Returning to the untamed Georgia coast

The waters along the Georgia coast are blessed with dolphins, but infested with swamp flies. As we crossed Cumberland Sound after leaving Cumberland Island, the waterway became narrow and meandered like a sidewinder snake through the Georgia marshes -- making the waters calm enough for the dolphins to play but also stagnant enough for the flies to pester us.

There is no sane geometry to the course taken by the network of rivers that form this part of the waterway. Sometimes we could be hundreds of yards in front of a boat and see it heading towards us along the river bend we just passed. These rivers connect yet another network of wide sounds that were luckily relatively calm today.  As we zig zaged through these waters today, many dolphins played along our bow and in our wake -- often jumping high out of the water. We saw many dolphins in this area on the way down as well, but this time around they seemed more comfortable around us -- as if they remembered the last time we passed through and saw no need for caution.

I know we said we would anchor in the same places we anchored at on the way down, but after stopping in Cumberland Island we decided we could go further than Umbrella Creek off Jekyll Sound. So yesterday we stopped in New Teakettle Creek instead, about 50 miles further north. Subsequently, today, when we came to the place we anchored on the way down, Vernon View, we decided we can once again go much further and wound up another 25 miles north on the New River just past the Georgia-South Carolina line.

So we're back in the state we began. This actually didn't even occur to us until we had settled in for the day. After observing the guide and charts closely, we noticed that the Savannah River was the border between the states, something unbeknownst to us as we crossed the river.

On the way down, the area we traversed today was the most treacherous probably along the whole trip, with various wide and windy sounds, and the infamous Florida Passage and Hell Gate. Today the waters had no chop though, and we passed the narrow passages mentioned in high tide. We sort of subconsciously employed a different technique too. On the way down, since it was our first time passing through the area, we payed extra attention to Hell Gate and were consequently petrified when all the dangerous portents we heard about the place turned out to be true. This time around we approached the area with much more leisure, in fact we came to the passage a bit unexpectedly, and ironically passed through it with no trouble at all.

Perhaps a good lesson in life could be learned from these experiences on the waterway: Life takes no patterned course. It's full of twists and turns like the rivers along the Georgia coast. And there's no reason to worry about what's ahead because, as Tom Petty said "Most things I worry about never happen anyway."