Where have all the Palm Trees Gone?

Long time passing...and it took us a while...like the end of Sapelo Sound, to realize that the foliage on the shoreline had VERY few Palm Trees included in the mix. As we are now 'parked' at another Marshy Anchorage, we have taken special note that there are indeed very few palm trees here too! Who woulda thunk? :)


It was one of those cloudless, gorgeous days out of the book...90-ish degrees, we are just told on the TV weather, and we will have the same tomorrow and for the rest of the week, apparently.

What an interesting and beautiful day it was....Firstly, the vegetation changed. Then the water was the most wonderful color...while we were in the Sounds...in the marshes, it was still very Tanin heavy and brown!

Even the Dolphin look brown!

We couldn't leave the dock at Darien until the tide was on the high rise. That meant about 11am. It was a good time to leave, and it gave us time to go for a walk and take some photos..last ones:) We have really enjoyed our weekend there, so we also went by the office of development, or whatever that is, and said thanks for the free dock and some suggestions for how they could make others welcome!
The light was pretty, of course...given the day! We went back to the vacant former Movie Theatre to take morning light photos. Shame about the wires, but they lend an abstract air to the pic.:)

 

Broad Street, on Monday morning. Nothing open until 10am! That's the kind of hour I think is civilized!

 This is the park that is on the waterfront now. What was once a busy a waterfront in the late 1700's and early-mid 1800's, until the town was burned to the ground around 1867 (I think..without looking it up!) This is where the wedding took place on Saturday.

 Under the big trees over there, in the center of the photo, are the remains of some of the thriving warehouses and businesses. The 'Tabby' is still there.

 We walked up the bridge to take these photos...we had done that last night too, and Waz went back down to get his camera to take some sunset shots. We look reasonably small here:) That is the Darien River we are parked in.

 The Marshes are forever...it is hard to see where the river is once it disappears on the horizon. It was funny, in fact, looking back at two boats that were following us...we could see the top of the speed boat and the yacht mast, but nothing more. The tide was almost full...well, within an hour of full.

 This was a close as we could get to the Shrimp factory, just behind the boat and next to the park. Those are huge tubs which they put the fresh shrimp into to purge them (often overnight) of any nasties...so that their body waste is gone, for the most part. The workers were moving the shrimp into barrels marked for export to Japan...waz's camera has a longer lens and that is what HE saw.

It took us an hour to go down the Darien River to the cross-roads to rejoin the ICW. We had watched the little cruise ship go north up the same channel in front of us. and later saw it parked next to Sapelo Island, as we went up the channel past Little Sapelo Island...see chart below.

 Three Sounds, today. These Sounds are the confluence of several rivers all opening onto the largest river which opens to the Atlantic Ocean. It is the widest/largest body of water.  The first was Sapelo Sound, which followed our passage up the river alongside Little Sapelo Island, which is next to Sapelo Island, which is on the Atlantic Ocean. Make sense?
Let me illustrate this.. That is Sapelo Island on the right where it says Marsh Landing.

I apologise in advance for the photos and charts.  When we are in the marshes, there really is nothing to see!..well, apart from Marshes! This is how much of the journey looked, today...one river, into another, along a narrow channel that we had anticipated might be shallow, but seemed to have been recently dredged, it was so deep. I think the shallowest point was 7ft! Not as bad as we expected!

Lots of marshes, Islands, and rivers.

You can see the little cruise ship on the far right! ..this dock is on Little Sapelo Island...about all we could see of signs of life!

Isnt this gorgeous? We just felt that we would like to run the boat into the beach and hop off.

You can see where we came out of the river and are now in the Sound and making our way towards another river off to the right.

The first Sound..Doboy Sound!

Waz is pointing to where we were at the time. You can see how close we are to the Atlantic Ocean!

Sorry, not a clear photo! This shows the really narrow channel...follow the red boxes around and into the white oblong at the top which is a marked channel.

 Here we are turning that final corner around the three red  markers, into yet another river. It was endless, but also fascinating. I lost count of the rivers we went into, so sorry, I wont be telling you all the names, as I would have to go back to all the charts and look them up.

 ...Creighton Narrows were not nearly as bad as we had anticipated, and probably because of good planning on Warren's part with the tides. I don't think it would have been as pleasant if we had done this at low tide! There were a few tricky places, but nothing that got me nervous!:)

 You can see that we have come out of a Creek...Shellbluff Creek, to be exact.

 Pretty low foliage and marshland all in one package.

I wonder who thought of the name Dog Hammock Spit?? on the top right.

The bottom of St Catherine's Sound was interesting...see the left hand side of the screen shot just below 24.5ft. up and down and then it levelled out.

We turned left yet again, this time from St Catherine's Sound..if you go all the way to the right, you will get to the Ocean. The yellow arrows (Bottom of the screen, right) indicate strong current...you think? Tidal currents  going in and out and coming from all directions into that one large body of water!???:)

7 hours of motoring is a long time, and covers a lot of water. Some of the time we are in the middle of a wide body of it, and at other times we feel we could almost reach out and touch the sides. We like the changes, and in the middle of the Sounds today, put our feet up and relaxed and thought we might enjoy living in these surroundings. The water wasn't VERY deep, but 38 ft is enough for fun, in our books. We had enough room to relax and enjoy our surroundings, for at least an hour of travel.

I have to leave you here, today, as there is decreasing bandwidth on our WiFi booster, and it takes a lot to up load all the photos. I don't want to run out before the 16th of the month. 
We dropped anchor in the Marshes again...I love it..so tranquil! and we have enough water under us at low tide, not to worry about a thing. Im sure we will sleep well!

Ciao for now.