All of yesterday we prepared to leave the dock. We arrived at Jekyll Island exactly a week ago. At the time we were only planning on staying here 1 or perhaps 2 days. We did however find lots of other friendly cruisers with lots of kids. Our kids had a plethora of other kids to choose from and our kids as well as the other kids asked us to stay longer. In the end we decided to stay a week. A big cheer went up amongst the general population and there was happiness on our boat.

A big reason we decided to come here and in fact stay was to receive packages. It’s pretty difficult to order parts and procure supplies without a mailing address. I’m happy to say we have been rather successful at that but with all of our initial round of supplies received and our week coming to an end we started to wind it up and get ready to move on. We filled the forward and aft water tanks then worked on pulling together a list of supplies we wanted at the store.

We even borrowed the car keys from our newest kids boat friends Amazing Grace II to do a last minute midnight run to the Wal-Mart in Brunswick. On the way back down the dock at 12:30am we quickly realized that the wind had picked up. The increase was instantly noticeable on the waters surface. Small angry waves topped the water next to the boat and out across to the bridge. As we unloaded the groceries and dragged them from the car across the dock to the boat I couldn’t help but shake my head.

Cold weather I’d braced for. It’s been freezing here (literally) but the wind, with this cold… I’m not sure I’m ready for it. After getting the groceries and kids below Boyd checked the weather. Sure enough, in addition to the 20ish degree weather -that I may have already mentioned in a previous post- the forecast for Tuesday included 35 knot winds. Not wanting to be a hero popsicle, I immediately suggested we reconsider our plan to leave, now only a few hours away. And so… the false start. Water tanks full, groceries stuffed into every nook and cranny we decided to wait it out.
It’s one thing to go out in bad weather, something else to go in really bad weather. Sure it could be warmer in Florida, or as the news says today it may be even colder! There are parts of Florida that would definitely be warmer but it would take about a week, coincidentally the exact amount of time this snap is supposed to last, to get there. In the mean time just to keep reasonably warm we’d be compelled to stay at other marinas, which would cost more money and be less likely to have all our friends at them.

And so, here we still are at Jekyll Harbor Marina. Just for the record, not even Boyd seems unhappy about our decision! We have decided to order the “second wave” of things that we couldn’t get before and to stock up on all of the items that aren’t readily available in the Bahamas.

I’m taking well into an informal survey of the local opinions about where to jump from and how to “clear in”. We have walked on the beach, visited the Georgia Sea Turtle Marine Park and a small local nature center with touch tanks. The kids continue to have movie nights nearly every night after dinner on one boat or another. During the day after all the home schooling is complete they bounce from one boat to another playing board games and game boys and even Wii as the opportunity presents itself. For being “stuck” we have lucked out once again.

We’ll make it to the Bahamas yet, we may be a little bit late. Right now its better to be here than out there and better to be safe than sorry.