We finished January on Saturday racing from St. Mary's to St. Augustine to hole up before the Southeast's bomb cyclone storm hit. Leaving St. Mary's at zero dark thirty (slight exageration, it was first light at 06:45), we scampered down the ICW and securely docked at St. Augustine's Municipal Marina just before the temperature plummeted and the winds started to scream. Our highly focused trip through undeveloped marshland and heavily developed shorefront offered numerous dolphins, brown and white pelicans, kingfisher, great egrets, and cormorants.
We endured a wild evening eating leftovers, watching Eleanor the Great, a poignant but humorous movie, and then reading in bed listening to the howls, moans, and screams of 25-30 knot winds gusting to 45 and 50. We awoke this morning to 24 degrees , crystal blue skies, sea smoke, and winds 15-20. Temp is not forecast to go back above freezing until mid day and we're looking at another hard freeze tonight. Sure glad we're in Florida though as we missed the snow that hit South Carolina and parts of Georgia.
As we left the boat yesterday for a walk and leisurely lunch, this sentinel great egret greeted us at the head of the dock. Standing in an oyster bed, his interest in catching
his lunch far outweighed any fear he had of us. I'm not sure where or how he weathered the brutal cold and wind that soon followed. One of his fellow avian friends, a great blue heron, landed at the end of our finger pier just as it was getting dark yesterday afternoon. With howling winds and a temperature already below freezing, we feared for his life. Occasionally raising his wings and poising to fly, he thought better of it again and again. it finally got so dark he was hard to see and we stopped watching. By the time I went out to disconnect the shore water hose and bring it inside before bed, he had disappeared. We hope he found a more sheltered place in a marsh and survived the night.
Before coming to St. Augustine, we spent two nights docked at St. Mary's, Georgia. A delightful, busy small town, St. Mary's among other things provides the gateway to
Cumberland Island National Seashore. On Friday after a glorious sunrise, we took the
ferry out to the Island where we enjoyed a full day tour with two other couples our age and a guide named Toby. The Island has a long history starting with native Americans and then alternating back and forth among the British, Spanish, and French. In the 18th and 19th centuries, slave holding planters including Robert Stafford and Catherine Greene (widow of revolutionary war hero General Nathaniel Greene) established sea cotton plantations. Sea cotton, well know for the length and strength of its fibers, proved extremely lucrative during the slavery era but the industry collapsed after the Civil War. Not long after that time, Andrew Carnegie's brother and business partner, Thomas, and his wife, Lucy, began buying up the island and converted it to luxurious estates for themselves, their children and grandchildren. They built Dungeness, a 37000 square foot estate, for themselves at the south end of the Island. Sadly, after Lucy's death, an arsonist and poacher burned it after being identified for poaching by the estate's chief caretaker. What you see below is all that's left.
We did have the chance to tour Plum Orchard Estate which was built by Lucy Carnegie for her son, George, and his wife, the former Margaret Thaw. Roughly half the size of Dungeness, Plum Orchard is still huge by most standards. Built to impress friends and
family, it offered an immense greeting room, a large formal dining room, a substantial library that doubled as a ladies' sitting area, and a huge family room/gun room where the men smoked cigars and drank brandy after dinner. The estate made its own electricity, first DC and then AC. Nearly 50 servants kept things going for the wealthy family who, by the way, never worked a day in their lives.
Near the North End of the Island, we visited the home of Carol Ruckdeschel, commonly known as the Wildest Woman in America, who has fought for and defended the Cumberland Island National Seashore. Not far from her home is the simple church where the late John F. Kennedy, Jr. and his wife were married. By coincidence, Jackie
and I were at the church exactly 46 years (almost to the hour) from the time we first met.
As the estate era dwindled, the federal government began acquiring Cumberland Island to protect its heritage and especially the unique environment of the 18 mile long, 3.5 mile wide barrier island. Congress and Richard Nixon established the Cumberland Island National Seashore in 1972 and the government eventually purchased nearly 90% of the 36000 acre Island. There are still Carnegie inholdings and the Candler family (Coca Cola) have a large holding on the high bluffs at the north end of the island.
Today, almost entirely undeveloped and allowing a maximum of only 300 visitors/day, the island hosts a wide variety of birds and wildlife including feral horses, wild hogs, white tail deer, armadillo, raccoons, and squirrels. On our visit, we saw numerous horses at various points on the island, countless armadillos, wild hogs, a bobcat, lots of squirrels, a tri-color heron, several great white egret and a cardinal.
After a long day (boarded the ferry at 09:00 and returned at 17:30), we retreated to the Locals Dockside Restaurant for an early, pleasant seafood supper following which we retired early in anticipation of our dawn departure to St. Augustine. I leave you with a couple St. Mary's photos:
