12/10/15   Thursday   St Mary's

We're in renowned St Mary's, GA, tonight after an early start but fairly gentle day on the water.

Out before sunrise and under the bridge leaving Brunswick, GA
Home of Brunswick Stew. My grandma Richey made wonderful stew!

St Mary's is known among snow birders up and down the eastern seaboard for its Thanksgiving welcome to cruisers. Even before we left Maine sailors were saying, "Be sure you are in St Mary's for Thanksgiving." (We weren't but...) Apparently LOTS of boats arrive here and the townspeople lay out an amazing lunch/dinner spread and open there arms, hearts and kitchens to the watery visitors, maybe land-based visitors, too. I don't know. Our friend here said there were about 240+ boats in the harbor this year past.

While the people and the welcome is terrific the marine facilities are sadly lacking - rough, run down and totally without pride of ownership. The reviews on Active Captain were so negative that David and I'd decided to not make the 3 mile trip up river to visit. But dockage is cheap and there is a shower (though not the cleanest with more cobwebs and mold than I've seen on the trip thus far.) But David got in touch with Ralph Tolbot (sp?) who nearly sold us a Nauticat a number of years ago. David and he had such a good connection then and David wanted to meet him. (David is way better at making and keeping connections than I am.) Ralph would "love to meet and see our boat" and offered to take us to the grocery store to re-provision. Deal, and a good one, too. Ralph is delightful and interesting... and he complimented our boat! Groceries procured, we had a delicious Greek dinner at the Riverside Cafe on the main waterfront street. And chatted with the owner's brother, a Greek national who grew up in Yonkers, NY. We delighted him with our 3 phrases of Greek language...Hello, how are you, goodnight...and  hand gesture greeting that we see our friends, Irwin and Mary, use.

A highlight of our journey today was the all-white pelicans who sat in trees, floated in the water in front of us and made daring dives straight into the water, long beaks first. Splash!

The dots on the beach are white pelicans

And, a dolphin flipped its fluke at us. I'm taking that as a "hi, how are ya?" wave and not the finger. David and I traded helms person and navigation responsibilities. Since we were kind of in the ocean between Jeykll and Cumberland Islands we toyed with the idea of "going out" on the ocean side of Cumberland Is. to St. Mary's River inlet. No. We'd not studied that route and even though really calm no need to be less than our best careful selves. Besides, we really wanted to get to shower and grocery store. Priorities, people.

 We'll do laundry tomorrow morning and have a little walk about to see town which was highly decorated for Christmas when we drove back after dark from grocery shopping. Maybe we'll anchor out at Cumberland Island and go ashore for another beach walk (and see John and Darlene there), then on to Fernandina Beach, FLORIDA, for the weekend perhaps to see Dana and Craig.

"You woke me up...for what???