skidaway island and isle of hope, GA.

the delegal creek marina is in a lovely spot on skidaway island, a gated community. it is small and quiet, has all the amenities a cruiser would need including the use of a golf cart, and a great view of the surrounding marshes.  the only snag is that if you draw more than 3 feet, you have to wait for at least mid-tide.  but it is a great place for staging for the hell gate trouble spot on the ICW.  once we got through the channel, the dockmaster, billy, helped us get situated and the big clean up began.  my friend and former classmate, cynthia, arrived with flowers and lunch and it was a grand reunion - 33 years since she and i had seen each other!

she took us on a tour of the island and we had her over for dinner that evening - corned beef and cabbage (corned beef brisket went on sale after st. patty's day last month!)

the next day, tom and i spent the day at home working quietly at our computers while the barn swallows flew around us eating up noseeums and the dolphins splashed and played in the creek.  in the late afternoon, cynthia took us over to savannah for a tour.  i had never been to savannah and the last time tom was there was a  very long time ago.  it really is a lovely city, made even lovelier by apparently a lot of funding help from SCAD (savannah college of art and design) infused into the city.  downtown savannah is a fun place with lots of shops and places to eat and we could have eaten anywhere but we ended up, of all places, at FIVE GUYS because cynthia loves their peanuts!  tom has no problem with their burgers and i certainly have no problem with their bacon cheese dogs.  but,  the really amusing thing was the old-time music that they had blasting out of their speakers - my sharona by the knack. if anything reminded me of medical school, it had to be that song which was played CONSTANTLY ad nauseum when i was rotating in bay, laguna (rural) during my clinical clerkship - how appropriate was that?  haha...

we had a great time getting caught up while walking/driving around but we had to leave skidaway island the next day because of the tides.  we did not, however,  go far - only to the isle of hope marina.  we had to get out of delegal creek or be stuck there for a while and the tides were not favorable for negotiating the next ICW trouble spot at fields cut north of the savannah river.  more importantly, cynthia's husband, edgar, who is also my former classmate, was arriving from NJ and we had to wait and see him, too.  as soon as his plane landed, they drove directly to the marina to pick us up for dinner at  pearl's saltwater grille.  dinner was excellent and conversation even better.  it is good to see old friends - we remind each other of the things that we had forgotten - of simpler times when our chief concerns were a lot different from what they are now.  it is always an education to compare eras. 

we got dropped off at home before the rain came.  i failed to mention that before they arrived, tom and i took a little walk.  the isle of hope marina is right on the ICW and it was fun to see the parade of snowbirds going by, quite a few of the boats looking mighty familiar, all of us members of the same grand exodus.  we walked along the road that hugged the shore and enjoyed the view - the stately and gracious homes, the live oaks, the spanish moss - the atmosphere of the south.  we had georgia on our minds.

artsy fartsy gate

see the bluebird?