For my wife Allie, a happy place is anywhere there is a beach. I’m more of a beach-plus kind of guy. A get-away spot that works for us both is Saint Simons, Georgia. We’ve been visiting every winter for the past fifteen years or so with an annually changing continent of dear friends. 

St. Simons is best known for the stunningly beautiful Sea Island Resort. We stay at the Lodge at Sea Island, rather than the larger, better known Cloister. The Lodge is not actually situated on Sea Island, but rather on the opposite side of the village of St. Simons, along the St. Simons Sound, at the setting of the resort’s golf complex. The Lodge sits between the nines of the recently renovated Plantation Course. Adjacent is the more famous Seaside Course. Between the two now sets the resort’s new Golf Performance Center. A few minutes away is the Retreat Course which has its own dining facility, the Davis Love Grill, named for one of the area’s more famous native sons.

A stay at the Lodge is like being a guest at an English country house. It is dark, quiet and masculine, yet warm and inviting. The rooms are large and sublimely comfortable. The bathrooms alone are nearly worth the lofty price of admission. Our group skipped the annual trek there last year due to construction adjacent to the Lodge where a pool complex and new guest cottages were being built. We feared these additions would ruin the serene setting where each afternoon a lone bagpiper walks along the shore serenading the setting sun. Happily, we were wrong—the new configuration was exceptionally well-designed and enhances, rather than detracts from, the Lodge as we have loved it.

Our visit this winter was marred, only slightly, by a refurbishment of their kitchen which severely limited the on-premises dining options that we usually enjoy. Visits to two excellent local restaurants, Georgia Sea Grill and Del Sur, more than compensated. A personal disappointment for me was that we were not able to dine at Nancy, a restaurant about which I had written a glowing review following our last visit. That piece received many comments, and I heard from many readers that they had tried Nancy at my suggestion and loved it. Alas, my detailed voice message on their never-answered telephone went inexplicably unreturned. Our loss and theirs!

Another jarring surprise this year: a large shipwreck directly opposite the Lodge in the middle of the Sound. On September 8 of last year, the good--but obviously not good enough--ship Golden Ray was run aground by a harbor pilot after losing its stability and beginning to list. It was departing from the Port of Brunswick, headed to Baltimore and onward to the Middle East, carrying more than 4000 cars, most of them Hyundai and Kia models manufactured in Mexico.

Thankfully, rapid response by the US Coast Guard and local port authorities averted what could have been significant environmental damage. As of year-end, almost all of the oil and fuel onboard had been safely removed. The pilot and all twenty-three crewmen were unharmed, though four were trapped in compartments below the new waterline and spent a harrowing 36 hours before being extricated.

The ship was owned by Hyundai and was very new, having been commissioned in 2017. The vessel and its cargo are total losses. Hopes of salvaging the ship have been abandoned. It is now being scrapped, tediously cut up piece by piece, in a process that is expected to take another 18 months.  So, we will still have a view of its remaining hulk when we return next winter. The ship and its load of autos are each estimated to have a value of about $80 million. The cost of scrapping the vessel and its cargo will add many millions more. Sounds like a big payday for maritime attorneys.

The outline of the ill-fated Korean ship is no more than a tiny, temporary blemish on the beauty of St. Simons Sound and the Lodge at Sea Island. It will take much more than that to deter us from returning each winter.