wahoo river anchorage, wahoo island, GA.

we left savannah bend marina at about 7:30 a.m.  by that time, the fog had lifted.  there was frost on the dock in the early morning, too - this is SOUTH?  good grief!  however, it warmed up nicely.  we left at slack tide and went very slowly as we did not want to get to the trouble spot at hell's gate (between the vernon and ogeechee rivers) too soon.  although we are used to studying tides and currents up in the chesapeake to save on time and fuel, it is doubly important here in the SC/GA area.  the tide shifts are quite marked, up to 7 feet!  one moment you are crossing the ramp from the floating dock to dry land at a nearly horizontal level and the next time you look, it is like a double black diamond ski slope! 

georgia's waterway is beautiful.  it isn't as well maintained as the other states though but if you love the salt marshes the way tom and i do, you will appreciate its untouched beauty.  the rivers slowly meander along - lots of curves - not like the other parts of the ICW "ditch."  hell's gate was no problem at rising tide and as we were traversing the ogeechee river about noon, the wind died and the current was slack and i took this pic below - absolutely beautiful. - georgia's wild and desolate marshes.  the worst place on the ICW to break down, i'm sure!  i mention this because a member of our fleet was having some engine problems so tom was talking him through stuff over the vhf radio, talking on the phone with contacts from his little black book of experts, texting with mark and wally about the situation, etc. etc. until i finally kicked him off the helm seat.  i was already irate about hell's gate because i told him to get us through first before touching that damned radio but no....  he felt compelled to be informative.  everyone was so far behind us that  they could have waited for that information until AFTER we were through the skinny water.  it isn't like i can't read charts or drive this boat.  sometimes he just doesn't know when to stop juggling and let someone else take one of his many hats. 

we finally reached our anchorage on the wahoo river next to wahoo island where there was a reported dinghy shore access that was described as "rough."  quite frankly, there wasn't much to it - a postage-stamp-sized beach.  we dropped the dinghy and took consuelo ashore, walked around a bit and found, to our dismay, black mud on our shoes and on consuelo's feet!  and the tide was falling which meant there would be MORE mud - ugh!  we dinghied around looking for alternatives - there seemed to be none - and then we saw this lamp post.  as far as we know, wahoo island is uninhabited.  such an odd sight, that lamp post .  i joked about what if it turned on at night and, well, the thing is, it did!  it was the oddest thing - this lighted lamp post, in the middle of nowhere!  talk about wild....  even better, as the water went down, the light exposed a little sand spit that had been underwater and there was our doggie toilet at low tide!  i had already cleaned off our shoes, consuelo and the dinghy once so i wasn't thrilled about having to do it again.  that lamp post was like a miracle - just incredible! 

the narnian lamp post

and what a treat it was to be anchored once again.   complete silence out except for the interesting screechings coming from the marsh, and anchor lights blending in the dark with the stars up in the black night sky, and with the lamp post!   hahaha...

savannah bend marina, thunderbolt, GA.

we left beaufort before 7:00 a.m.  the fleet was breaking up as some of the boats wanted to "bump out," i.e. go out into the ocean and save some miles instead of meandering through the georgia ICW and possibly running aground in the trouble spots.  there was no sign at the SC/GA border.  once you enter the savannah river, you are in georgia.  i don't think i've ever actually STOPPED in georgia, not even by car!  eight of us wound up at the savannah bend marina in thunderbolt, GA,  some went ahead and anchored nearby or stayed at another marina and some went out into the ocean for an overnight sail to resurface in  florida.  for us, it was an uneventful short cruise - we crossed the potential trouble spots at high water and that was that.  the only thing was that there were no dockhands at the marina (holiday weekend) so everyone who got there first was helping everyone else.  "oy" is all i can say about that LOL...  tom and i don't like having help - too many people who think they are in charge when actually MOI is in charge :)  the only help i ever need is to let me know if i'm a starboard tie or a port tie and give me the right answer the first time so i don't have to keep moving lines around and be cranky about it!  there was a shrimp dock beside the marina and we lost absolutely no time running over there and buying 3 to 4 pounds of fresh, plump, juicy, yummy shrimp. 

the fleet folks were happy in this marina as they didn't have far to walk to get to the building with the showers (simple joys), and at cocktail hour, we all gathered at the marina office's wrap-around porch.  tom looked up how to clean shrimp and used a sharp pair of scissors and got all of our shrimp cleaned and deveined very quickly, some of which went to cocktail hour.   the other thing about this marina is that it is right ON the ICW so you can see everyone going by.  people you know, or boats you've encountered along the way,  and you can see them from the comfort of a rocking chair on the porch and just yell over if you have a big voice. 

downtown marina at beaufort, SC (part 2).

day #4 at beaufort was uneventful.  not much to report except that the afternoon turned out to be dry so we did a lot of walking around and took more pics of trees, homes and spanish moss, and got our free bottle of olive oil (tom picked that one and used it that night and said it was "too HOT!" - i didn't dare try) and our free chocolate sand dollar from the candy store.  while in those stores, tom went crazy and did some shopping - very uncharacteristic of him.  we, all three of us, needed the exercise so walking was good.  i also made food for the gods for the thanksgiving potluck. 

day #5 was thanksgiving day and we were scheduled to join the annual cruisers' thanksgiving potluck at lady's island marina across the beaufort river from where we were.  arrangements were made for a van to take some of our group across the bridge.  some people walked.  tom and i decided to take the dinghy primarily because 1) it needed the exercise and we were in a position to launch it easily, and 2) we didn't want to pay for the van ($15 per person round trip - gasp!), and 3) we had to leave consuelo at home so we didn't want to be dependent on someone else's transportation.  it was VERY windy that morning and at the last minute, wally came over and said that he was very uncomfortable with us taking the dinghy.  we ignored him hahaha...  we'd been out in worse but just to make sure, we put on our foulies and PFDs.  well, tom's is built into his mustang suit.  mine was brand new - i won it at the hampton snowbird rendezvous raffle.  as it turns out, mine needed charging - it didn't have a canister!  if i had fallen in, it would have been completely useless.  in any case, ugh...  all those clothes..... i just felt clumsy and awkward getting into the dinghy and you know what?  NOT a drop, either coming or going.  all we had to do was cross the river and yes, it was windy, but we have a SERIOUS dinghy with seriously large tubes - it is a dry ride.  the lady's island marina prepared five turkeys and a couple of hams.  everything else was brought in by everyone else, not just our group, but other cruisers in the area who were far from home for the holiday.  we were maybe a hundred people.  someone said there were 27 desserts!  but before all of that, we had our briefing for the coming trip through georgia.  unfortunately, the briefing and potluck were held in the same room and it was very distracting with people coming in with crockpots and trays and all the smell of that food.  FINALLY, it was time to eat and everything was delicious!  there was a ton of food.  tom and i ate and ran.  i was so fat and full from eating that i had to ask diana to zip me into my suit - i could hardly move ugh...  i also asked brenda from L'ATTITUDE to bring back my baking pan which she did later on with one little piece of FFG left!  i mean, c'mon, why didn't the person who took the second to the last piece take the last piece, too??? 

in any case, that was our thanksgiving and we had a good time.  back on the boat, tom worked on route planning and i just went back to work.  i felt a little guilty because although i tried to work that morning, i didn't try very hard and ended up just chatting with folks from the fleet.  the sun was out and though it was windy, TADHANA blocked the wind if you stood on the dock behind her.  before i knew it, quite a few people were standing there out of the wind and sharing war stories.  everyone was tired of being inside but it was too cold and windy to be outside except maybe downwind of a wall (TADHANA). 

downtown marina at beaufort, SC (part 1).

another o'dark early morning as the leaders of the SAIL rally herded everyone back out into the ICW from SJYH with beaufort, SC as the target destination.  the weather gods said that sunday would be a horrible day to travel - torrential rain and high winds - so the plan was to leave on saturday,  get to beaufort, tie up and be safe and comfortable.   the current was ripping through the stono river. luckily, we were on the side of the dock where it made it easy to get going.   some of the others were not so lucky and it took some manhandling (as opposed to boat handling).  this section of the ICW shows off SC's beautiful salt marshes.  SC has over 30 islands categorized into barrier islands, lake islands, river islands and sea islands!   the current is fierce as you weave in and out of rivers and land cuts, following the ICW's magenta line.  in the end, our assessment was that we mostly had the current with us rather than a break even between with and against.  when it was with us, we flew, and when we didn't (2 knots of current against?  gak!), you could really feel the boat slow down.  in fact, tom had accidentally overfilled the water tank and since we knew that we were going to be at a marina that night, we dumped some of it in order to carry less weight through the parts where we would be fighting the current.  when we passed a creek or river mouth, we had to crab the boat sideways to stay in the channel.  as i said earlier in this blog, running the ICW is work - you always have to be on your toes, watching, anticipating, paying attention.  maybe it's less work when you've done it a few times but not only was this our first but we had ducklings as well to watch out for. 

the downtown marina at beaufort is right in the heart of the historic district and the waterfront park/riverwalk area is really very pleasant.  downtown is alive with lots of restaurants, little "shoppes" and quite a number of art galleries as well.  we found a barbecue restaurant called Q on bay that did wings so we decided to get a couple of dozen for takeout to compare with sticky fingers.  the consensus was that sticky fingers was better - we are now chicken wing connoisseurs apparently.  after dinner, we went out again for gelato.  again, the tide shift in this area is something else - the ramps to the floating docks get pretty steep!  there are gates to the docks that are locked after office hours and if you are a marina patron, they give you a code to punch in.  people were leaving the gate ajar instead because the code wasn't an easy one to remember.

i had planned to work that first evening in beaufort but decided to blog first and i was falling asleep writing my own blog!  i was pretty tired.  i told tom that i just needed to lie down for a bit.  tom, himself, took a nap in the salon.  well, i never got up.  i left my computer on, didn't brush my teeth, my hair was still wet from the shower and tom wound up taking consuelo out for her last run because he didn't want to wake me up.  i woke up briefly at 3:30 a.m. when the rain started and at 6:00 a.m. when consuelo whined but tom was already getting up to take her out so i just rolled over and went back to sleep.  i got up for a bit an hour later and then went back to bed and it was so out of character for me that tom started to worry and he texted my brother about it!  i eventually got up though and we had our usual sunday morning pancakes and bacon.  it rained all morning.  no, it POURED!

rain, rain, rain, rain, rain

i discovered that my one and only pair of sneakers that i've had longer than i've had either consuelo or tom was starting to come apart at the seams and so, during a break in the rain, i ran off to the marina office which has a small ship's store.  i was really going to ask if there was a shoe store in town but they had some sperry top-siders on display so i took a look at those and eventually came away with a pair of sneakers that were 50% off.  the left shoe had been on display so long that it was a different shade of not-so-white from its partner that had been left in the box but hey, at $23, i can always dye the shoes.  white is definitely not my color of choice but i thought it was a good deal and i didn't have to work too hard to find a new pair of shoes.  not to mention, they are sperry boat shoes with the non-skid sole, etc. etc. that we all pay the big bucks for.  i am not much of a shopper and tom even less so - that expedition was pretty painless :)

the rain eventually stopped in the late afternoon so we went to town, walked around and eventually bumped into mark and diana.  the marina package that we had been given contained a coupon for a free small bottle of olive oil at one of the shops.  tom forgot the coupon but since diana had hers, i went into the store with her in the hopes that they would give me a bottle, too, without the coupon.  we actually had a choice of different flavors of olive oil or balsamic vinegar and i chose a little bottle of vinegar that said "espresso" on it.  they had some tasting cups so i took a little of the espresso out to tom who was waiting outside with consuelo.  it was pretty good!  we got back to the boat just in time, too.  the heavens opened up and it poured again.  there was also a tornado watch for this area.  lots of rain and lightning - we actually felt a little more secure being amongst all these sailboats with tall masts.  a big blow and heavy rain came and just as quickly as it arrived, it all fizzled out.  lucky us! 

day 2 at beaufort, monday, we snagged the courtesy car and went grocery shopping.  later the sun finally broke out and we went biking around the town and took a bunch of photos.  it really is such a picturesque place - antebellum homes, ancient oaks, spanish moss....  just lovely!  full of atmosphere...

that evening, the town of beaufort treated us to an excellent dinner at one of the waterfront restaurants, saltus river grill - on the menu were ham and pimiento cheese biscuits, quiche lorraine, oysters on the half shell, low country shrimp and grits, sous vide pork tenderloin, yukon gold potato puree, and organic vegetables from the brant family farm (collard greens).  plus a huge gift bag  on our way out - as mentioned before, we are party poopers and leave early :)  tom went to bed and i went to work.

day 3, consuelo got me up at 5:40 a.m.  she must have known something because as soon as we got back in, it started pouring again.  i just kept thinking - monsoon rains!  and that is how it was all morning, on and off.  at 2:00 p.m., arrangements had been made for us to tour the trumpy "freedom" which was docked at the marina. what a gorgeous boat she is!  (how the other half lives).  click on the link to see pics of her because no pics that i took could possibly do justice to this beauty. here are the two that i have.

it just continued to rain all day and all night.  what a wash-out.  still and all, it is just as well that we are tied up safe and sound here in beaufort. 

had to throw in a pic of what i thought was a good-looking boat

st. john's yacht harbor, johns island, SC (charleston).

we reluctantly left mcclellanville at o'dark thirty (notice a pattern here?) to get through a trouble spot immediately south of the town at high water.

pre-sunrise at the leland oil dock

underway as soon as we could see

the problem was that the early departure and bypass of that trouble spot made us get to the next trouble spot at isle of palms too early for the high water there even though we really slowed it down.   the three boats with us decided to go into the isle of palms marina for lunch and wait there- 0.50 cents per foot per hour (plus lunch!)  - way too rich for our blood so we just kept going and found a tug and barge aground at the trouble spot, waiting for the water to come in.   we just dropped the anchor and then the dinghy and tom went off to explore as our dinghy has a fishfinder/depth sounder on it, and to chat with the tug captain.   skinny channel and skinny water and then the wind blew the barge sideways into the skinny water, effectively blocking the channel.  as time passed, the others who were behind (not the ones who went to lunch) started catching up and there was a pileup behind us with tom communicating with the tug captain and passing the word along.  we waited at least a couple of hours.  then the tug moved the barge enough to open up the channel for us to pass through - we touched bottom a couple of times and then it got deeper, but to our horror, the wind took the barge again and closed off the channel once more, separating us from everyone.  oh well...  so on we went.  the sad thing is that, as sailboats, they had to wait for two bridge openings, the last one of which they weren't going to make because of the delay.  TADHANA easily went under both bridges with her 18.5-foot air draft.  as we came out into charleston harbor, a seatow boat passed us and tom spoke to him, too.  we later heard that the tug and barge kept trying to move but was not making much progress and kept blocking the channel but when the seatow arrived, the tug finally moved all the way to one bank and the seatow did the sounding for the waiting boats and they all followed it through the trouble spot after which they had to wait at the ben sawyer bridge and wound up either getting a slip at the charleston city marina or anchoring across from it.  we were the only ones from the delayed group who made it all the way to the st. john's yacht harbor  that evening as scheduled.  LONG day.

the barge blocking the channel - there was NO water on the left side.  ben sawyer bridge beyond.

passing fort sumter

waving as we passed charleston

the ravenel bridge - engineering art

the notorious elliot cut

we were, of course, thrilled to be going through charleston waters.  we have wonderful memories (well, i do anyway haha) of living in summerville, SC from 2007 to 2008 and every weekend, we would be out on one zodiac RIB or another as tom was doing a lot of endurance testing with those boats, i.e. he was instructed to break the boat!  we are pretty familiar with the charleston waters and marinas, but, unfortunately, we were not scheduled to stay there.  of note is that back when we lived in south carolina, we actually had a reservation at the charleston city marina for TADHANA whenever she finally got delivered, however, we left south carolina long before then.  so we waved at the ravenel bridge and the city of charleston and fort sumter as we went by, into the ashley river and then into elliot cut and out into the stono river to the st. john's yacht harbor marina.  the current was running fierce at the time and the dockhands suggested that we go bow in so that is what we did.  always (or never?) follow the local knowledge.  the problem was that the finger pier was too short so we couldn't get off through the swim platform.  our power cords plug into the transom so we had to plug one cord into another to make it reach the power pedestal and we didn't even bother with the water hose.  going out through the side door to a floating finger pier is quite a jump.  consuelo was not happy about being heaved about and there was a huge cleat in the way to boot.  oh well, what can i say?  we are used to backing into the slip.  the next morning, though, we solved that problem by moving the boat forward a little more so that the side door was at least beyond the toe-stubbing cleat and we could get off and on through the cockpit after rolling up the isenglass on the starboard side.  that worked out a lot better.  things just felt so WRONG the other way.

fancy little walkway at SJYH

salt marsh

the stono river bridge

5 to 7 foot tide shifts - low, low tide!

beautiful salt marshes

that evening, we had a date with an old high school classmate of mine who works at a boutique hotel downtown, the restoration on king, just the loveliest little hotel right in the heart of the city - very la-di-da!  agnes was supposed to pick us up at the marina but someone told her about the horrendous traffic leaving the city on a friday evening so she sent a limo instead!  agnes obviously does NOT mess around!  anyway, when we got to the little hotel which has only 16 suites, we each got a glass of wine and then she showed us around.  just a wonderful little spot and very charming decor with exposed brick and floors from the original buildings.  i'm almost ashamed to say that we did not avail of any of charleston's various fine dining restaurants and instead planned on eating chicken wings at sticky fingers.  this reminds me of when my dad used to take the family out to chinatown in manila and then i would order sweet and sour pork and my dad would say, "peasants, i live with peasants!"   well, maybe so, but it had been a while since we've had the best chicken wings ever and that is what tom and i wanted to eat.  agnes and i had a really good time getting caught up and tom was extremely happy with his hickory smoked chicken wings at dinner so much so that he ordered more for takeout for the next day's lunch!  agnes drove us back to the marina and stayed for the grand two-penny tour of TADHANA before heading off on her 1.5-hour commute home - gak!  it was short but sweet.

the other thing that happened was the weather.  tom, mark and wally had an emergency meeting to deal with planning for the coming bad weather as it pertained to the fleet and a decision was made to leave very early the next morning for beaufort instead of staying one more day as per the original plan.  needless to say, it was disappointing to have spent so little time at charleston but in the boating/cruising world, weather dictates all.

i thought i'd include a few photos of some odd little boats that were present at the marina.

what is it?? 

pepto bismol pink! 

custom made cabin on a tiny little runabout

oh, one more thing.  i took over the helm for a little bit while tom ran off to the bathroom and got hailed by the trawler behind.  i normally NEVER talk on the radio (stage fright haha) but i answered the hail and had a whole conversation with this guy - a first!  when tom came back, i told him about it and he was shocked!  i write, i do not talk :)