South
Porches of Charleston.
Charleston received us in the middle of the night, with a complicated entrance, trying to differentiate the lights guiding us in from the city lights from the lights of the ginormous dredging barges working inside the channel in those wee hours. We anchored on the Ashley River and in the morning dinghied ashore where we found some self-serve rental bicycles. Our legs had to adapt from sea-legs to bike-legs, but it was a pleasure. We spent some days in and around Charleston and rode all over that lovely town. The word that kept coming to mind on the streets of Charleston is genteel. There are lots of beautiful things to see, and people are exceedingly polite. It’s charming, even a New Englander such as myself is disarmed.
Biking on Jekyll Island’s trails.
Although we’re in our little 40-foot bubble that is the Billy P, we have been traveling with America’s current events around us. The farther south we go the fewer anti-Covid masks we see, for example. We are both boosted, but it’s still nervous-making for society in general. We are on the water, so we see coastal flooding, and people rebuilding sea walls and other harbingers of the changing climate. And one of the other topics we keep stubbing our spiritual toe against has been the Big American Problem of Race.
On historical markers and the like it’s certainly noted that here there once was a slave market, and over there was a plantation. I understand it’s a conflict to be proud of your place of origin, and to also be ashamed of what happened. But maybe we ought to say every single time it comes up that the idea of human beings owning other human beings is an abomination and those extravagant plantations could not have existed but for the fact that enslaving people was treated as an acceptable way to make money. And our country was built on that money. It’s awful, but there it is. So that complicated topic was on our minds even as we enjoyed the beauties of the Southern states.
Jenny and Lesley
Our friend Jenny flew up from Miami a couple of days before Thanksgiving and met us in Thunderbolt, Georgia, right by moss-draped Savannah. We tucked her into the aft cabin, and she fit in comfortably with Billy Pilgrim’s crew (as we knew she would), spotting dolphins and checking the weather apps right along with us. It was chillier than we’d expected Georgia to be, so we bundled up. We used a clay flowerpot over a burner on the stove to take the edge off the morning chill; even so I don’t think Jenny took her long underwear off the whole visit except maybe to shower.
Amazing driftwood on St. Catherine’s island.
Thanksgiving Day Tim stayed aboard to work on a book while Jenny and I went ashore at St Catherine’s Island. The island is privately owned for zoological research, but all’s fair below the high-tide line. We stepped into prehistory. Huge driftwood trees stacked up on the sand like pick-up sticks. We clambered our way around, over, under the trunks, doing our best balance-beam routines and limbo, guessing at which animals made the footprints coming out of the primeval forest of saw palmetto and moss-festooned oak trees. Gorgeous. Back onboard we made a roast-chicken dinner, and gave thanks for our surroundings and for being together.
Birds and boundless beach.
We passed Brunswick, Georgia, the same day we heard the news that Ahmad Arbery’s killers were convicted of murdering him in that very town. We got off the boat again at St Simons Island where we headed directly to eat barbecue. We logged many more miles on the benevolent bike paths all over that island and Jekyll island farther down the Intracoastal. Sadly, we had to send our Jenny back to her Miami life, and we continued on down the road to Cumberland Island.
Remnants of grandeur and wild horses on Cumberland Island
We found quite a collection of other boats anchored at Cumberland. Accessible only by boat, there’s a ferry that brings visitors over from the mainland for day trips and camping. The greater part of the island is National Seashore, part of the National Park Service. Wild horses wander across open areas and through palmetto and oaks with the requisite moss waving in the gentle breezes. We saw armadillos clambering around the ground and pileated woodpeckers bonking their way through the trees. For additional atmosphere the ruin of a former Carnegie mansion languishes on the north end of the island. Enormous leathery horseshoe crab molts are here and there on the vast spectacular beach, with congregations of royal terns and black skimmers crowding together on the water’s edge. (While we were there, we were unaware of a good news/bad news story happening right in those waters: an endangered Right Whale calf born to a mother who sadly, is entangled in fishing gear). Oblivious to the unseen drama nearby, I walked peacefully for miles, hoping to find a prehistoric shark’s tooth, blissed out by the spectacular scenery, the exotic creatures, and of course, the Spanish moss.
— Lesley
