We Love Georgia!

After leaving Charleston we spent three days meandering through the marshes. 

We travelled along under beautiful clear blue skies at the heart stopping speed of 7.5 knots, 9+ if the tide was with us.  Slow enough to enjoy the scenery but fast enough that I had to be quick with the camera. The marshes are lovely, unfortunately by photography skills don't do them justice. 

We anchored out for three nights.  Each anchorage was inhabited by  several dolphins, they ignored us completely.  We could hear their snuffling all night long when they came up for air.  One evening just before dusk CR saw a small herd of deer running along on a bit of high ground.

Barefoot Southern Belle!

There are only a few boats left on the ICW now, the power boats have all gone offshore.

Shrimping offshore

Rocks at low tide!

On the fourth day we went offshore and had a lovely few hours before coming in to my favorite marina.  Jekyl Harbour Marina. 

This place is like a movie set.  The restaurant and services building is a low white structure with a wrap around porch surrounded by large live oak tress dripping with spanish moss.There are the usual other marina sheds all in the pines. It is an  unassuming place from the water but lovely once you walk up the dock. It makes me think of old Flipper shows!! This is an underdeveloped barrier island so there are few hotels and few tourists. Unfortunately a new  convention centre is under construction.  Just what the world needs, another convention centre.

Jekyll Island Club

Jekyll Warf - Latitude 31 Rah Bar & Restaurant

The Jekyll Island Club  is here, open to everyone. There are lots of bike paths, yes we did borrow the marina bikes and toured around, twice.

We will go for another bike ride this afternoon and then off to Florida tomorrow.

Charleston, SC

We had three great days here in Charleston.  We docked at the at the City Marina which is very conveniently located close to downtown and the old City.  The marina is first class and has won awards. Great docks, which are large, wide, stable, clean and plentiful showers, laundry, free wifi, free coffee, newspaper delivered to the boat each morning, free  hourly shuttle. We are on the Megadock which  is a marvel piece on engineering...the dock is a floating concrete dock about a quarter mile long, 20 feet wide  and moves up and down the pylons with the tides which are around 3+/- feet here. There are little stone pads attached to around each of the pylons to scrape the barnacles off and keep the docks free floating.  

There are many mega yachts here which are fun to look at. 

The first night here we went to the Coast Restaurant with Deb & John from Java and had a great seafood feast with a nice wine John picked from Austria (his ancestry). 


The next day we went on a horse and buggy ride and had a very knowledeable guided tour of the old section of Charleston. Houses date back to the late 1600's and early 1700'  Charleston has a rich history for the US during the revolution and later slavery and the Civil War.

That night six of us went to a low country (read soul food) restaurant.  The food was also great - this is a foodie town.  Our final night here, we hosted  a pot luck dinner aboard Tango and had 8 guests.  It was cozy and fun...everyone appreciated it as it was a chance to say our goodbuys for now.  Nora and One White tree are taking the outside route for a 40 hour sail to Cape Canaveral.  Java is staying another 2 days to tour some plantations and we are taking off down the ICW towards Beaufort SC.

South Carolina, Alligators, Dophins, Brenda's Birthday and Warmer Weather

Saturday November 12

We opted to stay another day at this 5 star facility in Grace Harbour as the wind & wave forecast was not favourable and would make the morning 12 mile trip across the Neuse uncomfortable.  Unfortunately I had bought some fresh local fish on the assumption we would be anchoring out so we cooked that and passed on the dinner with the other 10 sailors we had met.  They reportedly had a great time.  Our dinner was good but without the camaraderie and the bill.  The dockage here is $1.20 per foot which is cheap.  We rode into town again with the courtesy van piloted by our new friends.  I bought Cruzan Rum, which my brother-in-law Tim put me onto and it is delicious for a sundowner.  I also bought a  SPOT personal GPS locater to send ok messages to the girls, so they don’t have to worry about us.  I’m finding it hard to find the time to blog, what with all the sailing long days as we try to push south.

Sunday November 13

Left Grace Harbour at 6:30 and motored all day through pretty nice country in North Carolina.  The homes along the ICW are huge, very ostentatious.  We are seeing more & more seabirds of every kind including pelicans, gulls, egrets, herons etc.  Saw our first dolphins today as they went by our boats unfortunately we couldn’t  we are still travelling along with Java and One White Tree and we communicate daily on the VHF regarding target destinations for the night.   I discovered on a Yanmar website the proper operation RPM,s for my engine model - 4HJ3E 56HP Yanmar – is 3000 ( supposed to run them at 80-85% of max RPM).  At this RPM, towing the 110lb dingy we are doing about 7.5 knots which gives as a capability to do 70 mile days in 10 hours and we are doing  a few of these is we don’t have delays at some opening bridges.  We are the fastest boat in our little fleet.

We anchored at a military dredged basin known as Camp La Jeaune.  Very nice spot and a great sunset.

Monday  November  14

John on Java, on the advice of another cruiser we met, Connie &  Ed aboard Surprise a Catalina 42,  suggested St James Marina as the next days target, which was a long day but worth it – another 5-star type marina, very friendly staff and in expensive to Boat US members at $1.05 per foot.  We fuelled up here – burning just over  a gallon per hour at 3000 rpms.

We left ST James Marina in SC at 6:30. In my attempt to  let Brenda get a few more winks, I took all the fenders in, cast off the lines, moved the dingy to the stern again, etc. I did some of this once I got out into the channel, so put the boat in neutral. Unfortunately, we drifted into the mud and spent a few minutes getting out by slowly reversing, then forward through the muck to deeper water.  Our target for this day was an anchorage called Cows Creek at mile 343 (mileage is quoted as south from Norfolk).  We passed into south Carolina and the scenery just gets better, the weather is warmer. 

Homes along the ICW still very large and beautiful, they seem a little more tasteful and the architecture is changing to more Spanish influence. 

We are travelling through what is reportedly the most scenic parts of the ICW and have to agree as we motor up this river surrounded by colourful trees.  The scenery changes again as we get into cypress swamp forest. 

We made the anchorage in a Cypress swamp a half hour earlier (4pm) the other boats in our flotilla so had the anchor down and greeted them when they arrived.  We hosted the evening social hour as John launched his dingy and did the pick-ups and returns.  Everyone returned to their boats for dinner…we cooked a great steak on the BBQ before turning in.  A day on the water is basically up at dawn, motor or motorsail if we are lucky for about 10 hours,  enjoy the changing and varied scenery, get anchored or to a dock, quick dinner then to bed – daylight is scarce this time of year.  It is more fun to do this travelling with other boats, and very easy to hook-up as there are many boats we see doing the same trip.  I think we are at the end of a large flotilla of boats going south.  They are just a few days ahead of us.  At the anchorage at Camp La Jeaune there were reportedly 28 boats the week before us – there were about 8 the night we stayed.

Tuesday November 15 - Brenda's Birthday!

There are reportedly alligators in the swamp creek we stayed in last night but we didn’t see any- nor did we see any cows at Cow’s Creek – so we didn’t go swimming.  It is supposed to be in the mid 70’s today, which is good news to us.  We haven’t  used the propane cabin heater we have since Grace Harbour when the cold front came through and temperatures dropped into the low 30’s F.  It is about 82 miles to Charleston from the Cow’s Creek anchorage so we are targeting a shorter day today of about 47 miles and will be in Charleston tomorrow just after lunch.  We are planning to spend a few days there before moving further south.

We saw numerous dophins today but weren’t fast enough to take pictures.   At one point we were passing One White Tree and they came up between our hulls as if racing us.  Very   exciting moment for us humans.   Another great anchorage…this one amongst the marsh grasses with a sand bluff hillock on the west side for wind protection from that direction.   We arrive early around 2:30 and were invited aboard One White tree for an afternoon social. We were joined by two new cruisers we had seen on the water the day before – Jill & Wayne on a catamaran called Born to Cruise. 

 They have been living aboard for a while but just bought a house in Florida because the prices are cheap.   They are sailing her south from her home Port of New Bern to Georgia, returning home for the holidays, then will come back and head to the Bahamas.  They have done the trip 3 times and love the Abacos most – Green Turtle Cay and Treasure Cay were mentioned.. . Nice afternoon…we all sang happy birthday to Brenda because it is! Everyone brings a drink and appetizers – so much food we didn’t bother to cook dinner.

Finally got a picture of some dolphins. What a life this cruising stuff!

November 16

This morning we left the anchorage at 6:30 in the fog...everone was navigating by instruments. We have navigation software on the computer down in the cabin, so I sat at the nav station with my headset on and talked Brenda through several hours of ICW navigation.  Our friends on Java ran aground and we stopped to help them but they soon got off by using their dingy to pull the boat back to deeper water.  It was a tense few hours but the fog finally lifted and we arrived Charleston by noon. The boats here make our little ship look small.  We are parked behind one that is over 200 feet long.

New Friends

Tuesday we repaired the head at the Atlantic Basin Marina at Great Bridge and were away by 10 am and travelled to Coinjock (40 ish miles?).

There we met up with some new friends all going south in sailboats. 

A half hour out we were hailed on the radio by John & Deborah aboard Java  a Jeanneau 36 who had introduced themselves to us back at ABM. 

They invited us to stay at the Midway Marina in Coinjock for a beverage and we were joined by Diana and Ross aboard a  Island Spirit 400 Catamaran "One White Tree" we met on the dock at Coinjock and Diane and Jan aboard a beautiful and gleaming  Passport 40 "Nora" that John had met earlier. 

We all had dinner in the restaurant which opened up just for us...great meal, reasonably priced. 

We decided to sail together next day.

Nora  has an older engine and is a heavier boat so ended the day at the Anchorage at the entrance to the Pungo Canal.  The rest of us pushed on.  Good day Wednesday …put in about 70 nautical miles from Coinjock across Abermale Sound, the Alligator River, where all the Alligators have already gone south, through the Pungo Canal to an anchorage just off the ICW in the Pungo River.  The last 10 miles were a bit of a drag as as our little flotilla got stuck in the canal behind the Philadelphia Belle, a large paddle-wheeler party boat which is making the trip south to new owners in Louisiana. She was dubbed the Canal Plug/Hog and various other names by those 10 or so boats following her who were all forced to anchor in the dark at the end of the run.

Thursday we did another 40+ or so miles and reached River Dunes, Grace Harbour in Broad Creek near Oriental NC.  This is an oasis in the middle of nowhere but check it out - http://www.riverdunes.com/spring.php - fantastic. Very luxurious 5* facilities- hotel, cottage rentals, homes available, excellent dining facilities, spa, 5 personal jets in the showers etc,etc included for us for the $1.25 per foot(reasonable price). Here we all went to dinner together and were joined by another cuople we met Lisa and Val aboard Rising Star a Valiant  40.

Higher winds and waves and cold temperatures today(Friday) forced us (haha) to stay another day at this place.  We took the coutesty van to shop in Oriental a town with 500 residents and over 3000 boats!  Tomorrow we are all heading out together towards LeJeune past Beaufort NC about another 70 mile run.

We learned from Diane & Jan about the spot satellite messenger  gizmo which is a cool GPS tracking system that allows us to press a button and update the girls(and all blog followers) on our whereabouts complete with a link to a google map with 7 days historical data on our trip co-ordinates.  It also has an "oops button" (distress) button to call out SAR (search and rescue) or a help button for less dramatic help such as a tow.  We were able to link that directly to Tow Boat US the equivalent of CAA which I had purchased in Deltaville for $200 or so. Just follow this link to see our location updates:
https://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=1qdKkOi91fIOEB4pfpnGboQiuixO2fffv
The password is: TANGO
If the link doesn't work, try copying and pasting it to your browser's address bar.

In the ICW

Leaving at 7 am, we had a pleasant sail & motor sail from Deltaville yesterday to Hampton Roads about 42 nautical miles to the anchorage at Fort Monroe,  Old Comfort Point.  We saw our first pelicans, numerous ocean tugs pushing coal, dredging platforms, ships, barges etc., shrimper style fishing boats, and a Carnival Cruse liner plus other ships in the Chesapeake Bay...the lower Chesapeake is like sailing on Lake Ontario, but much shallower and with numerous rivers entering along the way.

Our anchorage was a little noisy with the Highway but had a great view of ships leaving Norfolk Harbour.  This morning we left at 8 am  crossed the shipping channel to Norfolk Harbour.  This is a US Naval base with many warships, submarines, aircraft carriers, patrol boats etc. as well as commercial operations for ocean ships. 

There are also many dredging operations going on as many rivers converge here and they need to keep the harbour clear.  This is truly a huge and very busy harbour.  Keep your wits about you and your binoculars handy. We passed between an ocean tug pushing a dredging rig and huge loaded Maersk Container ship.  We didn't see the container ship in time to pass it to port as would we have preferred.

Leaving Norfolk Harbour, in the the Elizabeth River we motored at 6 Knots(speed limit) to wait at the first bridge for it to open, then zoomed to the next to wait for it to open, went through several more that were open, then a lock and another bridge where we were stuck for an hour waiting for a tug pushing two huge barges (commercial traffic has precedence). The chatter between the tug Captain and the bridge tender would indicate they were lovers (very amusing).  Then disaster!!!! The head backed up!  Here we sit at Atlantic Yacht Basin with assurance our repair parts will be here by 8:30 am. Cruising on a sailboat is often described as fixing boats in exotic locales - ours is not yet exotic.

Mañana

Yesterday, the wind started to pick up by about 10:30 am and was blowing a full gale by noon and continued to do so all night and this morning 5 - 6 ft seas. We will stay another day and head to  Hampton Roads or Norfolk tomorrow. It is useful to have boat projects so we repaired some damage minor to the leech of the genoa,  cleaned most of the tree gum off the deck, rigged the stern kedge anchor, resorted the lockers etc.