy. The tide runs 9 feet high. It is high tide. You can't even see the land bordering the river, it is submerged. Claude gets us out using his GPS coordinates, running blind. We all have our depth sounders on, and believe in the Claude. He gets us out into the Sound, and now we are screaming across with wind at the back and that 9 foot tide rushing in to push us down. 8 knots. Get us the hell out of here! We flew all the way (well of course not really flying but going fast any way) and we are making time when Claude's motor starts acting weird. OK, pull in. We literally pull off the ICW into a creek, throw the anchor down, and we are done by 1pm because of engine trouble. Claude changes his oil filter and thinks it's going to be ok the next day. We are in debt to Chris, Nicole and Celeste on Grayling because had they not given us the Lentil Stew we would not be eating tonight. Next morning we are ready to take off by 8am. Nope. Fog. It's supposed to lift by 9am. Nope. 10 am? Nope. 10:30 comes and now we are beginning to see. We NEED to get to Jeckyll Island because there is precious little left. No bread. No meat. No cheese. No vegetables. No fruit. OK, we could survive by eating rice, but we are spoiled Americans and have generally not had to do this in our lives. We get about 2 miles, and it's too foggy to continue. Claude tosses in his anchor, we raft up (we hope we are out of the channel) and wait. He has to re-do his GPS waypoints because they did not all transfer. As soon as he is done, we notice we are dragging anchor. Right into the channel! The fog has lifted sufficiently to get going, so we untie quickly and get GOING. by 2pm we make it to Jeckyll Island where the first thing that happens is we see a guy we met in Annapolis. Well technically, we met him at anchor just before Annapolis in front of Cantrell's Crab House. He works at this marina when he wants to. He had given me a discount card this summer which I actually kept and found. The guy is astonished. We get a discount on our stay here and a shower. Immediately. Have not had a shower since Charleston. Don't even know how long ago that was, but about a week. Have not bought groceries since Charleston. No internet since Charleston. Cell phone battery dead, can only use it when hooked up to the boat battery via the "car" charger. I am sitting here clean, and on my beloved computer. We will go grocery shopping soon. My foot is healing. No tennis or running for another while yet, but the smash is clean and healing well. I need some bandages and tape, but there is a pharmacy here too. Incredible. Life is getting much better. We are most thankful this Thanksgiving season for our friendship with Claude, his great help, knowing that our families are safe and well, and that we have re-entered civilization at the present moment. Who knows what the next day will bring? As we leave here, we will enter St. Andrew's Sound, one of the "four most dangerous bodies of water on the ICW". Luckily we have already done the other three. We are NOT going out if it is not just right. We will wait it out here until we get a good weather window - favorable winds, no fog, little waves and just the ride tide. At least we are somewhere, not in the middle of the marsh. I would stay here for a week if I could, just to have some fun. But, we are trying to get somewhere so that's quite unlikely. It's a team effort. I "drive" or steer the boat about 50% of the time. The other 50% of the time, I look out for the buoys, watch the depth sounder, and do the job of the navigator. OK, the best news I ever heard was Claude's remark just this very moment that today is Monday, and he made reservations to watch Monday Night Football (go Steelers!) tonight at the little restaurant/bar at this marina. Heaven. For real. I can't wait.