Cumberland Island (2)

Lots of fog last night. We were both woken up during the night by the sound of fog horns from ships in the channel. At breakfast it was still thick, but just about gone by 10AM.

The dinghy had not been in the water since Long Island Sound in August - 3 plus months ago. We had bought a small charger back at "The Tides" and had been giving the battery an occasional top up, and I did so again this morning. Also, we had not used the davit since it was "extended" at Bock.

Deja Vu all over again!

The extended davit worked well, and better still the engine started first try, so we loaded up and pushed off, only to discover that the steering had completely frozen up. Fortunately we did not crash into anything and we managed to get back to Tide Hiker. After 15 minutes of investigation it appeared that the steering had frozen up where the cable connected to the motor. Also, in my frantic efforts to steer the boat when we took off, I had stripped some teeth in the mechanism behind the wheel. After an hour of "undoing stuff" and fiddling about with WD 40 and grease I seemed to get the mechanism un-frozen and then re-assembled. The steering worked OK but with a few "blank spots" where I supposed teeth had been stripped off.

 So we set off for the ferry dock in not quite a straight line and made it OK. The island was heavily forested with She Oaks heavily draped with Spanish moss and some sort of bushy palm ground cover - literally just those three elements. The overall effect was quite beautiful and a bit strange. We followed a trail over to the ocean beach about 1/2 a mile away. The tide was out, the beach was enormous and we did not see a single person until we made it back to the dock where the ferry had just deposited a bunch of hikers and campers..

One of the islands "features" are the wild horses. We did not see one until we made it back to the dock, where we stumbled over few that had wandered down to meet the ferry. They did not seem very "wild" to me.

Deidre is making shrimp omelettes with french fries for dinner.

Wild horses on valium