19 Georgia

Mangroves: they have been a familiar sight all the way from Grenada to Florida; a welcome sight too. Those red claws grasping at the water are the sign of a quiet anchorage.

We saw the last one at Daytona. A sad specimen it was. Red mangroves can handle salt water and fresh, flood tide and desiccation, hurricanes and calms. They draw the line at frost.


All at once we are in a new zone: salt marsh.

This afternoon we are anchored up a creek off the ICW somewhere in Georgia. Fields of cord grass, like prairie wheat, extend as far as you can see. When the tide is in, they are awash; when the tide is out (and it drops seven feet here) they are above the cockpit on a bank of mud. This is when tiny birds appear (just a ball of fluff with a pin for a beak - more like a Christmas tree decoration than a real bird) and peck about in the ooze.


The golden cord grass turns lilac in the evening, and aerial plankton (no see ums and mosquitoes) appear. We have been reading that the salt marsh, like the mangrove swamp, is the basis of a complex food web. Tonight this may include us.


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