Life on Lailia

(plus a car show, cool flowers, and some birds)

April 3-5, 2026

St. Mary’s, GA

Our school district is closed for Good Friday, so John and I decided to take a short road trip.  Last summer we planned to bring Lailia to St. Mary’s Boatyard so we could paint her.  We were unable to connect with the boatyard, though. This was a very good decision because we were able to get Lailia painted at a boatyard near our home. 

Everything we read about St. Mary’s made it seem like a cool place – it’s where the ferry to Cumberland Island departs.  The town also provides a Thanksgiving dinner for boaters.  It stuck in our heads as a place we might want to visit at some point.

We were able to get a last minute weekend reservation at a historic bed and breakfast, too.

St. Mary’s is filled with historic homes and waterfront views.  There’s a nice fountain in the park, too.

St Mary’s also hosted a huge car show on Saturday morning.  All kinds of cars – antique, custom, sports – were on display.  Three blocks of the street were barricaded off for the event which drew a variety of folks, too.

Spring is fully blooming, too, so flowers are everywhere.

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Crooked River State Park

Crooked River State Park is around 7 miles from St. Mary’s.  I had read that it’s a decent place to birdwatch, so after the car show we took a ride to the park.

We saw very few birds – but the best thing was seeing a manatee!  John spotted her first and I am so glad he saw her. 

Warning signs let us know about all the dangerous things we might encounter.

There were some indicators that the cliff had crumbled in the past (like that tree in the water by the manatee) but we didn’t see any reptiles.

Birds weren’t all that plentiful but we did see an Eastern towhee (they’re plentiful in the South but I don’t recall seeing one) and some brown headed cowbirds.

A crow carrying something flew overhead – I was able to get an okay shot of it in a tree.  I kinda wish I didn’t know it was eating a baby bird.

Twp double-crested cormorants were the only other birds we saw.  This one has a nice crook in her beak (cormorants have crooks; anhingas have straight beaks).

We’re pretty fortunate that we both like so many of the same things: small, walkable waterfront towns with good food and being outside.  Getting to spend this late spring weekend together was a reminder of how lovely it is to have a spring weekend with no agenda except being together.

March 2026

It’s definitely spring, even though we have had some cold fronts try to tell us differently. 

So many birds are twitterpated right now.

Marsh hens are acting like some reality TV contestants.  They’re noisy and combative, and then just go on their way.

Great Egrets tend to be showy.  Males fluff up their feathers and do little dances to attract mates and to assert their nest rights. 

Right now, the wood storks are my favorites.  They show out a little bit but (at least to human eyes) don’t seem very aggressive. They will show the ladies their very impressive wings…

…and once they find their partner, they take care of one another.  They sit in their nests and clack their beaks at other birds.

Anhingas are usually solitary birds, but even they are pairing off.

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I’ve also seen some new-to-me species as I have explored Pinckney Island. They’re not rare birds – they’re just ones that I have rarely, if at all, ever seen. 

I even managed to talk John into going to Pinckney.  Rain cut the adventure short.

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A few other signs of spring: snakes are out again (they, like me, prefer temperatures to be at least 72°).

Gators are really active again and they’re sunning themselves like crazy

And the yellow-bellied sliders are laying eggs.

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And because they’re my favorite wading birds (I think I used to be cool but now I have favorite birds)  just a couple of photos of the roseate spoonbill that’s been hanging with the wood storks and snowy egrets at Cypress Wetlands.

February 19-21, 2026

Port Royal to Skull Creek, Hilton Head and back – docked

Sometimes we make a series of good decisions.

There is one bridge connecting Hilton Head to the mainland; it regularly backs up for miles.  There’s really only one way to drive from Port Royal to that bridge, and that route regularly jams up.  It can take 90 minutes to drive the 35 miles from home to the Hilton Head school cluster – and my conference was another 25 minutes from there.  Three days of that commute would have been awful.

Our first good decision was for John to bring Lailia to Hilton Head for a few days.  I had an afternoon meeting in a school there on Thursday afternoon and was attending a conference there on Friday and Saturday.

John got to spend some time on the water in great weather.

I met John at Skull Creek Marina on Thursday afternoon.  That marina was a 6 minute drive from the school I was in.

On Friday, John drove me to the conference.  This was a win-win: he had the car all day and we didn’t have to deal with conference parking.  Plus, we didn’t have to contend with morning bridge traffic snarls.

Friday afternoon was gorgeous: sunny, breezy and warm.  We headed to Coligny Beach just to check out the ocean.

Hilton Head is in the middle of an off-season beach renourishment project.  Sand is pumped in through about 1,000 feet of pipe which are moved every 6-8 weeks through the late fall through very early spring.  The pipes have sand ramps over them so folks can still get to the ocean

In typical early spring fashion, that gorgeous afternoon weather turned into a rain storm in about 15 minutes.

Our second good decision was to not stay in Hilton Head through Sunday.  Our original plan was to explore more of Hilton Head Saturday after the conference ended and then head back to Port Royal on Sunday.

Unfortunately, Mother Nature had other ideas.  The weather forecast called for seriously gusty winds, heavy rain, and precipitous drops in temperature on Sunday (the same weather pattern that would bring feet of snow to the Northeast).  John set out on Lailia at slack tide late morning Saturday.

I made another good decision to spend a little time hiking the Ibis Pond trail at Pinckney Island National Wildlife Refuge.

We had dinghied over to this refuge a few years ago when we anchored in Makay Creek.  We didn’t spend a lot of time on the island because it was hot and I was sick (and miserable).  I always planned to return and finally had some time.

The trails here are nicely maintained, wide and flat (pretty much EVERYTHING here is flat, actually).

Ibis Pond was just what I hoped – lots of critters (including a bunch of gators).  The weather was pretty close to perfect, lots of sun and warm breezes.

John and I each arrived in Port Royal a few hours later.  We tied up at the t-head to wait for slack tide at 6:00 pm. 

Just before 5:00, the front started moving in. 

Favorable tides are way more important than avoiding a bit of rain. We moved Lailia back to her slip in a downpour – but it was warm so getting wet was no big deal.

A final good decision was to brave the wind to hike around Port Royal.

Cypress Wetlands were fairly protected from wind.  Lots of critters were out, including wood storks which haven’t been around all winter.  They’ll be nesting here soon.

The gators were trying to soak up as much solar energy as they could.

I found a bit of history in Port Royal – this buoy broke free in a storm in 1970 and was found 6,000 miles away in Scotland the following year.  The buoy was returned to Port Royal in 1973  and now serves as a memorial to all officers who lost their lives at sea.

Port Royal also has a sand beach (called Sands Beach) that lies along Battery Creek.  The town constructed a boardwalk along Battery Creek with a large observation tower. 

This area received the full force of the wind. 

Just about 55 miles east of No Name Harbor is Bimini, Bahamas.  To get there, boats have to travel across the Gulf Stream, a wide current  that moves from the south to the north at about 5.5 mph.  A good weather window to cross is one where there is no northern wind component because winds blowing from the north hitting a current from the south causes waves to pile up.

We waited for our good  window but also two time constraints: I needed to lead a virtual visit for several days starting March 2 and we had to submit proof of negative Covid tests no longer than 48 hours prior to our arrival. 

Winds were set to shift on  February 27 which meant that we had time to get settled in Bimini and figure out internet connectivity.

Our window included 17 knot winds from the east.Unfortunately, the waves were still pretty gnarly  coming from the south and the east – and while it wasn’t quite as snotty as Port Royal Sound, it was kind of  *sporty*

The water in the Stream is absolutely gorgeous – like blue velvet.

Bimini, all turquoise water on the Bahama Banks side…

…and rocky, wavy ocean on the Atlantic side.

Bahamian stores in small settlements are a lot like New York bodegas, with limited selection replenished weekly.

From Bimini, we crossed the Bahama Banks to the Berry Islands – this was our longest crossing.  We left  in the dark and navigated around Bimini as the sun rose.

We anchored off Great Harbour for a couple of days – the first time we anchored outside the ICW. Endless sky and water…

It’s kind of a struggle to summarize our months in the Bahamas, where, no matter what, the water was jewel-blue or green.  How we met some people who moved from boat neighbors to boat friends to flotilla family. 

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A quick list of places we visited:

Bimini (North and South)

Great Harbor  and Bay of Five Pirates (Berry Islands)

Hoffman Cay (Berry Islands)

Nassau

Highbourne and Allen Cays (Exumas) with their giant iguanas

Shroud Cay and Warderick Wells Parks (Exumas)

Black Point Settlement (Exumas) where we waited for almost two weeks for a  good weather window and watched a regatta…I also had to commute to shore to get good Internet at a cafe.  My morning routine included climbing this ladder with my laptop in a backpack.

Staniel Island, Big Majors and Between the Majors (Exumas) home of the swimming pigs

Nassau again (needed some maintenance stuff)

Spanish Wells (Eleuthera) where we met folks with whom we’d spend the day months later in Florida

Near Lynerd’s Cay (Abaco)

Outside Tillaloo Cay (hit a high spot on low tide) (Abaco)

Hope Town(Abaco) where the pennant line from the mooring ball came off and we drifted into another boat, whose owner we knew from Charleston.

Great Guana (Abaco)

Green Turtle (Abaco)

Manjack Cay (Abaco)

Spanish Cay (Abaco) with lots of thunderstorms around us as we motored there

Great Sale Cay (Abaco) where we watched a waterspout dissipate in our anchorage

Grand Bahama (last stop before crossing to the U.S.)

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Three months of cool adventures together:

Three months of cool critter sightings…

And, of course, 3 months of John fixing stuff…

Charleston to No Name Harbor, FL

Sometimes you have to cast off from the dock.

We left St. Johns Yacht Harbor on January 15, 2022. While John had spent several weeks in the wild with Lailia, I had only been out on her for short cruises here and there. 

I feel as if we have a pretty intricate history with Port Royal Marina – we looked at a boat there in early 2019

John stayed there in the fall of 2019 while he waited to get water bled out of Lailia’s fuel injectors.

It was also our first dock heading south.  What took 90 minutes by car took an entire day by boat – but going slow meant lots of time to check out birds and dolphins.

Our second day of adventure included a small craft warning. 

It was a pretty “snotty” day.  Lots of stuff fell down below, a door slammed on my hand, and I vomited. (Snotty is worse than sporty, although I don’t like either.). Port Royal Sound still makes me a little anxious.

We returned to Port Royal Marina and I seriously considered going back to Johns Island.

Thankfully, the waves smoothed out by the next day

The first time we spent the night together on anchor was in the Herb River, just outside of Thunderbolt, GA.  We tucked into that spot for a couple of days while I did some work on Zoom.

It took about 43 days for us to get to No Name Harbor in Florida where we made our crossing to Bimini. 

We probably passed under 40 bridges (there were 10 one day).  They went from delightful to annoying as we traveled south.

There were some pretty cool spots to go ashore, too.  You can see how we got warner as we moved south.

John also fixed a bunch of stuff, including a water pump as well as other things we don’t even remember.

A normal day of travel for us was around 50 miles;.while we anchored most of the time, we did manage to enjoy a few marinas especially in Fernandina Beach, St. Augustine, and Ft. Lauderdale.  Some anchorages were pretty remote while others, like West Palm Beach, were filled with lights and lots of boats.

We stayed in No Name Harbor, just outside of Miami, waiting for a good weather window to make the jump to the Bahamas.  While we were waiting, we used the water maker for the first time, replenished provisions and had our boat hull cleaned by divers. 

Ft. Pierce, FL to St. John’s Yacht Harbor, SC

When your husband has a dream of living the boat life, eventually you move aboard.

We’ve lived on Lailia since November 1, 2019; folks say that time flies and it really has.

John single-handedly brought her north, just after Hurricane Dorian moved north from Charleston.  We didn’t want to close on Lailia until we knew she’d weathered the storm – luckily, Dorian missed her in Fort Pierce and she was good to go.

Lailia and John spent a good deal of quality time together, including a few days in Port Royal (at the marina in which we are currently docked) due to some bad fuel.

In a moment of serendipity, I actually filmed John and Lailia as they approached home – I was near enough to the Limehouse Bridge to catch him motoring under it.  Lailia was so new, I didn’t even know how to say her name!

Once we got her to Charleston, John got her hauled and he painted her (this was the first, but not last, paint job while she’s been ours). 

By October 31, 2019, we had donated, sold, discarded, or stored almost everything we owned.  We moved aboard on November 1.

It was (and continues to be) an adjustment – there’s movement, noises, little storage.  It can be absolutely gorgeous, too

Our elderly puppy learned new tricks and became a boat pup.

That first year helped me learn to use a propane stove and how to live with a minimal wardrobe.

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…and when Covid seemed to close down everything around us, we had our own little pod in the marina.

Although we thought about taking off on an adventure in 2020, we learned many marinas were quarantining new boats and the. Bahamas wouldn’t let sailors come ashore so we stayed in place through 2020 and 2021.

There were some really great moments.

Watching a rocket that launched in Florida…

Dolphins in our “yard”

Having our boys join us for a day cruise

And a few learning experiences

Frost on the docks…(it’s slippery)

…as well as rocking and rolling docks (and boats)

…and fog

Plus… raccoons (including one ON the BOAT)

But all of that was offset by daily sunrises in the biggest sky I’d ever seen

Two years of marina living were just a baby step towards getting ready for the Adventure Year of 2022.

Hilton Head to Port Royal, SC (docked)

June 29, 2025

It was a very short trip back to our home marina today, just a jump across Port Royal Sound.  It’s much shorter distance to go by water than by land (it’s about 30 miles from land to Skull Creek) which says more about the geography of the Low Country than anything else.

Other folks left visual reminders of their sailing adventures  – one something tragic and awful; the other, something annoying and maybe funny.  There’s a lot that can go wrong – usually not terribly so. 

Home feels different when we actually travel IN our home.  It’s good to know the folks in our marina and to have easy access to groceries…but good vacations are ones that feel as if they’ve ended too early.  Getting back into routines can feel great, except when the goal of vacation was to get away from routine.  We have a family (non-boat) vacation coming up, but I am already missing waking up at a remote anchorage.

• Long Weekend Adventure ***We saw a Manatee!***
• Early Spring & Love is in the Air
• Good Decisions: Hilton Head and Back
• Happy Boataversary, part 3 (going east to the Bahamas 2022)
• Happy Boataversary, Lailia (part 2, going south-2022)
• Happy Boataversary, Lailia – part 1, 2019 through 2021)
• …and a Jump
• A Hop and a Skip
• High Tides & Marsh Grass Forever
• Low Tide is Only Fun When it’s the Brewery

Thunderbolt Marina, GA to Safe Harbor Skull Creek, Hilton Head, SC (docked)

June 28, 2025

Originally, we planned to be away from Port Royal for about three weeks; we were going to get Lailia hauled out in St. Mary’s so we could get her sanded and then we would paint her hull.  St. Mary’s Boatyard is one of the few that allows DIY work.    They’re really busy and not very communicative.  As we waited to hear from them, we priced out having Lailia painted and found that it was actually better to have someone else do it.

Now that we have “extra days” we can take our time and do shorter trips towards home.   We averaged about 40+ nautical miles going south (a pretty full day) but are shooting for 25ish each day going north.

Thunderbolt to Skull Creek Marina in Hilton Head Island 25 nautical miles.  We are able to dock here for free as we are members of Safe Harbor.

Summer Saturdays on the water are really busy.  It’s very noticeable in places with construction, like the Causton Bluff Bridge.  There’s a narrow channel in between barges and an anchored tug that all marine traffic has to use.

Calibogue Sound between Hilton Head and Dafuskie Island is also a busy place during summer Saturdays. 

Tomorrow we’ll be back home – another short ride. 

As happy as I am to get home (we need some provisions), there’s a Tom Petty lyric* running through my head, “You belong in a boat out to sea,  Sail away kill off the hours, You belong somewhere you feel free…”.  On this vacation we got to take Lailia out on the ocean and anchor in remote places, where we felt free and having this adventure together.

Redbird Creek to Thunderbolt Marina, Thunderbolt, GA (docked)

June  27, 2026

We made a good decision to wait until this morning’s high tide to get through Hell Gate.  The rising tide also kept us from bumping on our way out of Redbird Creek.

Hell Gate is only about a mile long but it’s narrow and shallow.  The Army Corp of Engineers last dredged in it 2019 – so everyone has to depend on the additional 7 or so feet of water high tide brings. Those big tidal swings bring lots of silty mud with them, which is why annual dredging here would be optimum.

Green flies are still trying to takeover Lailia but John has been able to fend them off. While they’re annoying, it’s pretty amusing to watch the Captain take them out.

Almost exactly three years ago we docked at Thunderbolt Marina while we waited for a cable to repair our autopilot.  They have a huge boatyard that does repairs on huge boats – their huge boatworks building is visible from a distance and is a good landmark. 

Our Lailia is dwarfed by many of the other vessels here. 

We’re going to take it easy again tomorrow: instead of going straight home, we have reservations in a marina in Hilton Head. 

• Long Weekend Adventure ***We saw a Manatee!***
• Early Spring & Love is in the Air
• Good Decisions: Hilton Head and Back
• Happy Boataversary, part 3 (going east to the Bahamas 2022)
• Happy Boataversary, Lailia (part 2, going south-2022)

Crescent River to Redbird Creek, near Keller, GA (anchored)

June 26, 2025

Much of today was against the current and on an ebbing tide, so it felt like slow going. 

We traversed Creighton Narrows with enough water.  There were huge pods of dolphins there, including calves. 

Green flies were a constant pest today.  They can bite (and if a bug is gonna bite, it’s gonna bite me).  John was able to use his a-salt gun (it shoots table salt) to defend us from this menace.

No hyperbole – he took down at least 60 of them.  By the time we anchored,  salt and downed flies were everywhere.

Tides were at their lowest point exactly when we left the ICW to get to our anchorage.  Even though the charts SAY there’s enough depth, we bumped and had to back out a couple of times before John got us in.  We marked the chart, which will hopefully assist other boaters.

Once we got past the shoaling, the creek deepened into a pretty nice spot.  The flies were still trying to hang out with us tonight.  John’s got the generator running the air conditioner so I’m literally chilling down here in our cabin.  He’s in the cockpit keeping the homestead safe from a greenfly attack while listening to music.

This anchorage is the closest one south of Hell Gate.  We’ll head out on a rising tide tomorrow so we won’t have to deal with the shoal at the mouth of this creek or with the skinny water at Hell Gate.  We have reservations at a marina tomorrow night.    We’re not in a huge hurry to get home (but I hope we move faster than we did today).