A Wonderful Week in Paradise (almost)

Live oak tree in Beaufort grows across the street

So, we spent slightly more than a week spreading our limited retirement income around the Beaufort & Port Royal area, seeing all the sights (both of them).

Beaufort River 8' tidal range exposes the marsh
at low tide

We took a walking tour around Beaufort, reading about the long history of the area, admiring the mansions from when “Cotton was King”, and gawking at the centuries-old live oak trees (which remind us of City Park in New Orleans).  The downtown area and historic sections are very tourist-friendly, with a very nice waterfront park adjacent to the City Marina.  A major drawback to staying at the City Marina (and our Port Royal Landing Marina as well) is the very strong currents running in the Beaufort River, since the normal tide range is 8’ (there are two high and two low tides each day).  I had thought that Georgia had the widest tidal range, but this area matches it.

We toured the MCRD (Marine Corps Recruiting Depot, for you non-military types) at Parris Island, and just barely avoided being recruited.  Their museum shows a good history of the geographic area, as well as the history of the USMC.  Watching the new recruits march by was interesting, especially with the antics of the “hats” (the platoon Drill Instructors) continually jumping & yelling at their Marine wannabes.

USMC MCRD

 

Click on this to enlarge

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hunting Island coastal forest

 

We took a drive east to the barrier island of Hunting Island, where we toured a very nice state park.  The most interesting part was the combination of live oak trees, large pine trees, short saw palmetto trees, and taller cabbage palmetto trees.  It looked like an equatorial jungle (although I’ll admit, I’ve never actually been to an equatorial jungle).



Hunting Island lighthouse.  Yes, we climbed
this one, too!

 

 

 

Of course, we tried to eat at all the good restaurants around town, and we did get our share of shrimp and crab cakes.  When we drove east across St Helena Island, we were in the middle of Gullah country, so we had to eat at the local restaurant.   Your history lesson for today includes the fact that the Gullah culture developed from the African slaves, who tended the cotton, indigo and rice plantations on the Sea Islands (barrier islands), and were quite isolated from the society on the mainland.  The Gullah culture retained a significant portion of their African heritage, and developed their own language and lifestyle.

She-crab soup, collard greens,
potato salad, & corn bread!



Since we had our car, we also drove to other marinas & boatyards in the area, to begin looking for a marina to stay at this winter.  Ideally, we want to stay in South Carolina for the winter, so we can cruise to the Great Lakes next summer.  We’ll continue this search as we cruise northbound this weekend (after the cold front passes through).  We’re planning a 3-day cruise to Georgetown SC, and maybe one more day to Myrtle Beach.   At that point, it will be time to retrieve our car again & drive back to TN to see Sue’s mother, as well as several of our old boating friends (no, the friends are not really old!)





The Admiral is happy with her magnolia
blossoms and Gullah sweetgrass fan!



Beaufort City Park - a pet rabbit with a leash

We're in Marine Country

No, that is not marine (as in nautical), but Marine, as in USMC.  Aircraft flying low overhead from Parris Island and the Marine Corps Air Station, Marines all over town, Marines in the news - this gotta be the safest town in the country!

We left our 2-nite anchorage just west of Hilton Head Island around noon yesterday to m (ake the short 25 mile cruise into Port Royal, SC (right next to Beaufort SC).  With the tidal range of about 8' (and corresponding strong currents), we wanted to time our arrival at the marina for slack tide & no current.  Our anchor came up clean, even though we anchored in mud, but the trip line to the anchor (which I keep attached at all times), was horribly wrapped around the anchor chain.  That's what happens when the boat swings 180 degrees every 6 hours with the tide.

We had time to spare, so we travelled at idle speed most of the way.  We were really a "crawler" at 6-7 mph.  I know that would drive our friends on "Barefootin" utterly insane!  But to make Clint happy, we took pictures of Parris Island (USMC Recruit Depot) so he can recall all his fun times there.

We arrived at Port Royal Landing Marina as planned, but had a terrible time docking the boat as we tried to turn around 180 degrees into the strong wind.  No damage was done, except to our egos.  Sometimes, everything you try just doesn't work out (enough said).

We'll stay here for a week as we retrieve our car from Jacksonville, & see what there is to see in the area.  We'll also ask questions about keeping our boat in this area during the upcoming winter months.  Next summer, we're hoping to get to Lake Erie, so we don't want to start cruising so far south as Florida.

North to South Carolina

Across from the fuel dock, Jacksonville Landing
had a festival going on.

Our week at Ortega Landing in Jacksonville went by quickly.  The upcoming week had absolutely beautiful weather forecast (but should we really trust a weather prognosticator?), so we wanted to get some cruising under our keel.  We departed on Sunday May 4, but stopped in downtown Jacksonville to fill up our fuel tanks.  We only needed 205 gallons, but at $4.00/gallon, we had to take out a second mortgage.

Playing "follow the leader" along the ICW

On the 24-mile trip back to the ICW, we enjoyed a following current on the outgoing tide all the way down the St Johns River.  There were numerous small pleasure boats on the river, but we only passed one ocean-going ship.  We proceeded north on the IC W where we had been twice before, and it was easy to follow our “bread crumbs” of our previous route showing on our chartplotter.  We traveled with 3 other boats in a “follow the leader” style as we picked our way through the shallow areas.  I followed a sailboat with a deep keel (that’s one good thing about sailboats!)

Another festival at Fernandina Beach FL

As we neared our planned anchorage just west of Fernandina Beach on Amelia Island, we saw and heard the festival going on in the city.  The shrimp boats we all decorated & the live bands were heard over the waterways.  It must have been either a Blessing of the Fleet, or maybe a Shrimp Festival.  We were able to listen to the music at our anchorage a mile away.



Our anchorage across the ICW from Fernandina Beach.
With the 2 paper mills, we could always tell which
way the wind was blowing!

Monday morning we got up at zero-dark-thirty to run offshore.  We had planned a one-day 120-mile run from St Mary’s Inlet north to Hilton Head S.C.  That run would bypass 150 miles of tortuous ICW travel through at least 5 areas of dangerous shoaling through Georgia. Had we tried to travel the ICW in this area, it would have taken us 3-4 days, with the tide cycle (and the need to cross the shoaling areas at half-tide or better).  Besides, that big high pressure system gave us absolutely gorgeous weather offshore.

Gee, which direction are we heading this morning??!

We were underway 20 minutes before sunrise and saw that big ball of fire rise right out of the ocean as we headed east out the Inlet.  This St Mary’s Inlet is very well marked and dredged, since the Navy uses it for their nuclear ballistic missile submarines to go to their Kings Bay GA base.  Sue wanted to know what the “warning” area meant on the chart at the entrance, so I explained to her that this is where the submarines surface after deployment, to enter the channel to come home.  Unfortunately, we didn’t have any excitement Monday morning.

Our planned route took us right through the area
that the shrimpers were working!

We continued our travel about 5-10 miles offshore, and the seas layed down nicely.  I was glad to see that the Atlantic Ocean read the same weather forecast that I did!  We got used to following our chartplotter and our charted course on the paper charts, along with our autopilot,  radar and magnetic compass.  One leg of our trip was about 70 miles long, so we “crawled” along at 10 mph for almost 7 hours before requiring a turn.  In general, the trip was boring and uneventful – exactly the kind of trip we had hoped for!

We came back in at the southern tip of Hilton Head Island & waved to all the mega-yachts in their marina.  We found our anchorage about 2 miles west of Hilton Head & settled down for the night, content that we made our 12-hour offshore passage with no problems.

Tuesday, we decided to remain anchored in Bull Creek for the day, to read & relax.  We enjoyed a nice breeze all day, even though the temp was 86F.  We opened all the windows, put up the bug screens, & enjoyed the day.  We have cell phone & wifi coverage, so we got caught up on emails & travel blogs.  Tomorrow we’re headed 25 miles north to Port Royal Landing Marina (right next to Parris Island – a place of fond memories for all you USMC-types) to spend a week.  We’ll do some sight-seeing and retrieve our car from Jacksonville.  And plan some more on how to get to the Chesapeake Bay!

A new season begins

The pantries were full, the refrigerator was overflowing & the beer and wine were more than adequately provisioned, so it was finally time to set sail (or fire up the engines).  We departed Monroe Harbour Marina in Sanford, heading for Jacksonville, on Thursday April 24 about 0930, after waiting for an hour for the fog to lift.  Once it did, we commenced three cruising days of gorgeous weather.

Carol models the latest fashion of life jackets!

My sister Carol wanted to see as much of Florida wildlife that she could, so within the first hour she saw the first of many alligators sunning themselves (the first one was a good 14’ long).  That started a 3-day litany of herons, egrets, ibis, osprey, eagles, white birds, black birds, black & white birds, etc, etc, (ad infinitum).  Her constant pose was binoculars in one hand, her bird book in her other hand, and her camera……….???  I think at the end of the trip, she was satiated with all that was seen.

Getting the dinghy ready to launch

We anchored the first night just off the main channel of the St Johns River, just south of the town of Astor FL.  A small houseboat was also anchored nearby, and as the folks passed by in their small fishing boat, we hollered for them to stop on their return trip for a drink.  A short hour later, we were entertained by a husband/wife from the local area with their antics and stories.  That’s how to meet the locals even when anchored out for the night.

Getting to meet the "locals"

Day 2 was to be a short day, so we decided to anchor outside of Silver Glen Springs again, launch the dinghy, and give Carol a ride into the clear waters of the springs.  We didn’t put on the outboard motor because of the extra effort to do so, but in hindsight, the extra effort in rowing the dinghy made up for it.  We passed a guy in his motorized dinghy who took pity on us, and gave us a tow back to our boat, anchored about ¾ mile away.  How to meet more locals, even when you’re anchored.

That evening we anchored again in a beautiful side channel called Murphy Creek, just south of Palatka FL.  It was quiet (with an occasional jet ski zooming by) and relaxing with a cool breeze just before sunset.  It was a perfect evening in a perfect location.  This is what we hoped to realize every night that we spend on the hook.

A quiet anchorage

Day 3 had even more perfect cruising weather, as we continued northbound (down river – the St Johns River is one of the few rivers in the country to flow northbound).  The river widened significantly and the number of crab traps multiplied exponentially.  We found our marina on the Ortega River a little southwest of Jacksonville, and Admiral Sue made another perfect landing as she backed into our slip.  She had been a bit nervous prior to doing so, since she hadn’t docked the boat in 6 months.

We had two more days in Jacksonville before Carol had to fly back to the cold country of Michigan, so we enjoyed some local restaurants, but especially enjoyed some time in the marina swimming pool.  She said it had been a long time since she had been swimming outside in April!

We’ll stay at this marina for a week while we retrieve our car from Sanford and plan for the next leg of the trip.  We want to get through Georgia quickly since we’ve already been there, and right now, it looks like the weather will be good enough to allow us to cruise outside in the Atlantic, rather than taking the tortuous route of the Intercoastal Waterway.  Time to get out the ol’ plotter and dividers and put our US Power Squadrons training to use.

I finally learned that things go much more
smoothly when the Admiral gets some flowers!

Family Reunion in Orlando

Admiral Sue, niece Khalan, sister Carol,
sister-in-law Cindy.  Four roses in the park!

My sister flies down two days before Easter from Grand Rapids MI to get away from all the cold & snow they're STILL having, to tour the area & go cruising with us on our planned 3-day trip north (down the St John River) to Jacksonville.  This was Carol's first time aboard our boat, but she'll learn quickly how to swab the decks & be a part-time galley wench.

The next day, my sister-in-law flies down from snowy upstate New York with her daughter & family, bringing lots of those good Yankee dollars, to act like tourists for a week in Orlando.  So, Easter Sunday we all get together for a reunion of sorts, being that we haven't been all together for 2-1/2 years.  We all had a good, though short, visit.

We've finalized our trip plan up to Jacksonville, noting where we will anchor for two nights.  Carol is hoping to see lots of Florida wildlife, and we're always aiming to please.  The ladies are continuing to shop for provisions (at least that's their excuse for buying all this food).  And we'll show Carol some of the local sights, including driving to the seashore next to Cape Canaveral to squish some sand between our toes.  Departure will be either Wednesday or Thursday of this week.  As the Navy ships always said before leaving the dock:

"Make all necessary preparations for getting under way!"

Another 1000 miles last week

After re-reading the ending of my last blog posting, I find it amusing that I was so naïve to think that we would really have 2 whole weeks to prepare to go cruising.

It all started just as we were preparing to leave New Orleans on March 31.  Sue was actually in the doctor’s exam room when she received a phone call from the realtor in TN.  She said that we had a good solid offer to buy the house in Cleveland.  Was this just an early April Fool’s joke?  We were already set to drive to Jacksonville on April 1 to change our legal residence to Florida, with voting cards, driver’s licenses, and car registration, because we hoped to sell the TN house (our legal address).  Since Sue needed a day to gather more information about the house offer, we made the trip to Jacksonville on Tuesday, and then drove back to Cleveland TN on Wednesday.

Sue getting ready to crawl under the
house with all the spiders & bugs.

The offer was indeed valid, so we decided we could spend about 10 days in TN before we had to get to the boat to prepare for my relatives coming to Orlando at Easter.  We asked our realtor to expedite all house inspections so we could address them before we departed.

The home inspections were relatively innocuous EXCEPT for the fact that we had to remove a whole bunch of sheetrock construction debris which the builder threw under the house.  We rented an 8 cubic foot dumpster which we filled with an estimated 1-1/2 tons of damp sheetrock.  We had to hire a day laborer to crawl under the house to help us.  The worst part was having to handle each piece of debris 4 separate times in getting it into the dumpster, and each time, the sheetrock crumbled some more.

Clint & Leigh aboard their new yacht

Sue succeeded in selling all the appliances remaining in the house, using Craig’s List.  We also succeeded in filling a 10’ x 10’ storage unit with the remaining articles in the house, some of which we had just brought from her uncle in Ohio.  We were pushing hard all week to get everything completed, and were finally looking at a vacant house on Saturday April 12.  We were fortunate to be able to spend Saturday night at the home of John & Susan, fellow boaters and Hurricane Katrina refugees, rather than at a motel.

Captain Clint on the TN River
passing under Lookout Mountain

On another happy note, we were invited by some of our best friends, Clint & Leigh, to help them move their new 39’ Silverton boat to a different home marina.  Several years ago when we lived on our boat in the Chattanooga area, Leigh & Clint became our Boating Buddies when we took several week-long trips together along the Tennessee River.  This time, we helped them move “Barefootin” about 100 miles south, through some of the most beautiful mountains & scenery of the Tennessee River.  Clint claimed he needed a certified Deck Ape as he took his new boat through the two locks, so he put the call out far & near; all he got was me.  Seriously, it was a boatload of fun & most relaxing to be on the water with our friends again.

So now we can finally head back to our boat & our home.  We’ve been gone 4 weeks, and drove from Orlando to Cleveland TN, to Mansfield OH, back to TN, then to New Orleans, to Jacksonville, back to TN, and finally to Orlando.  We’ll have 4 days to prepare for my sister’s arrival to join us for cruising, and the following day my sister-in-law and family come to Orlando for a previously-planned vacation.  Looks like Sue & I are gonna start to get busy!

Captain Clint and Admiral Leigh celebrating the arrival
of their new boat at their new marina
with their "hired crew"

News from the Trenches

We’ve made our whirlwind tour around the country to take care of family & personal matters before making final preparations to go cruising this year.
We drove to TN on March 16, where we prepped, primed, and painted the porches and doors around the outside of the house. The weather was marginal for painting outside, but by the end of the week, it finally warmed up enough to work.  We also squeezed in a dinner meeting with our friends at the Chattanooga Sail & Power Squadron.  The highlight there was that one of our best boating buddies, Clint & Leigh, just purchased a bigger hole-in-the-water.  They’re in the motor yacht category now, and their new boat has many more things to break & fail.  Nonetheless, we wish them the best.

This is really fun at 70 mph!

We then drove northward for another day to Mansfield OH to take care of Sue’s uncle’s affairs.  Her uncle is doing OK in a nursing home, but we had to clean out the storage unit which still held his belongings from a year ago.  Sue placed an ad on Craig’s List to sell his motorized wheelchair, which was picked up by a scammer in Canada.  The scammer put forth all his lies and sob stories before finally asking Sue to wire money to cover the shipping charges.  After he claimed that he deposited money in Sue’s PayPal account, a quick phone call confirmed his lie.  He even sent Sue a fake email from PayPal with their logo and everything.

I was surprised to see piles of white crap still on the ground in OH!  As hard as I tried, I couldn’t get them to change into powder-white sand dunes of Florida.  And just to rub salt into the wound, on the drive back south, we ran into a mini snow blizzard just south of Cincinnati.  40 mph winds with snow coming down so hard that visibility was reduced to 100 yards at times.  Seems like ol’ man winter just ain’t gonna go away!

Next was New Orleans, where Sue took care of her medical check-ups & also got her “Oma fix” by spoiling our granddaughter for 4 days.  After some doughnuts, a movie, some carnival rides, and a huge ice cream cone, she was on a severe sugar-high, and we returned her to her parents! 

Finally, in case we ran out of things to do, we began notifying the myriad of people of our change of address to Florida.  Since the house in TN is for sale, and since we live on our boat, we needed to find some state somewhere to claim legal residence, so we can keep paying taxes to someone.  We decided to use a mail-forwarding service in Green Cove Springs FL to receive all our mail & then send it to a marina or general delivery post office as we travel.  So on our way back to the boat this week, we’ll stop at the Clay County Court House to change all our paperwork to a Florida address. 

At that point, we’ll have just two weeks to provision the boat & do final trip planning.  Looking forward to being on the boat & traveling northward to Chesapeake Bay this summer.