Sea Islands 300 : 01-Overture

Low Country from Up High
to Daytona Beach

Links to Chapters in the Series

From 30,000 feet I get a preview of what’s to come. The morning flight drops down out of the clouds, and there below is our destination: Beaufort, and a watery world of marshes, winding creeks, and inlets stretching out to the steel blue Atlantic. It’s deceiving from above as it is up close. The sun glints off obvious water and moves over what one would think is land; but the light strikes water there, too. What appears to be land ribboned with creeks is mainly water, as well. The Low Country and Sea Islands of the South. 

Then we’re over Florida, with its plumb straight shoreline and long beach bar barrier islands of sand. Mile after gridded mile of housing developments, parking lots, and golf courses fan out from cities like mold in a Petri dish. In the span of a few minutes I see our entire 300 mile route up the Intracoastal Waterway. 

It will take us three weeks to retrace that 300 mile journey by boat. There will be birds, feral pigs, dolphins and manatees; we’ll be run off the road by wild horses, run aground, get pummeled by storms and stalked by gators, we’ll intimidate a nuclear sub and serenade a yacht full of lovely traveling comedians; see alien spaceships, get a personal tour by a State Folklorist, drive golf carts too fast through a manicured island paradise, enter a secret portal to a hidden Disney World; we’ll sail a lot, motor a lot, eat well, and tell many stories. All in the coming three weeks. But from 30,000 feet I don’t know that yet. It all looks quiet and calm, a sleeping giant. 

I’m meeting Doug in Daytona. Originally, we intended to meet at Amelia Island on the Florida/Georgia border. But unplanned stops for maintenance delayed his arrival up the Florida coast by a week, even though he padded in extra days for weather and exploring. As Doug likes to say, “The great thing about owning a boat is you get to repair it in so many exotic places.”

This Doug is Doug Oeller. He’s one of our extended band of small boaters on the Chesapeake Bay. Some years ago he bought a slightly bigger boat with the idea of doing more extended cruising – a British boat, a Cornish Shrimper. Though only 19 feet long on deck, by our standards it’s enormous and luxurious, with a cabin and bunks for two, a diesel engine, etc.. But size is relative. By most people’s standards, as we would frequently be reminded, it is still a small boat.

Since 2018, he has been slowly traveling in that boat around the continental US, counterclockwise. From Kent Island in the Chesapeake, north through New York to New England and Maine. He trailered it overland to spot cruise in the Great Lakes, then out to Seattle and the San Juans, down the coast to San Francisco and San Diego. Last year he did the whole Gulf Coast from the border of Texas and Mexico to the Florida Panhandle, following the Intracoastal waterway. This spring he continued down the west coast of Florida to the Keys to pick up the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) and begin the home stretch back to the Chesapeake.

When he must, he sails solo, which he can do. But he prefers company for the conversation, and it makes boat handling less stressful. The journey, sailing seasonally with intermittent breaks, spans years. Many in our sailing group, and friends and family, have joined him for different legs of the trip. I was too busy in earlier years. But with a job ending, I suddenly find myself with time to spare. And this leg going up the southern coast is an area I’ve known since childhood. Lots of history there, both personal and otherwise. With family in Beaufort, making the trip by water to see it up close again – all those places with all those memories – is just too good to pass up.

Hence, I’m on a plane to Daytona with one small duffel bag of gear. The plane banks left and I can see the eponymous speedway next to the runway, and beyond that the pink palisade of hotels and condos rising up from the shore. 

Ah yes, I remember. Florida.

Video Introduction: