More fun on the Georgia/Florida border

It took about an hour to motor over from Cumberland Island on the St. Mary’s river to the town by the same name. We anchored at N30 43.020 W81 33.240 and dinghied into the town docks to the charming St. Mary’s waterfront park. The village reminded us both of Southport, NC; a nice quiet town with a lot of interesting historic background. We walked to the welcome center and met a friendly Berlinerin, Uschi, who told us all about the town and welcomed us to use their wireless to finally update the blog and get our email. We treated ourselves to lunch out, overlooking the water, and then took a long walk around town to admire the old architecture. When we get a really strong signal again, we’ll add some Cumberland pictures to Saturday’s post.

In the morning, the generous folks at Lang’s Marina let us tie up to wash down the boat and fill up our water tanks. The boat had gotten extremely salty back on Tuesday during our offshore dud-of-a-day and it really needed a bath before the stainless stains. We were surprised with how much water we had left in our tanks. We must be getting used to spending our water frugally and I believe our tanks will last 4 weeks at our current rate.

We left Lang’s to motor on down to nearby Fernandina Beach, FL. We anchored just outside of the historic downtown at N30 40.279 W81 28.132. Unfortunately, two big smoking factories are on either side of the lovely town, so the anchorage is not as quaint as many of the others we’ve been in. Once you get into town, though, all of that changes; Fernandina Beach is on the National Register of Historical Places, and it shows. The downtown area has been well preserved and it is about as endearing as a tourist trap can get. We strolled Centre Street in the evening and it’s the first time in a long time that we were bummed we couldn’t go out to dinner as we passed a really cool looking restaurant called Pompeo’s. We bought some fresh shrimp at the fish market by the shrimp fleet to make up for it. Dinner was fabulous!

Oh, did I mention it’s been in the high 70s and low 80s ever since we got to Cumberland. Times are good!