Thanksgiving
25 November 2007 | St. Mary's, GA
Mike and Kathy
St Mary's Thanksgiving day...
Thanksgiving dawned rainy. It was the first bad weather we have seen in weeks. I made breakfast and we called our families with holiday greetings. There was an oyster roast scheduled for 11:30 so we put our salad together, gathered up our utensils and donned our rain gear to make the trip to town in a steady rain.
The Seagle Hotel is on the order of the Winter Inn but with more dining rooms. Although I'm not exactly sure, I think that there were seven dining areas not including the patio in the rear. As we entered the main dining area from the street Jim from Solitaire flagged down Kathy, pointing to the best table in the house. He had been on the set up crew in the morning and had reserved us the corner table facing the River.
The oyster roast was held in an open area next to the patio in back. Burlap bags of oysters were hauled in and then scrubbed with a brush and hose. They were then transferred to a grill and cooked....There was a large table in the center of the area lined with oyster shucking knives where the roasted oysters were placed. Then is was shuck , add a little cocktail sauce and eat. The oysters are steamed in their own juices and were amazing.
About that time the rain stopped and the sun came out. We were asked to form a line in the street to enter the room where the buffet was set up. Given the number (there was seating for 282) we all made it through the line without much trouble. As you can imagine, the variety of food was amazing. Everyone whipped up their favorite recipes.
It was windy in the afternoon and there was a little excitement when a boat dragged anchor and was headed for the dinghy dock. We had a wonderful meal with Nancy and Jim and returned to the boat sometime after 3pm.
For about 2 hours the tide and the wind were at odds which made the boats in our neighborhood swing without a pattern On top of that people were crammed in here and had anchored way too close to each other. In normal situations that in not a problem because the boats swing in unison.... however, in this case boats were out of sync and narrowly missing each other. Everyone was on deck watching and a few boats had to move to avoid collisions.
Kathy here- Speaking of the strange tidal/current thing, I have noticed that when at anchor, we are not necessarily out of the wind, as we would be in Michigan. I like to sit outside, be it on the porch or in the cockpit. Sometimes when it is a little chilly as it has been lately at times, I think I can sit in the cockpit and be warm in the sun out of the wind. Wrong! I can sit in the sun, but the wind may be blowing right at me (brrr). Just another observation . . .
Today we learned that there were 96 boats at anchor, 11 in the marina and 325 (Mike and I are having a little dispute about this number, but there were A LOT ) people were fed. Everything went very smoothly and the food was delicious.