Wed., March 25 — Cruise to Nowhere

I’ll skip the weather dramatics and just say that the sun finally appeared as we were about to cook hamburgers on the outdoor grill. Hooray. It was gray nearly the entire trip from Savannah to New Tea Kettle Creek anchorage, except that it started drizzling as we made our way off the ICW and into the creek. We debated about eating inside or out….and the emerging sun and bright breeze made up our minds. Dinner al fresco. Beautiful. Peaceful. Amazing. Ahhhh. The 60+ mile trip to this evening’s anchorage (this means not a marina….we are in an area with no services, no dockage and no shore access at all) was quite enjoyable despite the grey weather. We realized how close we were to the Atlantic Ocean when we saw waves breaking on the shoals in Sapelo Sound. We were treated to visits by dolphin for our entire trip — small groups surfacing several times in a row and then, seemingly, disappearing into the depths. You saw yesterday’s Keith Haring cartoon drawing of dolphins and, hopefully, noted their beaks. These beaks are one of the distinguishing characteristics of dolphin compared to porpoises; porpoises have a rounded, beak-less face. Here are some others: dolphin travel in groups while porpoise roam in pairs and trios; dolphin are larger — 9 feet or longer is not unusual while porpoise are rarely larger than 7 feet; dolphin vocalization can be heard by humans, but porpoise make sounds that are above human listening ranges. Both of these mammals echo-locate — which means they identify objects around them by bouncing sound waves off of them. The area where we are moored is filled with birds. We saw a flock of two dozen white egrets take flight as a group from the grassy march as we arrived. As sunset approached, the near shores were filled with red wing blackbirds and their meadow calls. We watched lesser terns, royal terms and cormorants (or maybe they were anhingas?) diving as pelicans glided barely inches over the water. I missed seeing some sort of furry animal cross one of the rivers — we guessed a muskrat, since it is unlikely that either otter or beaver roam these areas. We did some research and found out that there are 200,000 alligators living in Georgia…..sure hope they prefer other areas. Dinner on board consisted on grilled hamburgers and a Whole Foods pasta salad. Tomorrow’s breakfast will require actual preparation — dill egg salad with smoked salmon plus fruit salad.