You’re familiar with the story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. What you may not know is that after Dr Jekyll was shamed from creating his alter ego monster, he fled to the USA and settled on an island off the coast of Georgia. The island was named after him, and has been laden with the curse of his ghost ever since. Much like the Bermuda triangle, nothing seems to go right when under the influence of this curse, and we found this out first hand when visiting Jekyll Island, Georgia.
It started off pretty peaceful. We don’t usually get to cruise on the ICW (Inter Coastal Waterway) because our mast is too high to get under most bridges, and we really like our mast. The stretch to Jekyll had no bridges, so we got to slowly meander through the Georgia wet lands, close to nature. So close that many of the insects from shore came out to pay us a visit, including one very large and forbidding looking wasp. It kept circling us, and then finally disappeared behind us. We thought. All of a sudden Hunter was screaming bloody murder, and we couldn’t get him to calm down enough to tell us what happened. Apparently the wasp had landed unawares on his arm, and was a little pissed when he shifted positions and squeezed it. Ouch.
Once past the rivers of the ICW, the the approach to Jekyll from channel is very shoaly. That means it gets shallow in a lot of unexpected places, so getting to our anchorage was a bit like doing a maze on the back of the kids menu. We made it through the gauntlet, and only had to anchor three times before we were satisfied that we wouldn’t ground at low tide. My brother in law Dave, is about six and a half feet tall, and the kids use his height as a measuring stick. That makes the Jekyll tides about “one Uncle D” high, so we had to factor that change into our calculations.
While we were setting anchor, we had the very first crocodile sighting of our adventure. Also, I’m told that it was an alligator, not a crocodile. I know nothing about croc-a-gators. It was slowly circling our boat like it was eyeing Zulu (dog) for a snack. I’m sure it was mostly harmless, but its presence quickly ruled out any swimming off the back of the boat. Luckily a nearby marina had a pool we could use for $20/day. That fee included docking our dinghy, access to laundry and showers, the pool, and the use of their modest fleet of bicycles.
Oh the bicycles. After cooling off a bit in the pool, we realized that we hadn’t planned dinner yet. After a little debate, we settled on burgers, but were out of buns and needed to get to a store. Great, we can just use a free bike! There was even one with a basket, so I smartly chose it to carry back our bounty. Well, I didn’t really choose anything. There were actually only three bikes in the “fleet”, and one didn’t have a chain. That left two for Jade and I to make the trip to the market. My seat was coming off, and the handlebars fell down whenever I touched them. This should be interesting.
Interesting it was. Getting to the market was a sight to see as we got used to peddling our rusty charges…but it was nothing compared to the trip back. The shelves of the market were chock full of goodies of all types. Except for one small section labeled “bread”. That two foot span of shelves was completely bare. Nada. The main reason for us coming was a bust. We tried to noodle out an alternative, but decided that sticky buns would not make for a good burger. Not wanting to go back empty handed, we grabbed a 12 pack of Coors Light, a bag of Doritos, and a Snickers bar. Yes, we are the model of healthy eating.
Well, shoot. I didn’t think that through. While my bike had a basket, it was not nearly large enough for the 12 pack. I would have to hold onto it while peddling. The best way to do this was to grip the handle of the case and rest my hand on the handlebars of the bike. Except that the handle bars were not secure, and kept falling, causing me to lurch violently left and right.
If you were to have seen Jade and I on the way back from the store, weaving in and out of the bike path from the weight of the beer, raising and lowering our seats and handlebars, and ultimately giving up and walking the bikes when the chains fell off, you might just have taken pity on her and called social services. We made it back alive, and the whole crew headed back to the boat for bunless burgers and doritos (and beer for the adults).
The next morning, Zulu was acting a bit weird. Even for her. I had glued down the sea deck (floor mats) the day before, and she kept going over and sniffing at and licking at it. I guess she likes glue. Silly dog. The Golden Retriever: the end result of centuries of meticulous inbreeding.
But she kept doing it. All morning. Meredith noticed too, but didn’t shrug it off to sniffing glue like I did. She went over to check it out. She looked down. She looked right. Nothing there. She looked left.
AHHHHH!!! There’s a racoon on the boat!
Say what?
There’s a racoon on the boat!
Ha ha. Whatever. There can’t be. You’re nuts. We’re anchored out in the middle of a river, and racoons don’t swim. (this is a good time to note that I know nothing about racoons).
I puffed up my chest and went over to show her just how silly she was being. Clearly she was seeing things, right?
AHHHHH!!! You’re right! There’s a racoon on the boat!
Nestled behind our blue cooler and gas cans was a very small and very smug little racoon. At least I think he was small. Not a baby, but not full grown. I think. Remember, I know nothing about racoons.
He was also very dry. That struck me as odd. If you’re following along closely, you know that we live on a boat. A boat out on the water. Unless this little tyke fell from heaven above to save us from our sins, he had to swim to the boat. That’s odd, because, as I told Meredith, racoons don’t swim, and if they did, they would surely get wet doing so. (Remember, I know nothing about racoons) If he did swim, it must have been the day before, meaning that we had three pets on board last night and were lucky he didn’t leave his hiding place. We think.
The best way to learn something is to experience it, so I decided to try out my “racoons don’t swim” theory first hand. There was a broom nearby, and I was able to easily give him a little nudge off the back of the boat into the water.
We tried to keep the event from the kids, but they are far too perceptive for that. The boys wanted to know what all the ruckus was about, and we finally caved and told them. Being small, the racoon was not treading water very fast. We were about 100 yards from shore, and he was only ten to 15 yards from the boat, making it easy to point him out.
What transpired next makes me swell with pride, and deflate with shame. Luckily, Jade, being 12, was still asleep. Jade loves all things even remotely cute, and would have been appalled at the spectacle. Over the course of the next hour, we intently watched little Jekyll (named after the Island) try to make his way to shore. Greyson was his biggest fan, checking in every five minutes and cheering him on. The rest of us were looking for the gator to make another appearance. I’d like to say that we had Jekyll’s best interests at heart and were looking out for him…but at least one of us (I won’t say who) kinda wanted to see what happened when a gator happened upon a swimming racoon.
Meredith should be ashamed of herself. (for marrying me)
Eventually the excitement died down, and Jekyll made it to shore unharmed. It was getting hot, so the kids reluctantly went to suit up for a day at the beach. You would think they’d be excited to go to the beach, but it’s always a bit of an ordeal. We’re anchored in a river on the back side of the island, and the beach is on the other side. To get there, we need to make the irrevocable decision of what to bring, load it into the dinghy, drive the dinghy ashore, and trek across the island to the beach.
At least one kid was crying, and the others were angry. Meredith and I were committed to getting them off the boat more, so we pushed on. Only Zulu was happy. The beach means a dinghy ride and dip in the waves, and after starting the day sniffing a raccoon butt, that made today pretty much her best day ever.
After about an hour of complaining and kitten herding (literally and figuratively), Mom, Dad, Jade, Hunter, Greyson, and Zulu were loaded into the dinghy for the quick trip to shore. Sadie (cat) was left to defend the boat from further intruders. Jade wanted more practice driving the dingy, so we let her have the tiller. It was a weekend, so there was quite a bit of traffic around the boat launch on shore. I was continuing to force myself into a good mood after fighting with the kids to go to the beach, so I waved at a friendly looking pair on a boat nearby. They graciously waved back, and decided to come for a visit. They were even nice enough to turn on their pretty flashing lights on their way over.
It was the boat cops, and we had kids in the boat. We always have enough life jackets for everybody on board, but had sorta let the habit slip of the kids actually wearing them during our time in the Bahamas. Especially for a 100 yard trip to shore. We were no longer in the Bahamas, and the officers were kind enough to make sure we knew that. The boss (I assume the one driving was the boss) kept writing on his little pad during our get to know you chit chat.
Luckily, our dinghy is registered. It’s the source of much debate in the cruising community if you need to register both your dinghy and your sailboat, or just the sailboat. We erred on the side of caution, and got the paperwork done before heading on our trip. Doing that wasn’t trivial. The seller’s had forgotten to put the tender (dinghy) on the bill of sale, so we couldn’t prove we actually owned it. After being denied registration because of this in both Florida and Georgia, we finally got our sticker from Colorado. We kept that sticker in the desk for the first four months of cruising, and had finally gotten around to putting it on the dinghy the week before.
Luckily, I was driving. I know that I told you that Jade was driving, but that can’t be true. You see, as the officers told us, you have to be 12 to drive a boat in Georgia, and only then after taking a special class. Jade hadn’t taken that class, so of course she couldn’t have been driving. Luckily, I was sitting next to her and it was easy to take the tiller when we saw the light(s).
The cop kept writing on his pad and asking questions. Where were we from? Where were we going? Yada yada. Just when I thought he was about to board us to do a cavity search for drugs, he handed me the paper he had been furiously writing on. A warning. Phew. Yes officer, from now on the kids will all have their life jackets on when in a moving boat, even if just going to shore. No officer, nobody under 12 will drive the boat. Yes officer, Zulu is very cute.
Bullet dodged, and a great reminder of safety at sea with kids. We continued to shore to finally take the mile (ish) hike across the island to the beach. Hunter’s wasp sting was hurting, so we made a quick stop at the market for some ice. Other than that, it was relatively uneventful getting to the beach. Just the delicate hum of constant complaining.
Kids: Why couldn’t we just go to the pool? Why do we have to walk all the way to the beach?
We responded with the time honored mantra of all parents everywhere: Because we said so.
The beach itself was lovely. There was even a golden retriever pup just learning to swim to keep Zulu company. Our typical swimming session with the dog is to first play around with the ball on the shore and get a little wet, and then head out past the waves for a little real swimming. When we’re out there and she needs a rest, she swims over to one of us and we hold her until she’s ready to go again. It’s quite sweet, and a real tear jerker. Except for the jerk that decided to complain.
Dogs can’t be off leash at the beach. Apparently not even out past the breakers. The lifeguard that the complainer complained to was nice enough to let us know that. Oh well. I guess she’ll swim with her leash on. They failed to mention that we were supposed to hold the other end of the leash…and we failed to ask.
That’s it. We swam our hearts out and then headed back. On the way we noticed a lone air pod (headphone) on the beach. That sucks for somebody, those things are expensive. We leave it there because surely the owner will come looking for it.
Four weeks later I discovered that the air pod was the left one of my pair, and going back to look for it was out of the question. I’ll consider it a sacrifice to Dr Jekyll’s island.
While cruising around, we are always on the lookout for new (cheap) ways to entertain the kids. Museums and national parks (get the pass and they’re all free) abound, but sometimes they need something a bit different. On Jekyll, we engaged our friends at Iridium Go for some diversion, and they came up with a nice game for us. Iridium Go makes our satellite phone. Well, it’s more of a satellite hub that lets us use our phones as satellites. This is an extremely important part of our safety at sea strategy, and allows us to communicate from anywhere. However, even more important than that, it allows us to have a nifty little webpage that shows where our boat is at any given moment.
Over the last six weeks, the function that tracks our boat went on the fritz. It would often show us traveling at 100+ knots (nautical miles per hour) nowhere near the water. Our friends and family monitoring our progress started to get worried for our safety and/or sanity when they saw this. We contacted Iridium Go to see what was up, and they said “never fear, this happens all the time when customers screw up” (paraphrase). Whew, I’m glad to know that we’re the problem. Except that we’re not, and here’s where the game they designed for us came into play.
The game was a scavenger hunt. The object of the hunt is to prove, without a doubt, that we were not at fault. Failure to follow their instructions to the letter would result in a $150 “told you so” fee if we sent back our faulty unit when it wasn’t actually faulty.
The first phase was on the boat. While we hadn’t moved our unit in approximately ever, they insisted that some new interference was causing the glitch. We had to try it in every conceivable place on the boat that was over six feet from electronics. That’s difficult to do on a 47 by 24 ft boat that is loaded down with navigational equipment and the normal devices of a 2023 family of 5. After much ado, we finally convinced them we were out of spots to try on the boat. Fine, says they, let’s try it off the boat.
The off the boat phase occurred on Jekyll Island. The objective was to find a park. A big wide open park. A big wide open park with no trees. A big wide open park with no trees or buildings. And we have to take a picture of the unit in the park to prove that there are no trees or buildings. Or other boats. The park had to be away from all boats. Right. We live on a boat with no car, so trying to find said park in walking distance is an adventure. We tried to trick it out by taking angled shots not showing buildings, but Iridium always replied back with something wrong with the location, and asked us to try again. Finally, while I was fixing something (I don’t remember what, but it was probably a water pump) on the boat, Mere and the kids trekked out to a park that fit the bill. Now, all we had to do was ship the unit back and wait a couple months (without our emergency satellite communications) for a replacement (or the “I told you so” penalty). They provided us with a nice form to print out and include with the package. We don’t have a printer. Phase three of the hunt: find a printer. Joy.
After two days packed with crocodiles that were actually gators, stowaway racoons, encounters with police, broken bicycle acrobatics, fruitless scavenger hunts, and swimming with our dog on the leash, we had enough. We needed to get north to Savannah to put the boat on the hard while we went on a land visit back home, so we pulled anchor and got out of there before something else happened.
Maybe it should be named Hyde Island….
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