So far, January has been a mix of celebrating the arrival of a new year with our good friend, Jim Garfunkel, plus getting the boat ready to leave Brunswick Landing Marina for destinations south.
Jim arrived on Dec 24 to spend his Christmas break from teaching with us. While Craig and Michelle were in MN for the holidays, Craig loaned us use of his car so we were mobile! The weather started off cold and windy, but the end of the week found us in tee shirts!
So, what do you do on a boat when it's nasty weather outside?
(I think I was baking bread ... helping to keep the cabin a toasty 72 degrees!
And what do you do on a boat when it finally warms up?
Dan has been waiting for a strong person to visit so he could be hoisted to the top of the mast! Thanks to Jim, he was able to replace the mast lights and corroded wiring.
And what do you do when it's warm and sunny outside ... and you have a car?
Road trip! Off to visit Jekyll Island.
Now Jim can check Jekyll Island off his list of "1000 Places to Visit"! The Jekyel Island Club was the hunting "lodge" for the rich and famous 'back then" ... the likes of Carnegie, JP Morgan, Reynolds, gathered here to socialize and hunt and do other worthy things like create the Federal Reserve Board and place the first transcontential telephone call. Nice not to waste your free time just hunting!
Each family had their own "cottage" but without a kitchen as everyone was expected to dine together at the main lodge. They are filming scenes for the next "X Men" movie on the Jekyll Island beach so we were able to peek through their fencing to see some of the props.
And no trip to Brunswick would be complete, for Jim, without a stop in at Seagulls Bar in St. Marys, GA, where he's kinda sweet on the bartender, Cindy Deen. Cindy defies description ... signs behind the bar list her credits as "Cindy Deen the Porno Queen" as well as "Queen of Mean". I wouldn't call her mean, but she's got a mouth on her that would make me think twice about taking my daughter inside! Foul but funny ... for example, here's Dan's favorite: "Honey, you're in Georgia where you're still a virgin until you've f*ucked outside the family." I don't know where she gets this stuff, but we always leave with aching sides!
When the weather warmed up, we took Maja out for a test drive of the newly installed autopilot. A few problems presented themselves in terms of how well the compass held a course. As Jim said: "Well, you can make it the Bahamas, but you won't get back." After sea trial #2, where the A.P. once again proved unreliable in holding a course with any degree of consistency, Jim and Dan used a hand-bearing compass to reposition the autopilot at the helm and discovered the source of interference that was throwing off the compass. Back to the company, where they sent us another mounting bracket and a longer cable, and after sea trial #3, we were golden!
Final home for the autopilot. It seems to like it here.
The last few weeks of January have alternated between very cold and windy weather (where we hole up in the cabin and break out the books) and nice days where we continue to work off our long list of boat projects (it's always something) as well as meet with other cruisers to discuss different routes for heading to the Bahamas. Everyone has an opinion, so we listen to them all and then return to the boat and plot our options on the map. We've been ordering everything we can think of (presecriptions, books, boat parts, FCC licenses) since we'll be without a reliable mailing address once we leave Brunswick. The Bahamas may be just 50 miles off the coast of Florida, but it's still international travel.
We took a quick trip up to Savannah to see our daughter, Michelle, when she came to visit Craig over the Martin Luther King holiday weekend. This could be our last trip to Savannah (deep sigh) as Craig deploys again in May, and we'll probably be out of the area when he returns. His next move with the Army will take him away from Savannah, and who knows where he'll set up his next residence ... but we sure have enjoyed having a home spot in Savannah. We don't even need a GPS to get around anymore!
We have our fingers crossed that we'll leave Brunswick on the next full moon ... sometime around January 20. It all depends on the mail ... and of course, the weather.
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