Island Day

 We packed a lot into our day today - no wonder I’m tired! After breakfast Kathy, Steve and I borrowed a golf cart and drove to the Georgia Sea Turtle Center.  Tom stayed behind to work on a boat project. The sea turtle center is a combo educational and rehabilitation facility for the whole state of Georgia and we learned a lot. We went through the whole teaching exhibit, saw the surgery center, watched a recovering turtle being tube fed and then went to the area where the recovering turtles are in large pools and monitored to see if they can be released into the ocean or not. One large turtle was there recovering from a propeller strike on it’s shell and several were there for skin lesions or metabolic issues.  We got to observe feeding time as well.

I almost forgot - before we ever left the marina we saw a big manatee swimming around the boats across from ours and we followed it down the whole row. I got some pictures and a great one of it’s face as it came up to look at me.  My first manatee sighting since entering Florida! I was beginning to think I would never see one….

There is a Historic District on the Island where the buildings from the original settlement of the island still stand and now shops and various services are housed in them.  Kathy and I shopped most all of them while Steve sat in the golf cart waiting for us!

After lunch I hauled 2 loads of laundry up to the main marina building and got that done - only one more load to do at the next marina.  I got my steps in for sure….  While up there I found out that the marina cat is a male, Mo, and he is around 16 years old.  Apparently he arrived 10 years ago on a sailboat and bailed ship, choosing to live here instead.  He hates boats and the water, but loves it here, and everyone here loves him.  One of the dockhands tried to take him home and he escaped and was waiting at the marina for him when he reported to work the next day!  Haha. He’s a pretty “chill” kitty and will take all the loves people give him.

We met a few new loopers today as new boats came in to dock and Steve and I did some route planning for the next couple of weeks.  Now I have to start calling the marinas for reservations, which is the nerve-wracking part…

We hosted dinner on the Orion tonight and it was Italian night! Spaghetti with marinara sauce, Chianti and chocolate wine for dessert. Yum! Tomorrow we only travel 10 miles up the river to the next island and have to leave during high tide, so we will not go until mid afternoon.  The tides have a 7 foot swing here!! Can’t wait to see what the next stop holds.


                                                                  Turtle Center

                                                                  Sweet Mo

                                                              Historic District

                                                                   Manatee!


                                                                    Manatee tail




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It Is Finished

Image
 And just like that our boating adventure of the past 2 years is over. We got up early to strip the bed and pack the last few items and made one last trip to the storage unit. We did one last inspection of all the nooks and crannies (with a flashlight) and actually found a small bag of acrylic glassware that had fallen down into a lower shelf unit, so we rescued that.  After loading the car to the gills, we took a couple of last pictures and walked away. I am sad on one hand because I loved our looping adventure on Orion, but by the time we left the boat it didn’t feel like “home” any more. We did something few people ever accomplish and I’m proud of that, and we always said we would know when it was time to move on, and it was. We drove to Baltimore with a stop at the Quantico Marine Museum that Tom has always wanted to see. Wow, what a great place! Reminded me of a Smithsonian. We spent over 2 hours there, ate lunch in their pub and drove the last 2 hours to Baltimore. Nothing beats
Read more

So close...

Image
 Today was one of those days we have been waiting for - warm, sunny, no fog, minimal crab pots and no "incidents".  We left Deltaville around 10 am after waiting till the fog dissipated  and traveled to Hampton VA without a hitch.  We even had our first 2 dolphins ride alongside the boat!  That was awesome!!  As you can see below, it was warm enough to go have a cocktail on the fly bridge and Dewey had his first little field trip outside on the boat too. We are nearly at our intended destination of the Norfolk area where we will have the boat hauled out of the water, the bottom painted and a couple of odds and ends attended to. We are looking forward to meeting our newest grand child, arriving next week and spending the holidays with family.  When we come back to the boat, it will be 2021 and we start the Great Loop adventure in earnest!  Stay tuned...
Read more

So. Many. Bins.

 It was day one of moving off the boat and we loaded so many bins! It’s not just packing, because as with all of our “moves” not everything goes to one destination. We like to keep it complicated! LOL! We have used color coded tape to mark which boxes are boat only, RV if that is what we do next, needs to end up in Hudson, but not this trip, and finally - things that must go with us now to Baltimore and ultimately Hudson. Sigh… We accessed our storage unit early this morning and made 4 trips with a fully loaded vehicle each time. Lots of empty drawers and closets now so we made really good progress today. Tomorrow Tom has a couple of boat tweaks to do while I finish packing and we should be completely done by tomorrow night. We will sleep one last night and pack up the last bedding and towels before leaving on Monday. We haven’t stopped meeting new boater friends - met the guy on the boat behind ours and found out he just bought the boat. He is an older guy alone, sold his house and is
Read more