SOUTH TO THE ISLANDS ABOARD BILLY PILGRIM

Georgia's Sea Islands and the Exuma Cays in the Bahamas highlight Billy Pilgrim's southbound season.

- TIM MURPHY

Just as we stepped through the rusted, wrought-iron gates of St. Simons, Georgia's so-called Strangers Cemetery, from hot daylight into a shadowy overgrown world of Spanish moss that dangled from the twisting branches of live oaks and wafted over eroding gravestones, we were startled by a ding from Jenny's phone. Its message sent a quick chill down her spine: You have arrived at your destination.

Perfect chance had brought us to this spooky and wonderful place, though the journey began simply enough. Many weeks earlier, we'd asked Lesley's cousin Scott Perrin, a veteran of several annual Intracoastal Waterway migrations between New England and Florida, for his favorite barbecue joint along the route.

"Southern Soul," Scott said without hesitating, "on St. Simons Island." So when our friend Jenny Gifford flew to Savannah, Georgia, to join Lesley and me aboard Billy Pilgrim in Georgia's Sea Islands for her Thanksgiving holiday, we built our wanderings around a visit to Southern Soul.

The Atlantic coast Sea Islands preserve constellations of microcultures spanning from the coastal Carolinas through northern Florida. Isolated within semipermeable borders, these communities are separated by swiftly moving tidal waters with such Muskogee and Creek names as Ogeechee, Wassaw, Ossabaw, Sapelo and Altamaha. Other rivers and sounds are named for European saints: Catherine, Simon, Andrew, Mary. Through this Lowcountry stretches a US National Heritage Area called the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, recognizing the speakers of the only distinctly African Creole language in the United States. All fall we'd been looking forward to lingering a while among these islands.