Day 130 (Georgia at last)

Daily stats
Start: 7:00 AM- Fernandina, FL
Finish: 9:00 AM - St. Marys, GA
Time: 2:00
Daily dist: 7 miles
Total dist: x miles
Companions: None
Weather: Beautiful, I beat the building NE wind under clear skies
Notes: I caught my first glimpse of something other than Florida at about 7:30 this morning. It was Cumberland Island GA across the St. Marys river.

After catching my last glimpse of Alabama on January 20th and paddling over 41 days in Florida, on April 14th I finally arrived in Georgia. To celebrate this momentous event I hopped into a car and drove to South Carolina. Seriously it’s almost like that. Way back when I arrived in St. Petersburg and stayed with my friend Russell Farrow at Sweetwater Kayaks he got the idea that if I was interested he could help get me to the East Coast Kayak Festival in Charleston. Seems how he’d be driving up from St. Pete with another friend Nigel Foster anyway he could swing over to the coast (wherever I was) and pick me up.

After taking most of March off the trip I wasn’t sure taking five more days off to hang out in Charleston would be the greatest thing. Yet I thought that if there was any place where a person kayaking up the East Coast could go for information about doing just that it would be this event. Besides that it would be a great opportunity to catch up with some old friends and meet new paddlers as well. There are some blank spots on my boat that do need to be filled with signatures after all. With all of this in mind I decided it would definitely be a worthwhile break and made arrangements with Russell to get picked up.

Drying my gear on the dock

By the time I contacted him last week my daily mileage (with a good tail wind) showed that I could easily be in Georgia when he was driving through. The catch is that there are not a lot of places one can easily drive to the coast of Georgia so I started planning my route to land me in an easy pickup location. Even though it’s a couple miles inland St. Marys Georgia became the natural choice and became my destination. So this morning I said farewell to Cal and Nancy once again and paddled a few miles up to the very top of Florida then turned west and ran with the incoming tide on the St. Marys river and landed at the city boat ramp. I immediately phoned Russell to let him know I had arrived and learned that he was running a bit late and had yet to leave St. Pete. This was good news to me because it gave me a few hours to dry my gear and see the town.

A beautiful park in St. Marys

The old part of St. Marys is a fairly compact town covering only about two square miles. It’s streets are lined with huge trees dripping with Spanish moss and many of the buildings date back a couple hundred years. I found the local kayak shop - Up The Creek Expeditions- and visited with the owner Tom Monahan a bit picking his brain for what to see on Cumberland Island and further up the coast. I then walked up the street at Tom’s recommendation and found a bight to eat at a local coffee/sandwich shop.

A while later, after wondering the town in search of an ice cream cone, Russell and Nigel arrived and I loaded up my gear and headed north to Charleston.

Nigel Foster by a submarine that seems to have lost its way.

Along the way Russell stopped by the Navy’s submarine base where they have a life sized concrete replica of a sub that you can climb on. While Russell stayed in the car along the road Nigel and I jumped out and climbed around on the structure to take pictures. This “suspicious” activity aroused the interest of the base police and the next thing we knew we were being approached by a rather large police officer with an even larger “don’t screw with me” expression on his face. Nigel quickly explained, in his smooth British accent, that we were simply taking pictures. Seems how it was placed there to be well…um… photographed… the officer let us go without incident. It’s good to know that our parks are so well protected.