We drove down to Jacksonville on Friday afternoon, left Franks truck at the ? Creek Marina, and drove to Tybee Island and caught a few hours sleep in the bed of my truck.

Saturday - Day 1: We got up early Saturday morning and were paddling by 8:00am. The recent passing of hurricane Floyd had the surf up and white-capping at about 4 to 5ft as soon as we left the mouth of the sound (other than shrimp boats we saw no water craft for the first three days). Wind and surf was out of the Northeast so we had a good push to the South. Fifteen minutes into the trip, against my advice, Frank decided to head straight out into the middle of the sound, because he didn’t like the look of the whitecaps closer to the shore of the southern end of the sound, while I fought the white-caps nearer to the shore. We were uncomfortably far apart (1/4 to 1/3 mile) for about 20 to 30 minutes, which meant no visibility in the heavy surf. Frank had a rough time of it and lost his downwind kite that was latched to the deck. After we got back together offshore of Little Tybee we paddled across the Wassaw Sound to Wassaw Island, landed on the North beach, looked at the map and discussed strategy (Frank was uncomfortable in the rough water and wanted to see if we could paddle the inland water). Since there are no direct paddling paths on the inland side of Wassaw, I convinced him that we should continue on the Ocean side, and stick close to shore (when not crossing sounds), and stay closer together at all times. We put out my kite and let it tow us both the length of Wassaw Island, hauled the kite in, and crossed the Ossaba Sound to Ossaba Island (the sound crossings the first two days were kind of scary, with constant multi-directional 5 ft white-caps and occasional white caps up to 7ft). The We continued paddling until 5:00pm, taking full advantage of the Southerly wind and ground swell, which brought us to the Southern end of Ossaba. We pulled the boats up into the trees and made camp on the soft pine needle beds just beyond the sand.

Sunday - Day 2: Again we started early. Since this was my first paddling trip of this length, I wanted to be ahead of schedule if possible. Cloudy, dark, ominous sky with continued surf in the 4’ to 6’ range and intermittent rain showers. We stroked across the relatively small, but rough, St. Catherine’s Sound and continued South at a good pace, stopping for a lunch break on the Southern tip of St. Catherine's Island. We crossed the Sapelo Sound (another bought with 7’ multi-directional white-caps) and continued down to the Cabretta Island inlet about halfway down the island, arriving at 4:00pm, and set up camp in a dune bowl. The first two days of paddling had been quite interesting with, heavy downpours, strong winds, constant 4’ - 6’ seas that required constant attention and awareness to be ready for the next whitecap coming up over our left shoulder, and being ready for anything out in the sounds, perfect paddling weather.

Monday - Day 3: The wind had changed to Southeast, but was fortunately not as strong as the first two days (maybe only 15-20 knots), such that with deliberate paddling we seemed to move along well. We paddled down the length of Sapelo, took an Easterly course that kept us a wide distance from Wolf Island. We crossed the Altamaha sound and stopped for lunch on a low tide sand bar. We continued paddling around Little St. Simons Island and reached the dunes near the Hampton Creek inlet at 2:30pm, we again guerilla camped in the dunes. The recent storm seemed to have washed away much of the sand bars from this point down to the end of St. Simons.

Tuesday - Day 4: The wind had changed back to the Northwest. That night I called my parents on my cell phone and got word that another storm (Hurricane Gert I think) in the Gulf was predicted to cross Florida and move up into our direction. We decided to get an early start 7:30am and stop at the pier at the south end of St. Simons and get some more news. We arrived at the pier at 10:30am. We stopped in to the local paddling shop, ate at the restaurant, and had a beer Brogen’s while watching the Weather Channel. The storm was long gone by this time and stayed far from us. We screwed around until about 1:30pm and shoved off to paddle the inland side of Jeckyl Island for a change of scenery. I was able to fly my kite and sail about half the length of the island. We arrived at the day use area on the South end of the island at about 5:00pm, we waited until dark and guerilla camped at the far western edge of the area near a small creek.

Wednesday - Day 5: We shoved off at 8:00am and paddled the inland side of Cumberland Island down to the Sea Camp Ranger Station, arriving just before 5:00pm. The rangers were leaving as we were pulling in so we portaged across to Sea Camp and picked a campsite. It was nice to take a freshwater shower, even if it wasn’t hot water.

Thursday - Day 6: We spent the day on Cumberland Island jogging on the beach and walking the southern side trails that we had not been on before (Dungeness and Ice House). We took the boats out to the beach side and played in the surf some.

Friday - Day 7: We portaged across to the inland side of the island to avoid having to paddle out past the end of the jetty on the ocean side. We started at 7:30am and arrived at the marina on the back side of Amelia Island, FL at 9:30am. We hit the Pizza Hut and headed for Tybee were I was glad to see my truck was still parked. We made it back to Atlanta that evening.