A Sigh of Relief

Beaufort, NC
May 24, 2014

The Waterfront at Swansboro

We have reached Beaufort, NC, (bow-fort, as opposed to bew-fert where we spent so much time this winter), and I say this with a bit of trepidation because you never know what the gods have in store for you, but we feel like we are done with the worst part of the ICW. We spent the last two nights in the village of Swansboro, gathering our courage for the transit through Bogue Sound. Many "thin spots" in the water and one serious grounding just before reaching Mile Hammock Bay on the Camp LeJeune Marine Corps base, our intermediate stop between Southport and Swansboro, had rattled the skipper's nerves, so we took a day off to do some boat maintenance and explore the village.

Bogue  sound is a wide body of very shallow water with a very narrow channel through it and a couple of shoaling areas. A cross wind had the skipper a little nervous about the 20 mile transit, but we made it through without incident, with Captain Braveheart doing much of the steering. So now we are anchored in Town Creek Marina, looking forward to a good dinner at the Aqua restaurant and a quiet night on the hook.

                                    These guys have saved our behinds a couple of times.

 

Swansboro offers quite a few opportunities for "quaint" photos.

 

 

Muscovy Ducks are the town mascots. They wander the streets freely.

Yana's is a popular breakfast and lunch spot.

Fresh, locally caught grouper for dinner!

This is NOT us!

Discarded Crab Pots

More Drama on the Waterway

Angie's Journal  
Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina Monday, May 19, 2014

Crabber, Wynyah Bay

There’s never a shortage of drama. The day before yesterday we came into this spacious anchorage in Wrightsville Beach, NC, only a few boats, settled weather. So we get up the next morning and there is a little blue boat, no name or registration number, anchored kind of close to us, but Jim thinks it is going going to be all right. Well we get up this morning, and when we look out he is uncomfortably close. The wind is opposing the current, and when that happens, Bel Canto has the habit of riding up on her anchor chain. It is not all right—Bel Canto is about twenty feet from the blue boat. Jim starts the engine to avoid a collision, and the captain of the other boat comes up to see what is going on. Jim says, “We are too close. One of us has to move.” Well, the law, or at least the custom, is that the first boat to anchor has the right of way, but this guy tells Jim that he is having a problem with his transmission. So we pull up the anchor and find a new spot. Anchoring in a crowded anchorage is not my favorite maneuver, but about an hour later we are set again in a spot far enough from all of the other boats. Then this afternoon, Sea Tow brings in a disabled boat and they anchor about a hundred feet from us. Jim radios the captain of the Sea Tow boat and tells him that he thinks they are too close. Sea Tow says that as long as we all swing the same way we’ll be fine, but Jim tells him that that isn’t what happens. Sea Tow knows the rules, and reluctantly moves the disabled boat away from us.

We Share the Cape Fear River

After the excitement at McCellanville, we made it up to Georgetown without any problems. There’s no good place to anchor there, and we had reserved a space at Hazzard Marine. Hazzard Marine has a face dock, a long pier parallel to the water, which I like because it makes it easy to dock the boat, and Susan, the dockmaster did a great job of helping us with the lines. Across the dock from us was the boat Salt Shaker, that had been on a mooring near us in Beaufort, SC. Walter and Gwen, the crew on Salt Shaker, told us about the mooring field in Beaufort drama that we had missed. The winds were blowing about 25 knots, and a boat anchored just outside the mooring field began to drag into the mooring field. It just missed Salt Shaker but dragged into a boat near them and did about two thousand dollars worth of damage. This boat also had a faulty transmission. TowBoatUS towed them to to the town dock, which made the rest of the boats in the mooring field happy.

From Georgetown we went up the waterway and anchored in Bull Creek, one of our favorite anchorages on the Wacamaw River. It is a fairly deep creek, fourteen to eighteen feet all over, and surrounded by trees, so a lot more protected than the marsh grass anchorages farther south in South Carolina. We were all alone, but the next morning as we were pulling up anchor, another blue hulled double ender, Grace,  passed us. They had come in when we were below and anchored farther up the creek. We met them later in Southport and they told us that when they came into the creek and saw us they said, “Look, we are already here.”

In Bull Creek we studied the waterway on up to Southport, NC, and decided we’d rather avoid all of the shallow spots and problem bridges, so we back tracked to Georgetown and anchored in Wynyah Bay, near the ocean, waiting for the right time to make another ocean passage so that we would arrive in Southport after daylight. At five thirty we pulled up the anchor. It took us two and a half hours to make it out into the ocean clear of all of the shoals against a two to three knot current, but we made it before dark. We had a southwest wind of about 10 knots and were able to sail for about four hours and motorsail the rest of the way. It was a pleasant sail under a full moon, and we got into the channel of the Cape Fear River around seven a.m.

The man made harbor at Southport is tight with fairly shallow water. We had hoped to dock at the face dock, but the harbor master told us they were saving that for “bigger boats,” and directed us to a T-dock behind a big catamaran. It was a tight turn, and Jim was going as slowly as possible, as he always does. The wind caught the bow and we could see we weren’t going to make it. Jim threw the boat into reverse. Bel Canto has a mind of her own in reverse, and as we neared the bank behind us we hoped that there was enough water that we wouldn’t go aground. Jim got the boat turning the right way, I threw the dock hand a spring line, and we eased in behind the catamaran.

Shipboard entertainment, Beaufort

Southport turned out to be a timely stop. When we plugged into shore power, we discovered that our inverter/battery charger had crapped out. We already knew that the pump to the hose that we use to clean the mud off the anchor chain had failed, so we got them both replaced. Steve, the service manager, and Jeff, the electrician, knocked themselves out and we were soon ready to go again. Jim thought he had died and gone to heaven because he no longer had to dip a bucket to wash down the anchor chain.

At first I didn’t care much for Southport. After we arrived we set out looking for a breakfast/lunch place. We walked about a mile before we found a place called “Locals,” the only place that serves a full breakfast in Southport. By the time we got there we decided that lunch was more appropriate and ordered fish and chips. Most of the food on the menu was deep fried, not our usual fare, but hungry and dead tired after a night on the water, we just needed food. So my first impressions of the town weren’t very good.

Attentive Audience

But on the way back to the boat we passed a place called the Wine Rack. We stopped in and the owner told us about the Friday night wine tasting. He showed me the list of featured wines, a pinot noir, pinot grigio, chardonnay, Barbera, and a Tempranillo, all my favorite wines. I told him we would be back. He also sold premium coffee, and we bought a pound of Guatemalan. Then we kept walking and discovered the really cool section of Southport, down by the river. After we rested up this was where we hung out. We had some great sword fish, salmon, and grouper dinners at the Fishy Fishy and at Provision Seafood. They are both funky little places that reminded me of Key West in the Seventies. We listened to some great music at Fishy Fishy by two guitarists, one of whom had been on the road with Tina Turner among others.

The Friday night wine tasting was another hit. It cost five dollars a person, but if you bought a bottle of wine you got the five dollars back. They had great snacking food, crackers and cheese, salami, chips, spinach dip, and salsa. A glass of wine was five dollars for a generous serving. We ended up getting a bottle of the Barbera. So after further exploration of the town, I changed my opinion. Good food, good wine, good music and kind people will do it every time.

Just another sunset on the ocean

"For All In Tents and Porpoises. . ." a poem

If you have been following our blog, you know what a thrill we get from the dolphins that we see almost every day and that sometimes come to play around our boat. After our first sea adventure 28 years ago, as we were passing by Marine World, we saw two dolphins coming from that direction, and we fantasized that they were escapees. The first line and a half of this poem started circulating in my head (at that time I mistakenly thought we were seeing porpoises). Many years later the line materialized into a poem. With apologies to those who may have seen it in our 2010 blog, I am repeating it here.

For all in tents
and porpoises and whales
kept captive for our delight
I apologize.
Nor do I think it right
to discriminate
against beasts of the field,
although there may be some debate
about the food we eat--
I love my meat.
But it makes me sad
to see hogs and cattle
stuffed into pens like sausages.
I would rather we take
just what we need
from all the gods have given--
that would be heaven!
We have grown too many,
but at the least
I will take my pleasure
from seeing the beasts
where they freely roam
in their native home--
or not at all.


Jim George

Back up the Ditch

Sunrise, Minim Creek Anchorage

We had our plans all worked out for the next leg of our journey, from Beaufort, SC, up to Georgetown. This is a problematic stretch of the waterway, with several patches of low water and a couple of bridges we had to be careful going under. This meant getting just the right timing of high and low tides to have clearance on both ends. So we delayed our  departure from Beaufort for a week to get it just right. (No problem—we love Beaufort!) Well, you know what Robert Burns said about the best laid plans of mice and men.

Roof Party

Monday, the Cinco de Mayo, was a beautiful day to set out. We slipped our mooring just in time to make the nine o’clock opening of the Lady’s Island bridge and passed under our first bridge with a good foot and half to spare over the tip of our mast. As usual, a few dolphins showed themselves as we were setting out, and in spite of a fair amount of traffic ranging from paddle boarders to jet skiers, we looked for a pleasant day on the water. The goal was to reach the notorious Ashepoo-Coosaw cut, a five mile stretch where we had calculated 3 feet of water at low tide, on a rising tide, then anchor for the night on the other side.

All went well until we reached the Marine Air Force refueling station about an hour out of Beaufort. We were passing the Marine base dock when Angie noticed this guy in a life jacket frantically waving and yelling at us. We wheeled around to see what the nutcase wanted and were informed that we couldn’t go through because the marines were conducting firing practice up ahead. No guard boat, no sign, just a guy on the dock waving his arms. He told us the firing would go on until noon, and that we would have to anchor some place and wait to go through. While we were doing that, several more boats came along and would have passed on through if we hadn’t radioed them to tell them what was going on. One power boater was very skeptical of our “rumors” and kept spouting off on the radio about how this didn’t make sense. Well, just before noon a marine launch did show up from the firing area and tell us that the firing would be over at one thirty. A little after one a power boat came through from the other direction, evidently missing whatever warnings the marines had placed on that end, and that ended their playing war. This put us three and a half hours behind schedule and would get us to the Ashepoo-Coosaw cut on a falling tide.

The Marine who was supposed to stop traffic

We started thinking of alternatives and decided that we could go down the Coosaw River and toward the ocean on St. Helena Sound, and then up the Ashepoo River. That would take us about an hour and a half more, but it was deep water all the way. We were a little nervous about it, since it was off the waterway and an unfamiliar route to us. As we passed the cut and headed down the sound, we radioed the crew on Night Watch, a smaller (and shallower draft) boat than Bel Canto, and asked then to tell us the depth of the bar when they entered the cut.

Night Watch reported nothing less than seven feet, so we turned back toward the cut. I must have misjudged the entry, because as we went between the entrance marks, our depth gauge went to five feet and and Bel Canto started slowing down. We must have plowed a furrow through the silt, because she kept going and soon we were back in 7 to 10 feet of water. The next day was a “normal” day on the waterway, and we set anchor in the Stono River, just South of Charleston, in order to take Elliott’s Cut at slack tide in the morning. You might remember us writing about going through Elliott’s cut on the way South. The current was four or five knots against us, and it took us 40 minutes to go a half mile. This time we breezed through on the end of the ebb tide, crossed Charleston Harbor, and in an hour or so we were back on the waterway.  Our timing was perfect, rising tide for the problem areas, but not so high that we couldn’t make it under the troublesome Isle of Palms bridge.

Charleston

The day was hot, but it would have been a pleasant day, with dolphins surfacing next to the boat a couple of times. Would have been except for the plague of small black beetles that descended on us. Fortunately they didn’t bite, but they did drive us crazy landing on us and on everything around us. They usually died when we brushed them away, leaving an ugly yellow stain where they had been. At the end of the day, Angie must have cleaned up a thousand corpses. Fortunately a breeze came up and blew most of the beetles away. With a straight stretch of the waterway ahead, we were even able to sail for our usual 20 minutes. A little after three thirty, we decided to pull into the Awendow Creek anchorage where we are now, about half way between Charleston and our destination of Georgetown.

That probably wasn’t the best decision we could have made. (I should say that I made.) Angie suggested that we could go on to the next anchorage, about fifteen miles up the ditch. It was high tide and there was a problematic stretch of water ahead of us. But that would have meant another two and a half hours on the waterway. I declined, thinking that the low tide the next day (today) was at nine-thirty and that if we left by eleven we could still make Georgetown before the marina where we had a reservation closed. Miscalculation.  Low tide was at eleven. We checked our log and found that on the way down we recorded six feet in this stretch at just past half tide (on a falling tide). So today we should be able to make it through a little after one. That means we won’t make it to Georgetown today, but what the hey. Georgetown will still be there tomorrow. That’s what it’s like, the good and the bad, on the waterway.

Sunset, Awendaw Creek Anchorage

The Next Day

That was supposed to be the end of this blog entry. But I lost the layout and didn't have time to do it over before it was time to take off on the rising tide. As I said, we had a five mile problem stretch of water ahead of us, sometimes called the McClellanville stretch. From our anchorage in Awendaw Creek I could see a couple of trawlers heading up the waterway, so I radioed them to get a report on the water levels. The report was positive, and at a little after one, we hauled anchor and started up the waterway again. We tiptoed our way along for most of the five miles. I was steering and trying to judge from the inlets where the shoaling would be. Well I misjudged (I should have followed the advice of my co-captain and just aimed for the next green marker). Suddenly the boat stopped, and the depth sounder showed three and a half feet of water under us. We were stuck. We were still on a rising tide,  but a fairly stiff wind was blowing us toward shore, so I doubted if we would float off this time as we had before. We asked the crew of a passing power boat to go by us at full speed, hoping their wake would bounce us off, but they demurred, saying it wasn't their boat. After a few attempts to motor us off, I reluctantly called TowBoatUS in Georgetown for assistance. (We have insurance that covers this). We were told that their estimated arrival time was in 50 minutes, so in the meantime we set to work to do what we could to get ourselves off.

Kedging

The procedure for getting yourself out of a situation like this is called kedging. You load an anchor into your dinghy and drop it as far out from your boat toward deeper water as you can. Then you haul on the anchor and try to pull your bow around and work yourself off the bottom. This doesn't sound too difficult, but we had a stiff wind and a strong current to contend with. And first we had to get the motor on the dinghy using the hoist on the stern of the boat. And remember, Bel Canto weighs sixteen tons! We were winching on the anchor rode with little success when another power boater came along and offered to create a wake for us. He did a great job spinning his boat on our shore side and creating about a two foot wake. After two passes we were able to pull ourselves off, just as TowBoatUS showed up. They helped us retrieve our anchor, which was stuck firmly in the hard mud of the bottom, and we were on our way again.

Dolphin Playing

I was totally exhausted after that ordeal, and captain Angie took us to our next anchorage, where we are now. On the way the dolphins rejoined us and seemed to be having great fun playing in our wake. Just before we reached the anchorage, Angie asked me to take the wheel. "Do you trust me?" I asked.
"No," she replied, "but I have to go pee."

Sunset, Minim Creek

Leaving St. Augustine

El Galeon San Pelayo  (photo: St. Augustine tourist bureau)

We had mixed feelings saying good by to St Augustine. Right on the intracoastal waterway, St. Augustine has become a magnet for cruisers and has an active community of sailors, some who come and stay for a few days a year, some for months, and some for years. One of our cruising friends said you can leave but it’s like a bungee cord, pulling you back to it. It is home port to every kind of boat imaginable, including the Spanish galleon San Pelayo, replica of the ship sailed by Pedro Menendez de Aviles, St. Augustine’s founder. The beautiful square rigger, which sailed here from Spain and is spending years cruising the East Coast before returning to its homeland, calls St. Augustine its home port in the Americas.

The Schooner "Freedom"

What makes St. Augustine so attractive? The oldest continuously occupied city in the United States (since 1565), under the flags of four nations (Spain, France, England, and the United States (and one wannabe, the Confederate States of America), it has to rank with New Orleans, San Francisco, Charleston, Savannah and Boston as one of the most interesting cities in the country. Truly impressive buildings, some authentically ancient (by American standards) like the Castillo de San Marcos, the fortress guarding the inlet from the sea. Some in the Spanish Renaissance style built as hotels by Henry Flagler, cofounder with Rockefeller of Standard Oil . And, as we said, a friendly community of sailors ready to meet for happy hour. For us, a month passed in St. Augustine before we knew it. We decided that this is as far south as we needed to go for this year, and planned to head back to the Chesapeake, and possibly on to Maine, for the summer.

At the Castillo de San Marcos

Our plan was to head north at a leisurely pace, taking time to explore and enjoy the anchorages that we had passed through or passed up on our way south. We aimed to follow the advice of our friends on the boat Cinderella: We don’t want to be any farther north than the azaleas are in bloom. What a luxury it is going to be to look forward to longer days and warmer nights as we travel after the bone chilling cold we experienced on our way south in the fall. Our first day was a short one, about twelve miles or two hours to Pine Island. No hurry, so Jim had time to change the two fuel filters before we left. Always exciting, as we’re never sure whether the engine will develop an air lock and refuse to run after we do this. But after a brief sputter the engine kicked in and ran smoothly, and by one o’clock we were heading through the Bridge of Lions.

It was a beautiful day, with dolphins swimming around our boat as we passed the St. Augustine inlet and headed up the waterway. By three o’clock we were anchored among the low lying islands and marsh grasses, sitting in the cockpit, sipping a beer, watching the herons and egrets and thinking what a great life this is.

The next day, Saturday, looked to be equally idyllic. The weather still beautiful, in the seventies, light breeze, sunny skies, a whole family of dolphins. The nearly full moon phase meant that low water came in the middle of the day, so none of the five bridges we had to pass under were going to be a problem. The only problem was that traveling on the waterway in Florida on a weekend is about like driving on I-75 or I-95. Sports fishermen and jet skiers buzzed passed us, often at close quarters, without regard to what their wake was doing to us, not to mention the water skier who kept falling right in our path . About three o’clock we reached our next anchorage, St. George Island, where we planned to spend a day exploring the plantation and poking around the marshes in our dinghy. What we didn’t remember was that we had entered and left this anchorage on the way down at half tide, and what we hadn’t counted on was the exceptionally low water caused by the nearly full moon. Angie has built in radar that tells her when to hand over the wheel to Jim,and this is what she did. As we headed into the harbor, Bel Canto came to a sudden stop. I can’t say we were hard aground, because, fortunately for us, the bottom was soft mud, but we definitely weren’t going any farther. We weren’t too worried, because we were on a rising tide, and the light wind was blowing in the right direction to help us off when the time came. We motioned to a passing powerboat that had politely slowed as it passed us  to come over, planning to ask them to speed by us creating a wake to help lift us off. But by the time they got near, the tide lifted us enough and the wind turned the boat enough that we were able to motor off. Co-captain Angie said there was no way that we were going to make it over the bar at the entrance to the harbor in the next couple of hours, and that we should move on.

The Anchorage at Pine Island

Throwing B-Day Roses to the Manatees

There is no good anchorage near this one, but Fernandina Beach was only three or four hours away, so we decided to motor on. The water was still low, but after only one more close encounter with the mud, we made it through the tough spots. By evening we were moored at Fernandina Beach.

Angie: After going aground twice on our way to Fernandina Beach, we decided to skip Georgia, which has even more “trouble spots,” and do another 24 hour passage from Fernandina Beach, FL, to Beaufort, SC. This one was quite a contrast to our earlier passage in the other direction. We were able to sail for several hours, breaking our previous record for time sailing. The winds were out of the East and sometimes on the nose, but the wave action was much better this time, and even when the wind was light, there was enough to fill our sails and help to steady the boat. I got two hours of sleep instead of a half hour and it wasn’t as cold.  At night we could see the full moon through the partly cloudy skies.

"A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou . . ."

Coming out of the Fernandina Beach Harbor making our way to the ocean was quite a ride because of the opposing tide and wind. We were crashing into the waves for at least an hour. If I had been on shore looking out at these waters, I would have said, “I’m not going out there!” Well, I was out there. Bel Canto is really seaworthy, and she took the waves better than her crew. As we came out the long entrance channel, there was a clear line where the brackish river water met the ocean. As soon as we passed the line, the water smoothed out and we were able to sail comfortably. It was a great sail with a few lovely surprises, Like the school of rays swimming just under the surface of the water, resembling nothing more than a squadron of fighter planes. Then I saw this orangish/brown thing floating in the water. As we got closer, I saw that  it was a sea turtle. It dived and then I saw this little turtle swimming just behind it. Sea turtles lay their eggs on the beach and then desert the eggs, so I don’t think this was a mother and baby, but that’s what it looked like.  We saw another one swimming later on. And we had a whole pod of dolphins playing in the waves around our boat.  We were pretty excited about seeing all these sea creatures. All in all, it was a beautiful trip, the kind we live for.

Over the Bounding Main

Fernandina Beach, Thursday, March 6

We are sitting in the mooring field, rocking and rolling in gale force winds. A few minutes ago our diesel heater, which kept us warm and toasty at 74 degrees last evening, blew out in a back draft and filled the cabin with smoke. For a moment I wasn't sure whether or not we would have to abandon ship, but within minutes all of the fuel sources were shut off, and the cabin was clearing with the help of a few open ports and fans going.  We are safe, but the cabin temperature has dropped from 68 to 64 degrees. We will have to live with the warmth that our trawler lantern gives off, since we won't be able to use the diesel heater in these winds. I'm not sure that we'll be able to trust it at all anymore. But we ARE safe, and managing to stay reasonably warm with long underwear, blankets and hot water bottles. But who'd have thought that we would be getting this kind of weather in Florida?

Leaving Beaufort   Photo:Joe Bonturi

We cheered when the weather forecast gave us a window to make the passage from Beaufort to Florida an March 1 and 2. We were ready to leave Beaufort for new scenery and very excited about making our first ocean passage on Bel Canto. We figured the passage from Beaufort to Fernandina Beach would take us somewhere between 22 and 26 hours, and no strong winds or threatening weather  patterns were predicted for the next two days.

Saturday, March 1, dawned clear and relatively warm. We were up early, disconnecting power cords and making sure everything was stowed securely for our trip. We needed to leave the dock before nine o'clock to take advantage of the rising tide and incoming current for an easy departure. Joe Bonturi, our neighbor on Nirvana Blues, was there to give us a hand off. We pushed the bow away from the dock and glided off into the perfect morning. There was just enough breeze on the river to have us looking forward to raising the sails as soon as we cleared the McTeer Bridge, just a couple of miles downriver.

What we hadn't counted on was the tide, always higher after a new moon, being two feet above normal. As we approached the bridge we could see that the water was high on the bridge stanchions.  Angie got the binoculars and looked for the gauge that would tell us the bridge clearance. There wasn't one. We slowed the boat to a crawl while I checked all of our references for information on the bridge clearance. They all gave the clearance at 65 feet without any mention of problems. Angie gave me a questioning look, and I said, “We'll go through.” I started to crawl forward at idle speed, all the time looking at the stanchions with their bases awash. (It doesn't do any good to look up--the mast always looks like it is going to hit!) At the last moment I was seized with doubt and wheeled the boat around.

The Port Royal Landing marina is located just before the bridge. I radioed to see if I could get any more information on the bridge clearance. "We've been watching you," they radioed back. "We're looking at the bridge fenderboards with binoculars and right now the clearance is 63 feet." They told us how to gauge the clearance by the number of boards on the channel fenders showing. There was nothing for us to do but thank our lucky stars or the sea gods that I hadn't been foolish and go back to wait for the tide to go out. Back in Beaufort we tied up at the fuel dock and took advantage of the delay to breakfast heartily on a Spanish omelet and bacon. Good thing. This was the last real meal we were to have until we arrived in Fernandina Beach.

Shortly after noon we headed out again, and soon we had cleared the bridge with feet to spare. The sky was clear, the breeze fair, and we put out sail with joy in our hearts as we pushed out into Port Royal Sound, scurrying along on the outgoing tide. Several dolphins surfaced near the boat as if to confirm our good luck. As we headed down the sound toward the ocean, though, the wind began to weaken. Going out the long channel that leads out of the sound past the shoals on each side, we were again under power. It was nearing four o'clock when we had cleared all of the breakers that lay just outside the channel and turned on the course we would be following for the next 80 miles. For the next few hours we "motorsailed" (sails up but motor running and giving us most of our momentum), the sails helping to steady us against the three to five foot waves hitting us abeam. The wind gradually died out, though, and the boat's motion became more and more uncomfortable. Sailboats are designed to sail (obviously), and the combination of sail and keel give them more stability in a seaway than a comparable power vessel would have. But when just under power, the height and weight of the mast and rigging accentuate the rolling, and this was the case on Bel Canto for most of the night. Since we both felt more comfortable above deck than below, and since we were only going to be out for one night, we decided to forgo watches and keep each other company in the cockpit. Ten CD's by our favorite singers playing over the cockpit speakers would help to keep us in the awake mode.

 A side trip took us to the High Museum, Atlanta

Fortunately the night was clear, though fairly cold. As we looked at the star filled sky, undimmed by any loom from light sources on shore, we recalled our one perfect night of ocean sailing many years before. Our friends John and Zelda had joined us for the passage on Escapade from Marion, Massachusetts, to Cutler, Maine. The wind was about 12 knots astern and for 13 hours we sailed under spinnaker, gazing at the August meteor showers among the stars overhead and at the two V's of diamond studded phosphorescence trailing off our stern. It was memories like this that had drawn us back to the ocean. As this night wore on, dew began to collect on the decks and the cold began to creep into our bones. Soon we were wrapped in blankets and clutching hot water bottles to keep warm, bracing ourselves against the motion of the boat and waiting for the long night to end.

Centre Street, Fernandina Beach

By sun up the seas had quieted a great deal and we were feeling much more upbeat. But as we approached our goal, the weather had one more little surprise for us. A thick fog blanket descended along the shore, reducing visibility to a few hundred feet. NOAA weather radio predicted that it would burn off by nine o'clock, so for a while we motored back and forth, being careful to keep out of the shipping lanes. By nine, though, there was no sign of the fog abating. We had encountered similar conditions when we arrived at Cutler many years ago. Then, Angie had guided us in, standing on the foredeck and directing me by listening to the bell buoy that marked the middle of the channel. As we entered the harbor the fog cleared and we were a bit shaken to see the exposed rocks and boats that we had picked our way through. Now, though, we had GPS and a modern chart plotter to help us. We determined that we could make our way in just outside the channel on the south side and keep clear of both shoals and shipping lanes.


A short time later we were back on the ICW, safely (and quietly) moored at Fernandina Beach. We were dead tired, but feeling good about our achievement. Not that we had conquered a bit of the ocean. You don't conquer the ocean. Not that we had survived the trip, because we were never in survival mode. But we had raised the bar a little bit higher and accomplished our goal. And that was a great feeling.

Our last sunset at Beaufort before setting sail

Held Captive in Beaufort, SC

The Beach at Hunting Island

 

We can't tell you how many people we have met in Beaufort who tell us, "We came here in (name a year) planning to stay (a few days, a week, a month) and here we still are, x years later." We can see their point. We arrived here on December 3rd, and though we do plan to leave and continue farther south (we really do), we have just signed up for another month at the Downtown Marina. Beaufort is a captivating town, claiming to have been named "the happiest coastal town in the East."

Beaufort begins to charm you as soon as you land at the elegant waterfront park. with its palm lined brick walkway along the Beaufort River, part of the Intracoastal Waterway. Then you stroll through "The Point," densely packed with pre-Civil War mansions built by the owners of the Sea Island plantations where their black slaves raised the indigo, rice, and cotton that at one time made Beaufort County the richest county in South Carolina. Walking among the mansions on streets punctuated with mammoth oaks draped with Spanish moss, you feel transported into another place and time. You can understand why so many movies, including Forest Gump, The Big Chill, and, of course, Prince of Tides, have been filmed here.

The history became even more real to us when we entered a gallery on Bay Street advertising art by four generations of a family who at one time were numbered among the local planters, as they called themselves. "Our family, like most of the planters here, treated their slaves very well," they told Angie after she had softened them up with some friendly chatting. "It was overseers who were responsible for the abuses you hear about." They didn't see the irony. The owners of the island plantations didn't live on them, but instead built winter and summer homes where the climate was more bearable and diseases like yellow fever and malaria less prevalent, leaving the management of the slaves who worked the plantations to the overseers. As a result, the black people who worked the plantations developed their unique dialect and subculture known as Gullah. When the Union troops occupied this area, in the early days of the Civil War, the owners mostly abandoned their lands, and the Gullah became among the first slaves to be freed when they were taken as "contraband" by the Union general. Many of them fought for the Union in the war, and one in particular, Robert Smalls, became a local hero. Captain of a merchant ship working out of Charleston, he gathered together family and friends and under cover of darkness snuck the ship past the Confederate barricades and delivered it, and his fellow slaves, to the Union army in Beaufort. He went on to serve three terms as a U.S. Congressman. The Gullah are extremely proud of their heritage and add a distinct flavor to both the food and the culture of this region.

"A Gullah Christmas"

The historic part of Beaufort covers about a square mile, and one of the great attractions for us is that the marina where we are staying is right on the main street, within walking distance of some great restaurants, bars, and art galleries. And we do walk. So much that we are recognized and greeted by many of the locals. And that's another attraction. People we've never seen before smile and say "Hello, how ya doin'" when they pass us on the street. It's an uncommonly friendly town, and that's partly because "local" is a relative term here. It seems like eighty percent of the people we meet have a story about how they ended up in Beaufort two or ten or twenty years ago. Of course there are natives here, but for the most part they seem to welcome rather than resent the newcomers. It's as though the indigenous small town Southern friendliness is a virus that infects all who come in contact with it. We happened to mention to one local resident who has a boat across the dock from us that we had some errands to do but that the marina courtesy car wasn't available. "Take mine," he said. We had to ask his last name in case we were stopped and had to explain why we were driving a car belonging to someone else.

John Marshall is one of the people who ended up here. Born in Detroit, he has lived in Florida, San Francisco, New York, Germany, and Virginia and traveled to Morocco, Argentina, Spain, France and Italy, before landing in Charleston and then here. John is a professional chef who lives on his sailboat here in the marina. He has opened a small restaurant/bar in town called the Old Bull. The  Old Bull is "closed" on Mondays, but the bar is open to all of the local wait people and musicians, who usually have Monday nights off. Everyone who comes in gets a cup of John's gourmet soup of the night along with their drinks. And in case you should ever visit Beaufort, the Old Bull has the most delicious food at the best prices in town.

Because Beaufort County is made up of low-lying islands, bordered by tidal marsh lands, it hasn't become over-developed. Yes, there is Hilton Head, and there is a scattering of gated communities, but much of the area is in its natural state. Hunting Island has been preserved as a state park. Driving its winding trails through the mixture of palms and moss draped live oaks, you feel like you are entering  a primeval forest. It is a mystical, magical place. You half expect to see dinosaurs emerging from the trees by the lagoon. 

Hunting Island

This morning I get up and look out at the harbor where the sun is just beginning to chase away the light mist lying over the flat water and think that there is no place that I would rather be right now. So, yes, we will soon head out to experience some new territory. But not today.

Light House, Hunting Island

Window, tabby church ruins, St. Helena Island

Ghost Tree, Hunting Island