SC to Elizabeth City, NC

 May 13 – May 22, 2010

 

It’s been quite a while since I’ve updated the blog, and I realize that I have forgotten much of what we did in the past 2 months!  I’ve decided to split it into 2 separate entries, so here are the highlights.

 

Once we got back to Georgetown, SC from 2-1/2 weeks in Indianapolis, we met up with the Godins (Potest Fieri) and the Campbells (Jejuda) – friends all the way back to our “Carp Captive” days.  The weather for the next 2 weeks was nearly picture-perfect.  Our first stop was Myrtle Beach, SC, where we docked right next to the Outlet Mall.  How convenient!

 

Our next big stop was Beaufort, NC.  In North Carolina, it is pronounced “BO-fert”, compared to South Carolina, where that city is spelled the same, but pronounced, “BEW-fort”.  It was a challenge keeping the cities straight by their pronunciation.  In Beaufort, we borrowed a loaner car from the marina with about 235,000 miles on it and a trunk that had a difficult time closing when we made our run to the grocery store.

 

We continued on up the Intracoastal Waterway with Danny & Susan from Potest Fieri and stopped in Oriental, NC, where we saw a dog with a Mohawk haircut and his master “walking” him down the street while he motored along in his golf cart.  

 

As we traveled up the Intracoastal Waterway toward Wrightsville Beach, we could see the Outer Banks on our starboard side.  I wanted to pull over (like we do in a car!) and just drop the hook and swim in the crystal clear water.  But we kept heading north.

 

We stopped in Elizabeth City, NC for 2 days, where boaters are so enthusiastically welcomed that the town treats them to a Happy Hour and serves beer, wine, cheese and crackers, if 5 or more boats are tied up to the city dock.  After maneuvering through a “minefield” of crab pots, we had to back into the slip with about 5 different people shouting 5 different sets of instructions to us from the dock.  The slips were so narrow that we couldn’t even put our fenders down and the docks were so short that I worried about one of us falling in as we contorted our bodies between the stanchion and the piling every time we got on or off the boat! 

 

E-City was a nice stop and Jerry and Linda from Monk’s Vineyard, people we had run into periodically along the Great Loop, traveled with us also.  We went to a small farmers market on a Saturday morning and I bought basil and mint plants for the boat.  This was the friendliest stop we’d ever made.  The townspeople came to the docks to see the boaters and were so interested in hearing about our cruising life onboard our boats.  

 

It occurred to me that before we started this trip nearly a year ago, we were those people who walked the docks and wondered what the stories were behind the boats that we were slightly envious of.  And now we ARE those people – lucky or crazy to live this kind of lifestyle?  Maybe a little bit of both!

South Carolina

 April 15 – 21, 2010

 

We were really glad to leave Georgia behind because we knew we had an abundance of good stopping places in South Carolina.  Our first stop was in Port Royal, which is right next to Beaufort, SC.  

 

The people at the marina were so hospitable, and it seems that everyone who lives in Beaufort loves Beaufort like no other place on earth.  In fact, our friend Matt Rodgers contacted his mother to let her know we would be in her area for the evening.  Edie Rodgers, who formerly served in the South Carolina House of Representatives and on the Beaufort City Council, is the epitome of grace and southern hospitality.  Edie picked us up at the marina and brought us to her home where we enjoyed a wonderful evening with her.  I wish I had taken pictures!  The azaleas in her yard were in full bloom and I think her yard should be a noted arboretum.  Edie drove us around Beaufort, showed us all the historical homes and whipped together a delicious shrimp salad plate for dinner.  Neither Roger nor I wanted to leave!

 

The next day we had a long one – 70 miles to Charleston, SC.  We stayed for two nights at the Charleston City Marina.  When we arrived, the dockmaster told us on the radio that “the current is ripping.”  Oh great….. and we had to dock between two rather large and beautiful and expensive boats.  The stress was worth it, because Charleston is my favorite place so far.  If it weren’t for the heat, humidity and no-seeums, I could live there!  The restaurants and shops were less than a mile away, and we walked and rode our bikes throughout the city.  On our second day, we watched the Blue Angels practice for their air show the next day.  How uncanny was it that we just saw them in Pensacola in November!  

 

On to Georgetown, SC  --  another long day of 67 miles!  This is another quaint southern city of only 9000 people.  Nearly everything is closed on Sunday, but we found a breakfast place called Aunny’s that we loved!  Lucky for us, my sister-in-law Sue Spitale was on spring break vacation with my niece and nephews up in Myrtle Beach, less than 40 miles from Georgetown.  Sue and my niece Andrea drove here to see us on Sunday.  What a treat!  

 

On Monday, we had the boat hauled out of the water so that we could get the rudderstock repaired; a pretty easy fix and we needed to get it done one of these days.   So this was the place to do it, and we also contracted to get the boat waxed and buffed.  The marina guys put the boat on jack stands and plugged us in to their power so that among other things our refrigerator would keep running and also so we could stay on board.  I have to admit that I was less than enthusiastic about staying on the boat while it was out of the water.  Ok, if you ask Roger, I was being really difficult about it.  But in my own defense, I really didn’t like it.  You can see from one of the pictures, that we had to climb up and down a ladder to get on and off the boat.  Not such a big deal for one day, but it ended up being 3 days.  The good thing was that there was no rocking motion because the boat was stationary.  But it took “some getting used to” because it was so different.  On Tuesday, I rented a car for a day and drove up to Myrtle Beach to see Sue and the kids.  I loved seeing my family and it was also a nice change of scenery from the boat yard!

 

Georgetown, SC is where we will leave the boat again for about 2-1/2 weeks while we go back to Indianapolis.  So we’ll take a blog break until we get back on our way again during the second week of May for more points northward. 

 

Stuart to Savannah, GA

 April 1 – April 14, 2010

 

Over the past 13 days, we have traveled 400 miles on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway.  One of the delights about this Great Loop trip   is the chance to meet up with old friends and relatives and to make new friends along the way too.  After Stuart, we stopped in Vero Beach and had dinner with the Lassman’s & the Breens (new friends).  And then to New Smyrna Beach where we saw my cousins, the Comardo’s.  In Fernandina Beach, we had lunch with Ginny & Steve Ardia, friends from the old Goulds’ days.

 

On our second night out, we anchored in Cocoa, FL and put the dinghy in the water to take Louie to shore.  It was a good place to walk the dog and I was getting some practice driving the dinghy.  Poor Roger -- he has already taught all 4 kids to drive a dinghy and now he has to teach me!  Nicole was around 9 years old, and Brett & Heath were 7 when they learned. And Travis was probably as young, so the kids have always “chauffeured” me around in the dinghy and I never got proficient.  So I decided it was time and I only gave Roger a few extra gray hairs – you can’t even notice them.  Ha!  

 

In Palm Coast, FL, we saw the 6:21 a.m. launch of the Space Shuttle on April 5^th.  It is always a thrill to watch a launch on TV, but to see it happen about 100 miles away was a magnificent experience!  We had XM Radio on and listened to the Fox News broadcast.

 

We went on to St. Augustine for a few days.  What a quaint old city!  Roger talked me into going to 7 a.m. Mass at the Cathedral, which was originally built in 1565.  We walked around the city and got a close-up of the holes in the fortress wall, where the executioners’ bullets hit the stone wall.  Creepy!  St. Augustine is an interesting place, and we stayed for 3 days, but then it was time to move on.

 

After all the difficulties on the rivers last fall, we thought that navigating the Intracoastal Waterway was supposed to be a cinch.    Not so!  It takes an enormous amount of planning to prepare for each day of the trip.  The water is very shallow at certain places in the waterway, and the range between high tide and low tide can be as much as 8 feet.  So far, we have had to carefully time our transit through 3 specific areas for a “rising tide”.  In some places, we were told to “hug the red markers” because it was too shallow in the channel closer to the greens.  

 

One day, we decided not to leave our dock at Jekyll Island, GA until 10 a.m. and you know that is late for us – we usually leave at the crack of dawn.  Well, we knew we couldn’t arrive at Little Mud River (in GA) at low tide.  We made better time than we expected and got there about an hour and a half after low tide.  We saw water depths of 4.5 feet.  Our boat draws almost 4 feet right now, so we had 6” of water between the bottom of our boat and the bottom of the channel!!  That was nerve-wracking!  Roger was concentrating on not running us aground.  He was successful – so far.  We did see several boats sitting on the sand!  There is an old sailor’s saying:  “There are only 2 kinds of boaters – those who have run aground, and those who lie about not running aground”.  

 

Because we couldn’t get to a marina that particular night, we had to anchor out at a place called “New Teakettle Creek”.  We were the only boat there at first, and then one other boat arrived.  The biggest drawback that day was that there was no place to take Louie ashore.  We were literally in the midst of the swamps in Low Country.  Louie refused to go on the potty pads, so he had to wait until the next day.  I’m sure that Roger & I were more stressed than Louie was.  We enjoyed the solitude for one night and cooked lobster tails on the grill. However, Roger didn’t get much sleep because he did the anchor checks in the middle of the night.  He said he could hear the dolphins breathing as they played around the boat, not something we hear in Indianapolis at night, for sure.

 

Our next stop was Isle of Hope, GA, (8 miles from Savannah) where we stayed for 2 nights.  We borrowed the marina loaner car and went to Savannah for drinks and appetizers.  We’ve been to Savannah a few times, but it’s always great to visit again.  Unfortunately, when we got back, I hit my head on the boat and had a gash on my scalp.  I was glad that I didn’t need stitches.  I have lots of scars on my shins from boat incidents.  Now I have tons of bug bites from those damn no-seeums!  I actually put Skin-So-Soft on 1^st and then Skinsations, but I still got eaten alive.  

 

The stretch of the Intracoastal from Fernandina Beach, FL to this area near Savannah, GA was very desolate.  It was not only shallow in spots, but also winding and swampy.  Then all of a sudden, we would cross through these “sounds”, where boats can leave the Intracoastal Waterway and go out to the Atlantic.  The wind and the current blowing in from the ocean were fierce!  We had water coming up over our bow and splashing the pilothouse windows.  Once we crossed the sound, and got back onto the waterway, it was usually calmer.  But we were rocking and rolling with the exposure to the Atlantic! 

 

We try to walk whenever we stop, partially to explore and partially for the exercise.  In Fernandina Beach, we walked from the marina to the beach (on the ocean), about 5 miles round trip.  At Jekyll Island and Isle of Hope, we rode bicycles and did some exploring.  Jekyll Island was pretty quiet, and I saw my very first possum there!  It was dead and floating in the water by the shore and Roger wouldn’t let me take a picture of it!  Isle of Hope is a cute town.  It looks like a real southern, upscale community and we have enjoyed our 2 days here.  Today it is on to Port Royal, SC (near Beaufort) and the next day on to Charleston, SC!