November 30 -- Cumberland Island to The Kingsley Plantation on Fort George Island in the George River -- 20.3 Miles

The nights are getting less and less chilly, at last -- less blankets.  We learned this morning from Dean's daily email that "Autumn Borne" had come into the Cumberland anchorage yesterday afternoon; but we did not connect with them here and left at about 9:30 with a fuel stop along the way in Fernandina, arriving at about 3 pm. This, like the last two shorter passages, was all inside and all motor. Our speed varied between 5.7 and 7.9 knots depending on whether we were fighting the tide of getting help from it and depending on whether we were going upstream or downstream. Planning a speed for a trip like this is near impossible without local knowledge.
We finally got a decent picture of the friends that swim with us so often. This was because it was calm so that I observed one of them jump clear out of the water far enough ahead of us to be able to get the camera out, on and focused before they got too far behind us.

Our reason for picking this beautiful spot was that I had learned about the Kingsley Plantation,

another national park, at the Fernandina History Museum. Captain Kingsley was neither the first not the last owner of this plantation. The interesting thing about him, back in the 1830's, was that he fathered his first child by the 13 year old slave he had purchased, married her, and later left her in charge of his plantation while away on business. He owned about five plantations and wrote about how benevolent owners were both morally better and more successful financially.The house is not grand but is the largest plantation house remaining in Florida, having survived hurricanes, wars, termites, fires and developers. The view of the river from it is beautiful.

Unfortunately it is a nine room unfurnished house and the docent tried too hard to entertain us with its history. We had to view the other buildings including the tabby slave quarters by ourselves. This is the Driver's house, with a restored roof. The driver was a slave who drove the other slaves, hence the term "slave driver".

The slave houses were less grand and have not been re-roofed. They are arranged in a semi-circle, which is said to be the way that huts were arranged in African villages.

They reminded me of the ruins of Masada in Israel, different walls at different heights.




 They had a placard which tells more than I did in yesterday's post about how tabby is made.

This was our third consecutive night on anchor and our next stop, Jacksonville, has free docks. In the morning, at low tide, having swung on our anchor with the changing tidal current we were way too close to shore in nine feet instead of 22, where we dropped the hook at high tide.

Also, it being closer to low tide, we drove for about ten feet through sand to get out of the creek and back into the ICW.