St. Simons to Walburg Creek

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's) 

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 16 – April 16, 2017

It it difficult to describe the contentment we feel sitting here this evening at this nearly perfect Georgia anchorage! We had our sundowners listening to some of our favorite music on the Bose Soundlink Mini (John Denver, OK, we know it is sappy, but it is our music from our time!). Then we had a great dinner beef and cheese enchiladas. The recipe for the enchilada sauce we first learned from Sheila Gonzalez many years ago, but it is identical to cousin Abel Castijella's recipe, so it is guaranteed authentic – and good! The sun is shining and it feels good!

We are just past the north end of Walburg Island, directly alongside a beautiful sandy beach on St. Catherine Island. Behind the sandy beach are some dead trees, probably standing in a wetland. Sandy beaches here in Georgia along the ICW are extremely rare. Virtually all of the shoreline we have cruised here so far has been marshlands. We are a bit past the four Active Captain anchorages on Walburg Creek, but they were all too far from the sandy beach for an easy kayak paddle – they all talked about dinghying to the beach, fine if you have a motorized dingy,but not if you have a kayak you have to paddle. We lack the protection of Walburg Island, but the weather is calm and the convenience of the beach more than makes up for it. There were some people having a party on the beach, and when I paddled in, Baxter jumped ship and made a beeline for the party! I managed to convince him that he did not want to live in Georgia, and we returned to the boat.

But I get ahead of myself! We woke up this morning at last night's anchorage underneath the St. Simons Causeway bridge. We wanted to leave ourselves a short run to Savannah. So we identified this area about 50 miles up the ICW. I took Baxter to shore to the boat ramp for a second time this morning, we had our breakfast and coffee and headed out!

Today's cruising was fairly easy, except for Sapelo Sound, and that was not awful, just a bit choppy – the ICW route through the sound takes you nearly all the way to the North Atlantic before it turns north and takes you inland! When we got inland, we started looking seriously at Active Captain, and decided one of the Wallburg Creek anchorages would fit the bill. After passing on the four identified anchorages, we actually were out of Walburg Creek but we are tickled to death with our spot here!

A comment on navigating from St Simons to here...as before, without Garmin Blue Chart on the iPad we would have been in deep doo-doo. The logic of the NOAA charts as to when they chart the ICW channel and when they don't completely eludes me. It is charted for a while, then the channel charting ends – mostly where you need it most! It could be jusr a line instead of a channel, but there is nothing. And if you are counting on the ICW red and green markers, forget it – even with powerful binoculars, there are long stretches where you cannot see the next markers. And that is especially true across large bodies of open water, not just the sounds but wide areas of creeks and rivers. Only Blue Chart on the iPad showed us the ICW route turn by turn – the best $50 I have spent! Honestly, you could make this cruise with only a depth sounder and Garmin Blue Chart on an iPad!

Causeway br

Causeway br