Thunderbolt, Georgia — Cupcake Afloat

The week in Hilton Head provided a wonderful chance to see my parents, visit with long-time friends, and just take break from constantly moving south. It also turned out to be the week when the heat ended and we got a taste of fall weather. It also gave Ellen a chance to heal up. Thank goodness, because hauling the anchor is a difficult job I gladly ceded back to her.

The second half of the visit passed swiftly for us and we got to tour the island a little bit, eat more good food, check out more boats, spend more time with the folks. We took a walk around Harbor Town and saw the 1987 America’s Cup winner Stars and Stripes sitting at a dock waiting to take tourists out for day sails. What a strange place for a boat that was once among the fastest in the world, among the most celebrated in its day to end up. It’s like a thoroughbred racehorse being used to pull kids around on a hayride.

In other boat news, we saw this crazy Catalina that has been extensively modified. It’s got stainless steel tubing instead of lifelines, an 8’ bowsprit, an inner forestay, a huge anchor windlass, and a beefy stainless steel self steering rig. It also has been sitting at the dock long enough to grow a Gandalfian beard of seaweed.

We saw the vast majority of the interesting wildlife in Pennie and Alan’s back yard. A little green tree frog joined us for lunch two days in a row, a lizard snuck into the house, and a praying mantis showed up one afternoon. We also saw my parents in their natural habitat: reading in the sunshine.

After saying our goodbyes on Monday night, we got a late start Tuesday and sailed the short jump to Dafuskie Island. It’s a former plantation that was abandoned when the Union soldiers invaded during the Civil War. After the war, freed slaves returned to, essentially the same miserable conditions they experienced before the war, working on the plantation. When the boll weevil destroyed the cotton industry, Dafuskie struggled for decades, then boomed briefly before the Depression when a casino was built, then descended back into more or less its current state of genteel neglect and poverty.

We had heard it was an island both culturally and physically separate from the mainland, and were eager to see a Gullah community. (Gullah are the descendants of African slaves who have inhabited the region and maintained a distinct culture for generations.) What we saw was a bifurcated island: the majority of the place seemed to be abandoned houses or houses that should have been abandoned, with trash strewn about, dead cars in the yards, and not much sign of anything going on. The rest of the island had scattered developments – some charming houses in the middle of the island, some big condos and fancy houses on the water. No stores, one closed restaurant, a few tourists from elsewhere driving around on golf carts.

The island is no more remote than a boat ride across the 100 yards of ICW that separate it from the mainland. Hilton Head Island is about two miles away. We certainly respect the fact that people live how they wish and can, but we don’t see any magic to the place. Maybe we didn’t look hard enough.

What we did find, without looking for it at all, was mosquitos. More mosquitos than we have ever had to contend with anywhere. (Remember that we live in Maine, have visited Minnesota, and know our mosquitos.) We also found a guy on the beach, fishing. He caught a little hammerhead shark. That’s a crazy looking creature. I asked Ellen to stand near the shark for scale. She said, “No way. Why don’t you ask to put that lady’s baby on the sand for scale since it’s about the same size.” You should have seen the look of horror on the new mother’s face. Sorry I didn’t get a photo of that.

This morning we left our calm anchorage up a side creek near Dafuskie and headed just a little bit down the Waterway to Thunderbolt, Georgia. Sailed pretty much the whole way, which is always a treat on the ICW when the route is all river. The wind was blowing well into the high teens today and we were all wearing sweatshirts. I added a windbreaker over mine because my blood is thinned out in preparation for the Bahamas.

(Pictures when we get wifi, but you really want to see the hammerhead, so I’ll burn a little cell credit for you.)