The Foodie Post

Strange as it is for me to say this, I really like Georgia. Salt marsh Georgia, to be specific.

Last night was our second at Kilkenny Creek, Georgia. The plan was to hide out from a windy rainy day (that turned into a pre-winter storm for the Northeast). So yesterday passed with us getting lots of reading and schooling and napping taken care of. 

Because the cruising guide made strong recommendations for the restaurant at Kilkenny Creek (actually, the guide said we should dinghy, swim, or do whatever it took to get to the restaurant), we went, and it was outstanding. The place is called Marker 107 (after the buoy that marks the entrance to the creek) and was a real gem. We expected honky tonk fried eats, but were treated to a pretty hip location with excellent service and food. We had the fried okra appetizer, and now okra is the crew’s new favorite vegetable.

Yesterday was a grit-a-thon for me. My day began when I made myself two eggs (over easy) on a bed of Palmetto Farms grits. So delicious. Skipped lunch by accident (we were sailing too well for me to be distracted by things like food). And then I had the shrimp in a bacon cream sauce over local yellow grits. It was fantastic. 

I am not a food guy. If a pill were developed that I could take instead of eating, I would choose the pill most days. Especially for breakfast. But man, what a great meal. The view over the marsh was sublime (and not just because we could see Cupcake sitting pretty at anchor). Even the music playing at the restaurant was wonderful (we walked in as the Grateful Dead were on, what could be a better start?)

Moss started taking a much more active role in the anchoring. The other day I forced her to run the helm during the raising of the anchor. She squawked about it of course. But since then, she has at first reluctantly agreed to take the helm, and this morning she requested the task. So now I act as relay and Moss steers the boat and runs the engine to either motor the anchor out of the Georgia mud each morning or to set it good and solid at the end of the day. Today when Ellen got the anchor on the bottom, paid out 75’ of chain, tied it off at the cleat, and Moss put the boat into reverse, the anchor hooked up so solidly it was like we backed up into a wall. We are safe and sound tonight, that’s for certain. (Of course, if the wind shifts at low tide, we will probably wind up high and dry on a mud bank, but that’s not the point.)

So back to salt marsh Georgia. Lots of cruisers complain about the twisty, turny route through the marshes. The ICW down here is by no means a straight line, so if you are interested in hustling along, it’s a tough place to make tracks. But since we are not allowed south of Cumberland Island, Georgia before the end of the month (our insurance company made that arbitrary rule…somehow they figured North Carolina in September was safe enough, but northern Florida in October was not) we are not in any hurry. And maybe we are lucky in that the cool, windy weather we’ve been having is keeping the worst of the bugs away. (We have learned some tricks to keep the no-see-ums out of the boat in the evenings.) But the sailing has actually been excellent. The marshes offer next to no protection from the wind, so we get to sail in decent wind on these really flat calm rivers and creeks. It is a thrill to be zipping along under sail at 6 or 7, or today, with the tide, 8 knots in a creek that’s no more than 150’ wide.

Open water sailing is great, but this inland business is a real treat. Also, the place is lousy with dolphins. We didn’t see any yesterday and I was going through dolphin-withdrawal until about 9:30am today when we got the first of our many dolphin fixes for the day. Phew.

One last thing, when I say “creek” is suspect readers from New England may be picturing swampy, stagnant, alligator-infested, storm-drain runoff. It’s not like that at all. The creeks are just the deep passages through the honey and vermilion-colored marsh grass which stretches for miles on either side. When the tide is high, the grasses are covered except for maybe the top 12” or so and we can see to the horizon. At low tide we ride so low in the marsh that we can’t see over the grass. It is a pretty special place.

But there is no wifi. So again, not so many pictures until we get some speedy connectivity.

The change in temperature has been dramatic and fairly jarring. One of the reasons we began our trip early was to avoid chasing the warm weather south. So if we have to suffer through a hurricane and a tropical storm but only a week of cold weather, we call that well-planned.