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Sea Islands 300 : 01-Overture
Low Country from Up Highto Daytona Beach 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…
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Sea Islands 300 : 02-Daytona Beach
Day 1 – Cruising the Beach The airport is only three miles from the harbor, one of the reasons we chose to connect here. Doug meets me and we hail an Uber for the short hop to the marina. It’s still mid April, but the sun is already a white hot glare off asphalt and…
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Sea Islands 300 : 03-Daytona to Marineland
Day 2 – The Quest and Departure Just after daybreak. It’s almost time to shove off and I have to find a hat. It’s technically still Spring, but the sun here is blazing hot, relentless, and I don’t have a good hat. Couldn’t figure out how to pack one in the carryon for the flight.…
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Sea Islands 300 : 04-Grounded Near Marineland
Day 2 – Aground on the Matanzas River Modern navigation is a true wonder. Satellite mapping and imagery, GPS, digital charts, crowd-sourced sonar bathymetry, and the shareability of the internet, all make even detailed local knowledge available to anyone. Even with all that, though, reality still imposes limits. Doug spends many winter nights carefully plotting…
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Sea Islands 300 : 05-Celestial Wonders
Day 2 – Matanzas River: Nocturnal Spaceships and History of a Massacre We eat really well. Doug is a good cook, and likes doing it. All the food for at least three days is stored in a pantry bin of dry goods and a medium Yeti cooler with a bag of ice. He’s been doing…
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Sea Islands 300 : 06-St. Augustine
Day 3 – Dipping our toes in Florida’s “First Coast” Links to Chapters in the Series It’s only a couple of hours from Marineland to the oldest city in the US – St. Augustine – where I will find, finally, a decent hat. A short, easy day. Doug makes another fine breakfast, we wash up,…
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Sea Islands 300 : 07-A Ship of Comedians
Video of the concert on the docks. It’s almost full dark when I get back to the marina. From the shore I can see Doug has a boom light in the cockpit, playing guitar. We are tied up by the dinghy dock, where people come and go in zodiacs to their big yachts out in…
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Sea Islands 300 : 08-St. Augustine to Neptune Beach
Morning comes a little early. I spent much of the night listening to a persistent crackling noise that seemed to come from the water around the hull. Like electrical wires sparking. One of the odd things about these warm southern waters is the Snapping Shrimp, which sound like Rice Krispies when you pour milk on…
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Sea Islands 300 : 09-Neptune Beach to Amelia Island
The next leg turns out to be the most interesting yet. Another long one at nearly 30 miles. It will lead across the St. John’s River past a military shipyard, then into a series of mostly wild and winding linked creeks through broad empty marshes, around small remote islands, across Nassau Sound, and finally up…
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Sea Islands 300 : 10-Fernandina Beach on Amelia Island
While tidying up Tidings, and ourselves, we’re startled by a husband and wife scuba diver team (whose metier is scrubbing the bottoms of boats in the harbor). I thought they were manatees. Doug tells a story about a scuba diver who repaired his centerboard pennant. He was befriended by manatees. So friendly, in fact, Doug…
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Sea Islands 300 : 11-Amelia Island Questing
It’s a clear cool morning and we’re feeling peppy. Today we will say goodbye to Florida – sayonara, see ya later alligator! When we cross the St. Mary’s River for Cumberland Island we’ll be in Georgia. But first, we have to continue questing for Doug’s phone case. We get coffee and bagels in a busy…
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Sea Islands 300 : 12-Leaving Florida for Cumberland Island
“I knew there would be attack submarines armed with ICBM nuclear warheads. I just didn’t think we would see them.” The ampule of sacred cow’s milk in hand, we head back to the harbor and prepare the ship to push north. We drift out on the last of the Amelia River, saluted by train whistles…
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Sea Islands 300 : 13-Cumberland Island South
At the dock and gatehouse we find for the first time, as we will for the next two days, that we have almost the whole island to ourselves. There’s no one here to greet us, take our entry fee, or oversee the exhibits. Dozens of park service vehicles are parked neatly in rows in a…
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Sea Islands 300 : 14-Passing Submarines
It should have been an easy day. Though Cumberland is the largest of the sea islands at 20 miles long, we only need to go half that far to the anchorage at Plum Orchard. If we continue up the East River, we could bypass Kings Bay Submarine Base to reconnect with Cumberland Sound. But charts…
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Sea Islands 300 : 15-Cumberland Island North
So much drama for such a tranquil place. Past AND present. It’s about 4 in the afternoon when we drop anchor in Brickhill River, “river” though not much wider than a creek here. The tide is low and slack, just starting to turn. Toward the west is a broad marsh, so wide and flat we…
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