Sunday Morning in Brunswick

Hello from Georgia again. We are here at the Brunswick Landing Marina and getting the boat ready to sit. Sounds funny but there are quite a few things that have to be done to leave the boat for a couple of months. In fact this boat has never been left alone as the former owners lived full time on board since they built the boat in 2004. Shelley has the boat all cleaned up both inside and outside. We have been polishing the chrome rails to protect them from the salt water. This is a very protected marina, so we are leaving all the normal screens up until we come back this summer.

We rented a car yesterday to explore the area broader than the downtown area of Brunswick that we could walk. We drove over to St. Simons Island and Jekyll Island, both started as vacation homes for the wealthy. St. Simons is beautiful with huge homes and golf courses everywhere. We ate at a place called Barbara Jean's are were actually greeted by Barbara Jean and her husband Jim. The place was great as was the food, and we thought it was so unusual to find a big time restaurant with 4 other branches on the east coast, and two franchises where the owners were working up front on a Saturday. They are known for their crab cakes, and it was well worthwhile.

Jekyll Island is not as pretentious but has a pretty beach. You can camp on the island in a very nice full hook up campground on the north end (Smith's). Henry Hyde, the CEO of Equitable Life for many years built the first major home in the 20's on the island, which today is now part of a beautiful hotel with a grass Croquet court in front.

I think it was a good decision to stay in Brunswick and not push on to Beaufort. It would have taken another 3 days of fuel to go further north, and I think Brunswick is a better storm haven than Beaufort. I believe that once Hurricane season is over that we will go back south to Florida or the Bahamas, so we would save the fuel to go north to Beaufort as well as coming back. There are interesting places to explore by boat from here so that will be what we do between now and next April. We have retained a person to watch over Rock Chalk daily, and to come on board each week to check her out. I think the boat will be just fine in our absence.

We miss seeing everyone, so we are anxious to get back to Austin and return to our former life. This has been an interesting and challenging experience. I have learned so much. Shelley has done a great job of getting very comfortable on the boat and running its systems. She is a good navigator and we teamed very well in finding markers and working our way up the Intercoastal Waterway. It is cool to think that we have covered 700 miles of the Waterway from the Keys, and have another 2000 miles to follow to get into the Great Lakes. So we will get back to Austin for now, with more adventure ahead. Hope that each of you can join us for segments of this future exploration. See you all soon. Marc and Shelley