St. Simon Island to Jekyll Island
We left St. Simon Island Friday morning and motored down the ICW to Jekyll Island. Jekyll is the next island down the chain of barrier islands on the coast of Georgia. While St. Simon is beautiful, and we had a great little anchorage, it was time to go. It was the Florida/Georgia football game weekend – and we were about to be over-run by frat boys. Apparently, St. Simon is the place to be for the big game weekend!
Motoring
When we can’t sail – due to no wind, or in this case, sketchy depths in the ICW, we have to use the motor. Since we weren’t going that far south, it didn’t make sense to make the long trek out the inlet to the ocean, just so we could sail south and make the long trek in the next inlet. While we really don’t like motoring, it made sense this time.
It took a good bit longer to get to Jekyll Island than we expected. We pulled up anchor early and headed out with the tide. First mistake. Jekyll Creek gets really shallow, 4′ at low tide. Our boat is 6’4″ deep… Oopsie. This is not our first time taking this route, but we still managed to forget to check that little tidbit of information. So we anchored out just north of our destination for a couple of hours or so. And trust me, we weren’t the only ones who made this mistake. We were not alone at anchor in the creek!
Let’s make a movie!
Jekyll Island is where we started to really play with video, and say “Hey, let’s give this a shot.” Filming has happened pretty regularly since we got the boat – 3 years ago. I was just never ready to tackle learning the software, editing, music, voice overs etc. It was actually pretty overwhelming to even think about while we worked on the boat, learned to sail, and sold all of our worldly possessions. So we have loads of pointless video floating around in various clouds and external hard drives.
Free time is suddenly a thing.
I’ve finally plopped myself down and whipped up a first video. Are there things I would change? Of course. But with the minimal internet connection we had in the area, and the need to JUST GET IT DONE ALREADY, I finally stopped messing with this first one. It took HOURS to post with the cell phone connection we had, and it’s only 9 minutes long… I couldn’t bring myself to edit it much more once it was finally uploaded to Youtube. So here it is – our first video episode. (skip down to read, vs watch)
Don’t have a great internet connection? Well, I can break down the Jekyll Island trip for you 🙂
We have a good enough connection to watch videos some days, but not others. So here’s a written breakdown. (Plus I love to read/write blogs, not just watch videos)
Jekyll Island is beautiful. And literally COVERED in bike paths! Since we were so close to the boat ramp, we dinghied the dogs over for a short walk. Libby is almost fully blind now, and absolutely hates to get off the boat. And she hates to walk. So she wasn’t exactly thrilled about the adventure. But Molly had a fun, quick expedition and then we all headed back over to the boat.
We immediately tossed the half folded bikes into the dinghy, along with our yoga mats and a picnic, and motored right back to the public dock/ramp. We locked up the dinghy, and had no problems leaving it there each day while we explored.
Mark and I biked over to the beach and threw down a little beach yoga. There may have been a screaming banshee child trying to disrupt my flow, but we just zenned her out and carried on.
The beach here is gorgeous, and we can tell the waters are beginning to clear up as we move further south down the coast. But it is a little chilly, so I just dipped in a wee bit – to say I had.
After our little PB&J picnic, we hopped back on the bikes and explored about half of the island. A couple of friends were driving down the next day, so we wanted to save the north end of the island to explore with them.
Sunday Lori and Sean drove down from Savannah. They brought bikes and we all met at the public boat ramp. It was a great place to meet and leave their car for the day. We biked over to the historic area of the island and had lunch at The Pub. It wasn’t the least expensive meal we’ve every had, but it was pretty good (burgers and chicken sandwiches all around) – AND it was all day happy hour! It will also be a while before we have friends visit us again, so we took advantage and splurged a little.
After lunch, we peddled on over towards Driftwood Beach. I was struggling to keep up with the gang, and peddling my tush off. Eventually, I ended up having an asthma attack. Mark came over to make sure I wasn’t dying (I really need to remember to take my asthma meds before I head out, but this is only the 4th-ish attack I’ve ever had, so I forget). While we were waiting on my lungs to work again, he did a once over of my bike. Apparently my back brake had been rubbing/dragging the whole time. He tweaked it for me, and on we went to Driftwood Beach!
Driftwood Beach is GORGEOUS. We monkeyed around a while, then hopped on the bikes again to continue our loop around the north end of the island – over to Tortugas Somethingorother. After enjoying 2 for 1 beers at another happy hour, we finished up the loop by heading back over to the public ramp. It was such a fun day. We’re having a great time cruising, but it’s even more fun when you can share it with friends!
We crashed pretty early Sunday and got up at the crack of dawn to motorsail our way down to Cumberland Island. Jekyll is definitely one of my favorite spots on the Georgia Coast!
Thanks for checking out the blog – and the video, if you had the bandwidth to view it. If you enjoyed it, please give it a thumbs up – it really does help our channel! And feel free to Subscribe as well, so you never miss an episode.
There’s a Cumberland Island post and video up next!
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FANTASTIC ! ! ! ! Great pictures ! ! ! I REALLY NEED A LUNA SEA SHIRT ! ! ! ! REALLY ! ! ! ! 😉
Thanks, mom!
We don’t really have any shirts. Mark and I each got one as a sample, but we don’t have them for sale or anything…