DotCalm

Caught some luck with wind and wind direction for our departure to Fernandina Beach crossing St. Andrew’s Sound. Wind at 13 knots and from the SSW which created some low chop, but nothing scary. Forecast for tomorrow includes peppier winds and a northern persuasion, something definitely to be avoided.  The dock hand at Golden Isles Marina remarked that the sound can get “pretty snotty” in any north wind.  Glad to miss that experience.  Next leg of our trip was about four hours and we encountered some pretty skinny water at low tides.  I tried to get a couple of photos to demonstrate, but they do not quite capture the stomach clenching feeling of watching the depth sounder show shallower and shallower water.  We were also treated to some new wildlife displays — wood storks (which I did not manage to capture on film), white pelicans (which the books say are quite rare) and wild horses (on a island nature sanctuary).  We also saw many other sea birds and the pleasant sight of dolphins slipping easily through the choppy water. Fernandina Harbour Marina is nestled between two gigantic paper mills and is much nicer than that sounds. Wind is up, so no smell. The town itself is charming and compact — something like we expected in St. Simon’s! Lots of independent stores and restaurants, friendly people and relaxed attitudes. Roger got caught in a downpour while strolling downtown and was invited up to take shelter on a beautiful front porch by one of the Fernandina residents.  Stopped in to a bar (shock!) called The Palace which dates from the late 1800’s. The bar itself was designed by Adolph Busch and features carvings of semi-clad maidens and a huge mirror. A tin ceiling and intricate mosaic floor are all original and it really is a bar….no food, no snacks and a distinct hint of spilled beer and cigarettes wafting about. Also, much nicer than it sounds. We’ll spend two nights here which will give us time to stretch our legs, spend some $$ at West Marine and relax aboard without any crewing tasks. Dinner at a local Italian bistro called Ciao tonight, a nice change of pace from our usual seafood spots. And I’m sure we’ll get in a few games of Mexican Train.

A beautiful, still morning in our secluded New Tea Kettle Creek anchorage. Cliff was up at 2am to check on the anchor at high tide and spent an hour or so “enjoying” the quiet dark and the stars that finally appeared. (They were no where to be seen when we went to bed because of a thick cloud cover.) He heard alligator bulls sending out raucous love calls, bullfrogs doing the same and the gentle swish of the creek current wrapping itself around the boat. For safety sake, we kept the deck lights on and I’m sure looked like a UFO to anyone with a view toward our boat. We learned that we were moored in a marsh and not a swamp despite the bellowing of alligators.  Swamps are populated with trees; marshes feature grass.  The specific grass here is called cordgrass and it feeds, protects and otherwise nurtures an abundance of marine and animal life.  The water was glassy and nearly still as we ate breakfast as it was slack tide; the water ripples soon multiplied announcing a change in the current before we had the dishes washed. The cruise to St. Simons was mostly gray and it started to rain as we made the long u-turn into the water leading to Golden Isle Marina. Hot showers and fresh clothes were the first order of business before taking a taxi into the village of St. Simons. The shopping/restaurant area was a bit of a disappointment with mostly touristy tee shirt and souvenir stores and pretty ordinary looking restaurants, though Barbara Jean’s Restaurant’s claim of having the world’s best crab cakes was enticing. Fortunately, a salesperson Cliff encountered was polite in responding to his question as to whether there might be a shopping area with a Prada or something like that nearby. (Prada? Cliff?) She didn’t seem offended and answered, “You’d think with all the money on this island there would be. But nope.”  We decided dinner back at the marina was a better bet and it was a good choice. We will have an early start tomorrow morning in order to cross St. Andrew’s Sound before the winds increase or decide to take a northerly bearing. We’ve been warned about how nasty the waters in the sound can be. In fact, our friend Ron Greeley advised us to stay put until weather turned fair. “Sell the boat if you have to,” he advised. We are taking his warning to heart!

I’ll skip the weather dramatics and just say that the sun finally appeared as we were about to cook hamburgers on the outdoor grill. Hooray. It was gray nearly the entire trip from Savannah to New Tea Kettle Creek anchorage, except that it started drizzling as we made our way off the ICW and into the creek. We debated about eating inside or out….and the emerging sun and bright breeze made up our minds. Dinner al fresco. Beautiful. Peaceful. Amazing. Ahhhh. The 60+ mile trip to this evening’s anchorage (this means not a marina….we are in an area with no services, no dockage and no shore access at all) was quite enjoyable despite the grey weather. We realized how close we were to the Atlantic Ocean when we saw waves breaking on the shoals in Sapelo Sound. We were treated to visits by dolphin for our entire trip — small groups surfacing several times in a row and then, seemingly, disappearing into the depths. You saw yesterday’s Keith Haring cartoon drawing of dolphins and, hopefully, noted their beaks. These beaks are one of the distinguishing characteristics of dolphin compared to porpoises; porpoises have a rounded, beak-less face. Here are some others: dolphin travel in groups while porpoise roam in pairs and trios; dolphin are larger — 9 feet or longer is not unusual while porpoise are rarely larger than 7 feet; dolphin vocalization can be heard by humans, but porpoise make sounds that are above human listening ranges. Both of these mammals echo-locate — which means they identify objects around them by bouncing sound waves off of them. The area where we are moored is filled with birds. We saw a flock of two dozen white egrets take flight as a group from the grassy march as we arrived. As sunset approached, the near shores were filled with red wing blackbirds and their meadow calls. We watched lesser terns, royal terms and cormorants (or maybe they were anhingas?) diving as pelicans glided barely inches over the water. I missed seeing some sort of furry animal cross one of the rivers — we guessed a muskrat, since it is unlikely that either otter or beaver roam these areas. We did some research and found out that there are 200,000 alligators living in Georgia…..sure hope they prefer other areas. Dinner on board consisted on grilled hamburgers and a Whole Foods pasta salad. Tomorrow’s breakfast will require actual preparation — dill egg salad with smoked salmon plus fruit salad.

 

Gray, but not raining! A day to explore Savannah. First to the Jepson Contemporary Art Museum specifically for an Andy Warhol print retrospective, which was terrific and featured a number of other “pop art” luminaries. The exhibit had a number of Warhol’s most famous pieces including the camouflage series, the Liza Minnelli portrait and the Marilyn Monroe series. Another gallery featured an exhibit titled “The Visual Blues,” focusing on the Harlem renaissance with a musical backdrop of great jazz tunes. Swiss-born artist Katja Loher presents wildly creative video compilations focusing on endangered insect species that pollinate much of the food crops humans rely on. The videos “seem” to show bees, bats, hummingbirds and other species, but turn out to be costumed humans. You have to see them to understand how complex and amazing these dance-like performances are. We’re on a cruise, after all, so our next stop (after some refreshments, of course!) was the Ships of the Sea Museum, housed in a Greek revival mansion in the central city area. Intricate models of sailing ships, steam paddle-wheelers, passenger ships (including the Titanic), military ships and all manner of boats, mostly named “Savannah” are the focus. The gardens are worth visiting all on their own. Dinner at 700 Drayton, a restaurant housed in a historic mansion which is part of a hotel named, appropriately, The Mansion, was terrific. Elegant and delicious and leisurely enough to be a perfect ending to our day.

Well, since it snowed in Chicago yesterday, I suppose there’s no complaining about a little bit of rain and some cloudy skies. A coolish trip from Hilton Head to Savannah with the excitement of crossing the busy, commercial Savannah River and seeing many beautiful river-front homes along the way. We are moored on the forward dock at Isle of Hope Marina which is several miles outside of Savannah proper. It is quite different from Harbour Town. Isle of Hope is small and quaint with modest power and sail boats (with a few exceptions that you’ll see in photos) arrayed in straight dock rows perpendicular to the river’s current. We are on the face wall which means the current runs along our length, creating a constant, yet irregular, lapping sound that we’ll have to get used to at bedtime! I’m thinking it might be restful. Spent the afternoon along the river walk area of Savannah after lunching at Vic’s on the recommendation of Roger’s daughter Kim. Good choice! Appetizers of crispy calamari, crawfish beignets and crab cakes and then full lunches that will hold us until breakfast tomorrow (maybe).

Harbour Town Yacht Basin at Sea Pines Resort on Hilton Head is the Ritz Carlton of marinas. Wow! The boats around us are gorgeous and there are townhouses and condos encircling the harbor. Several clothing stores and the usual tee-shirt emporiums are nearby, but the grocery store is a half-mile away. Fortunately, Will and Roger borrowed the courtesy car in Beaufort and made a grocery run so we are well supplied. And, as Will noted when he explored the various storage areas on the boat, most of them were filled with cases of wine. This place has a very yacht-y feel — a perfect setting — if only the weather had cooperated. Despite grey, cloudy skies and some rain, the temperature is mild. A good day for catching up on some chores like laundry (I am pretty certain we were the only crew in the harbor that does its own laundry!) and stowing away a variety of things that did not find themselves back in the right spots during our first days of cruising. Also a good day for playing cards and Mexican Train with Will trouncing the rest of us as usual. Roger and I spent some time reading the electronic version of the NYTimes and lamented about the state of the world while enjoying our privileged perch. There is something about cruising that makes the realities of the world outside our tiny orbit seem far away and not as pressing or distressing. Not sure if that is good or bad. For now, we are focused on our here and now and that is very, very good indeed.

Explored more of Beaufort this morning after a glorious breakfast at Blackstone’s. Beaufort’s architecture is more West Indies than plantation. Spring is definitely springing here — azaleas just starting to blossom, mollie azaleas full of fragrance, camellias in white and pink plus the flowering trees, many of which are laden with Spanish moss. Trip to Hilton Head was an adventure, crossing wide expanses of water on the look-out for the marks that would lead us in our southerly direction. Weather warmed up quite a bit — hooray — enough that shorts were not totally crazy, though having a jacket nearby made sense.  Hilton Head’s Sea Pines Resort is quite posh!  We arrived to sunshine and enough wind to make mooring a challenge, but Cliff did a fabulous job with nary a pause from turning into the slip to having lines and power cord secured.

Underway, at last! Heading from Charleston to Beaufort. This trip has been a dream 20 years in the making. I can still remember getting an ICW cruising guide as a Christmas present when we were still living at 1949 Lincoln and reading it from cover to cover within a week. Doing it now is even better. No telephone calls to make back to the office, clients to worry about or other pre-retirement duties are calling. Ahhhh. That’s the sound of happy. The course of the Intracoastal from Charleston starts at Wapoo Creek and winds through a number of river channels — it is very calm and usually bordered by marsh areas that look prairie-like at low tide and more like seaweed at high tide. You get a very good idea of why this area is called the Low Country.  Special note about Beaufort….in South Carolina it is pronounced Bew-fort (as in Beautiful).  In North Carolina they go for the French version:  Bow-fort.

Awoke to a rainy and grey day with a Coast Guard warning about coastal flooding. Apparently, flooding is a fairly common occurrence in Charleston. Yesterday’s tour guide remarked that his family routinely carries furniture from the first floor to the second and then hopes for the best for the appliances too large to move. A nice thing about being on a boat is that “coastal flooding” just means that the water gets deeper!  Will’s comment about the weather was perfect:  “Even a grey day on Dot.Calm is bright.”  Today we cruised back to Gdansk, er, I mean the original boat yard, to pick up repaired stanchion and the dinghy that the truck driver, thankfully, dropped off. The grey sky matched the grey of military refueling ships that seem to be in dry dock and the USS Yorktown aircraft carrier, an on-the-water museum/attraction. Our route took us under the stunning Arthur Ravenal Bridge that spans the Cooper River — pronounced, we learned on our tour, to rhyme with “cooker” and not “coo-per.”  We celebrated our first mini-cruise with granola-banana-blueberry-yogurt parfaits and a glass of champagne. Yum. Afternoon spent zipping to variety of stores to get a long list of things we’ve decided we cannot do without before we set off tomorrow for the first leg of our ICW trip from Charleston to Beaufort.

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A walking tour with a 7th generation Charlestonian today. (His wife, he said, dates her family history in the city back for 11 generations!) He is a retired math and science teacher with definite opinions and wide-ranging knowledge. I can say for sure that his comments about the North’s “War of Aggression” had a different slant from the Civil War history I’ve read. Several of the Yankee guests pointed out (under their breath) that the South had fired the first shot at Fort Sumpter, but I do not think their version would have changed his mind. He was enthusiastic (and all of the Dot.Calm crew were aghast) about the city’s restrictive zoning policies. Exterior paint colors require hard-to-get approvals and it is completely verboten to take down interior walls or even break through them even to add air conditioning. So while Charleston residents may not be cool, they do have a lovely city to show for it. We learned that SOB has an entirely different and snooty meaning here — South of Broad, where the truly rich live in fabulous 17th and 18th century homes. Later we saw a restaurant, north of Broad, that capitalized (literally) on this local geographic distinction: South (Nearly) of Broad, otherwise known as S.N.O.B. We lunched at chef Sean Brock’s Husk, his original restaurant renowned for its local, Southern ingredient focus. I had some sort of rebel whisky concoction that went down way too easily!  If you haven’t tried pigs ears, I’d say go for it if you get the chance!

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