Georgia Swamps

6/15/07 – I ate some oatmeal for breakfast and weighed anchor. I sailed through Jekyll Sound and Saint Simon Sound but had to motor through the narrow, windy rivers that made up the rest of my day’s journey through the vast Georgia marshes. I decided to anchor in a little creek just off of mile 666 on the Intracoastal Waterway. I jokingly wondered if bad things would happen at that particular location. The current was very strong but the wind was even stronger going in the opposite direction. The boat could not decide which way she wanted to lay to the anchor that I tried to set out. It did not help matters that I was in the middle of a giant swamp for miles around and the bottom was the softest mud I had ever seen. Soft mud is extremely difficult to set an anchor in. I tried all sorts of things and finally got one anchor set after quite a while of trying various tricks. Not wanting to drift into a bank of the creek and rip my rudder off in the middle of the night, I set out a second anchor which seemed to hold reasonably well. I went below to read and try to figure out how to get a new jacket and autopilot. I noticed that the wind had begun to shift so I went outside to see what this would do to my anchoring situation. Both anchors began to slip as I drifted downstream. I was very frustrated with this anchorage so I picked up both anchors and backtracked a bit to another small stream off the Intracoastal Waterway. I had some more difficulty setting an anchor in the very soft mud but I think I got it figured out.