Family and Friends on Jekyll Island, GA Nov 21 - Dec 9, 2025

      Despite our anxiety that we might not arrive on time, we actually ended up tying to the dock in Jekyll with a full six days to spare before my sister and two nephews arrived to celebrate Thanksgiving with us.  We were beyond relieved to have made it on time.  Kathy was brilliantly understanding and agreed to meet us in Charleston if it came to it, but I feel like she has pulled the short straw in Dragonfly vacation planning a few too many times and I was really glad we were able to arrive into Jekyll Island as we hoped.  The folks at the marina were very helpful and made both a golf cart for local errands and a slightly worn out Lexus for driving into Brunswick available to us whenever we needed.  We had a flurry of chores and errands to prepare for our guests.  Dragonfly has four beds, but really only three that are available as we have long ago converted the smallest one to a workshop/shed/junk drawer.  Even with that space devoted to various junk, when it is just the two of us, we tend to sort of fill the other two cabins with things also.  One of them is in effect Lisa’s book bindery and the other is just sort of a catch all for winter clothing, coats, cushions, folding chairs and the rest of the various items that float around the boat.  We had our hands full cleaning and preparing, but it was both a good excuse to get things in shape and fun as we planned for what we would do with our guests.

Dragonfly chilling at the dock

     We absolutely did have some free time as well.  We ate sweet local shrimp until they were coming out of our ears.  On a previous trip we learned that there is a local grass that is a relative of sugar cane and is a favorite snack for the shrimp and leads to Georgia shrimp in general and local shrimp in particular to be among the most tasty shrimp on the planet.  I love shrimp and eat them everywhere I go, and I’ve never found any to equal them.  We felt a little bad that we weren’t exactly floating in an idyllic island paradise so we tried to plan some activities to keep the nephews entertained.

Natasha experiments with different hiding spots.  She also sleeps in the one below and the one at the foot of the bed that you can barely see is her favorite.

     Kathy kept us informed as they drove their way down the east coast and we strategized her ideal Buc-ees shopping plan.  We had tickets for the turtle rescue organization basically as soon as they arrived so we all bundled off to learn about the island’s role as a major rescue hub for sea turtles.  Kathy’s eldest, Matthew, is studying marine biology in college with an eye towards potentially a life doing some ecology work, so I think he was particularly interested.  We had a good meal and saw some of the holiday lights on Jekyl Island which pretty much did them in, since they had been driving all day and we didn’t allow them a moment to recover.

Somehow we made Kathy take all the photos!

     The next day, we went to one of our favorite spots on the island.  It’s called Driftwood Beach and it’s full of trees that have been drowned and killed by encroaching sea water.  The oak trees in particular are spectacular, looking ghostly and otherworldly and even poor photographers like me can take pretty good photos there.  The younger generation, who are masters of the instagram message, posed for all sorts of pictures like rockstars making their debut album.  Everyone got some juicy photos and a good time was had by all.  We were looking to avoid a very traditional Thanksgiving, so we planned to dine out.  The problem was that there are only a few places in town and everyone was full for many days in advance.  We did manage to secure a spot at a seaside joint but we had to agree to dine outside.  This looked like a sketchy decision a few days ago, but by now it was blowing hard and it was going to be absolutely unbearable.  We went to the restaurant hoping to beg them to seat us at the bar or to claim that our staff must have made some kind of mistake with the reservation.  Fortunately, they didn’t seem to even consider that we might be outside and sat us at a fine indoor spot.

I have so many album photos to choose from, but this one amuses me most.

    The day after Thanksgiving we blew off some of our more involved plans and went more for some lower key activities.  We played some board games, assembled a puzzle, wrote poetry and drove around to see the Christmas lights.  The boys went for bike rides and we took the dinghy out for a freezing trip around the harbor.  It was a ton of fun to be able to hang out and trade stories and laughs.  Hopefully we can work out a visit with them in somewhere more exotic down the road.  Now, I predict you are still puzzling over the idea that we wrote poetry.  We were somewhat fascinated by a story on the local news that a fellow tourist was playing putt-putt golf when a bobcat came sprinting out of the woods and bit her on the butt.  Fellow golfers rallied and defended her.  We found this endlessly amusing.  Here are the three leading poems for your consideration:

A golfer on Jekyll’s Putt-Putt
Was charged by a cat on his butt butt
He missed a quick par
And earned a deep scar 
That brave little mob that fought the bobcat

———

Wild eyes in the green
A bobcat darts from shadow
Under par no more 
————- 

A tourist was once playing Putt-Putt
At a noise from woods, she called What What?
A bobcat ran out
Ignoring their shout
And took a big bite from her butt butt

A serious photo shoot

My man TJ



TJ at the wheel of the dinghy!

   We were very sad to see them go, but soothed by the imminent arrival of our friends Sara and Eric.  Eric is a pilot, mechanic, sailor and bad influence and Sara is an amazing cook, sailor and worse influence and we love them dearly.  I express this affection by putting Eric to work and demanding that Sara cook and this trip was no different.  Eric and I assembled a grill and laid a new hatch, which mostly meant I started to do something the wrong way and Eric gently steered me in the right direction until the project was done.  I feel like Sara made us two or three dinners and she and Lisa baked and decorated the most amazing Christmas cookies.  There was drinking, exploring, eating and so much laughing.  This is now I think the third time we’ve managed to be in the same place as them on their RV and it’s delightful every time.  They’ve got a YouTube channel, which seems like an awful lot of work to me, but I enjoy watching their videos, especially when I’m not in them.
 
Sara and Eric documented their visit much better than I did!

     We had a lot of fun, but were eager to get further south so that we might be warm again.  We extended once or twice to have more time to hang out with our friends but the nature of the itinerant sailing life is that you have to make sad goodbyes on the regular.  I very much hope that we are able to talk Sara and Eric into a visit to Dragonfly in the near future.  This blog is now ridiculously long, so I will stop blathering and hit the post button.

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