St. James Plantation Marina - Day 2

Very high end - note the palm trees

The storms passed through last night and early this morning, lots of rain but not too much wind. The wind part is coming right now behind the storm with gusts to over 30 kts for all of tonight and tomorrow. We may move on tomorrow or we may stay and choose a calmer day to pass through the "rock pile", a section of the ICW that's notoriously narrow with rocks along either side if you wander outside the channel. Many boats have come to grief when they strayed too far to one side or the other or when passing another boat coming in the opposite direction. I'm guessing that we'll probably stay another day and do some boat cleaning.

Nope, definitely not in a pot

Since we're retired, we'd thought we would take a day of rest from all this retirement business and just read and walk around the area. It's tough job  but we're up to it. Actually, the area is very well kept and spotless in appearance and the price is right at $1/ft. for dockage. This is the first place we've seen with palm trees that aren't obviously kept in pots and moved in for the winter. I talked to one of the groundskeepers and found that Irene deposited about 3 to 5 inches of rain and 40 to 60 mph winds but didn't do any permanent damage.

Alligators aren't usually a problem this far north but there was one in a pond by the  back of one house where the owner kept 18 cats. She noticed that the number of cats seemed to be decreasing over time and thought they had just wandered off. Eventually she noticed she had an alligator in the back pond that was very interested in her cats. When she was down to 9 cats, she called for help and the alligator was disposed of.

Our next stop is at Barefoot Landing with all the outlets and a good Greg Norman restaurant. We'll probably go there on Friday, we'll see.