Simple Pleasures

Location: Brickhill River, Cumberland Island, GA
Position: N30 53.25 W081 27.336

We finally had a good day’s run yesterday and got through the last three “Georgia problem stretches” without incident. We’re now at anchor at Cumberland Island, a national park, at the south end of Georgia. We had made reservations to stay in St Augustine, FL Sat-Mon but decided to postpone so we could spend a couple of days here, do some walking, relaxing, and wait out some weather.

We’d been thinking that the Khronicles have focused a lot on our experience of getting down the Waterway. In retrospect, we feel that we haven’t really shared some of the simple day to day pleasures that we enjoy. Here’s a random list of a few things that come to mind:

We haven’t mentioned dolphins lately, but we are certainly not getting blasé about them. Nearly every day we see dolphins and they are still spectacular, and give us so much joy. They seem to be watching for us, too. We will see a fin or two up ahead and note that they’re making their way toward us. Whoever is not at the helm will go running forward and stand on the bowsprit. Looking down, you can see the dolphins swimming right below you, just under the surface, right at the bow of the boat. It’s like they are trying to race. They will bop from one side to the other and then peel off or down and swim away. They’re always beautiful and graceful and we never tire of watching them.

Sitting in the cockpit with the binoculars looking into the marsh grasses and the waters edge, we’ve seen terns, pelicans, egrets, cranes, loons, merganzers loads of waterfowl, etc. The outside world seems so far from here at times. Most of the time there are few man-made noises so we’ll just sit and listen to the wildlife and look at what’s going on around us. Julie is still waiting to see her first alligator!!

Pelicans are abundant and the way they fly around and then plummet into the water upside-down to catch a fish never ceases to amuse us. A crabber in a small powerboat zoomed by Rachel one morning. There was a little surface mist on the water and a string of about 15 huge pelicans were flying behind him, gliding just inches above the surface of the water. How can they be so goofy and yet so graceful in flight?

Looking out over the grasses we saw the top of Sapelo Island lighthouse just peeking out wanting to be seen.

Enjoying being with each other: laughing at silly sights, names, thoughts; quietly watching the sun come up, or go down; sharing the writing of these Khronicles; planning our travel days, and continuing to work our way southward.

Peace,