We Met Some Celebrities!

Note:  This post was written after we arrived in Brunswick, GA. We are now staying at Brunswick Landing Marina. The post I had written about our passage from Ft. Pierce didn’t post yesterday and follows this post. 

Early yesterday evening we met a couple of celebrities here in the marina. Well...celebrities in the cruising world anyway. Sara and Monty Lewis, authors of the Explorer Chartbooks, came in the slip right next to ours. I heard George chatting with them not long after they had tied up their boat. I joined him on the deck and we made our introductions. When Sara gave me her first name and Monty’s I paused and asked if they were the authors of the Explorer books. She modestly said “yes”.  I was practically speechless. The Explorer Chartbooks are known as the “Bibles” of the Bahamas. They have the most accurate charts and are full of information about all of the anchorages, marinas and settlements. In fact, Garmin Blue Charts for the Bahamas that are on George’s iPad are based on information from the Explorer Chartbooks and are the charts we use while in the Bahamas. We ignore the less accurate Navionics charts on our chart plotter. Sara and Monty had guests arriving so we didn’t chat long. I hope we meet them again so we can learn more about them and how they gathered the information for the books. 

Later in the evening we heard a clicking noise that sounded like it was coming from the deck. The wind had picked up and we thought it might be a line banging on something. I went up on the foredeck and pulled on one line after another while George told me he could still hear the noise. I eventually gave up. Later on George went out and looked and was listening near the water line. Jim, from the boat on the other side of ours, came out and told George the noise was caused by shrimp. We have heard noises from shrimp before and it sounded a lot like the “snap, crackle, pop” of Rice Krispies. This was louder and more like a click. There was another intermittent, lower pitched noise as well. While we were at the happy hour this evening Jim told us that the lower pitched noise was caused by Toad Fish that eat the shrimp. Well, we all tend to think there is something wrong with the boat when we hear strange noises and are relieved when we learn that there isn’t.