Leaving RE Mayo. That sign is a huge ice maker producing many boatloads of ice each day.

After yesterday’s adventure I did want to fuel up. Along the way I called our destination to learn that the only fuel available was at the nearby Yacht club, still 2 miles out of our way (that’s 4 total), at $4.50 a gallon! I got on Active Captain on the iPad and looked along our way. I found another fuel stop at RE Mayo Docks only 2 miles ahead of us on our current narrow canal. Just enough time to call and confirm their $3.70 price and find out where to dock. She told me to pull in behind the big blue boat.

Their dock was on the left. It went along the side of the canal since there was no room for a dock to stick out. Fishing boats were parked along the entire dock. All of them were blue. No problem since there was only one space anywhere between all those boats.

The opening turned out to be 70 feet, but that was hard to estimate accurately at the time. I’m 50 feet with that big swim platform. I pulled up alongside the opening, stopping with the bow as close as I dared behind the big blue (did I mention steel with jagged projections) boat. Paul ran to the back to tell me how much space I had there. I can’t see out back. I do have a camera focused back and downward there but it can’t see at all far to the side. Good thing it could not see that huge wicked looking anchor sticking out of the bow of the boat behind.. Paul estimated 10 – 15 feet of room, so with two engines opposing and the bow thruster I eased the boat sideways into the dock.

The fishing boats all fuel up at RE Mayo. They know where the price is right. They also offload their catch for processing and sale, mainly wholesale. After all that work I wanted my moneys worth for that dock, so we stayed and ate a nice if quick lunch, and then all went in to pay. They have store geared for the fishing boat people. It’s the only store of any kind for miles so the locals sit around in front of the counter. The store supplies 4 rocking chairs for them. I was disappointed that it did not have a pot bellied stove. If the diesel was cheap, their price for ice was even better. You buy it by the ton, however.

They get few non commercial boats here which did not surprise us given the docking issues, plus they are in the middle of nowhere. Still, I’ll stop there again on the way back, assuming there is a slot long enough for me to fit into.

An early start again.

Since leaving Charleston City Marina on the 12^th we have been to

Harborwalk Marina in Georgetown SC,

Ocean Isles Marina in Ocean Isles Beach NC,

Swan Point Marina in Sneads Ferry NC,

Whittaker Pointe Marina in Oriental, NC,

Swan Point was really funky but fun, Whittaker Pointe where we are now is small but so nice we can’t figure out how they make money with all their amenities, which includes a swimming pool and a car any of us can borrow for 2 hours at a time. We used it for a trip to the very small town for groceries and a restaurant. In Harborwalk we also had a grocery run in a borrowed car. We were too busy seeing important things in Charleston for that kind of thing.

Sue & Sharon leaving Charleston. Whittaker Marina from our slip

Our goal is Washington City Marina in Washington, NC. Our inverter needs fixing, and the regional service center is there. We may be delayed reaching Washington but I will discuss that next time.

We are setting a fast pace, averaging 74 miles per day. Our kind of boat rarely travels more than 80 miles per day. To do that we would have to use our fast cruise of 10 knots from 7 AM to 3 PM. We get slowed by currents of up to 3 knots which can go against us. Of course current can go with us as well, but if you do the math for a current against half of the distance (not half the time!) and one with the other half, you always lose time overall. In addition we might wait nearly an hour for some draw or swing bridge openings if we just miss the previous one. We’ve been lucky on that issue so far. Fortunately about half these bridges have clearance of more than 20 feet and we just run under them. It may take time to overtake a slower boat in a narrow channel. If the channel passes close to boats in the water we slow for them so our wake doesn’t bash them around. There are also people standing up fishing in small low freeboard boats just off the channel and some with a beached boat close by. Our 9.2 knot wake could make real trouble in these situations, so we have to drop to 1000 rpm, which averages 5.5 knots. We slowed down a lot Sunday on the way to Whittaker Pointe. A lot of people fish on Sunday.

Trees and water along the way. Click on any pic to enlarge.

Not the recommended way to travel by boat, but we got such a late start this year due to stops to get everything working as well as straightening out things we discovered as we started using the boat. Two more things we want to get done. One is in Washington NC, the other is one or two more days of travel up in Virginia Beach VA. We’ll go through the Great Dismal Swamp canal to get there. We’ll slow down for that.

On the dock (pier?) at Swan Point boat yard. To my right is one of the fenders Paul quickly arranged.

It’s Sunday the 14th and we’re now at Swan Point marina in Sneads Ferry. The town was started by this guy named Snead who… You can probably guess the rest. Two large bridges have replaced the ferry now. Didn’t know what to make of the docks as we pulled up. They had the pilings outside the docks so our fenders would not work. The marina people didn’t answer my hail on channel 16, but finally appeared on the dock. We yelled at each other across the water until we figured out what we could do. With Paul’s help our fenders were hung differently and we’ll see in the morning if the pilings have hit and rubbed through anything.

It rained all day until the last hour of our travel today, but we made pretty good time. We got really lucky at 3 swing bridges we could not clear. Two opened every hour and one every half hour. We made it so we did not wait more than 5 minutes for any one. Learned something on the last one, Surf City swing bridge. Just as the bridge opened a southbound boat jumped on the radio and asked to go through first. If it was that important to him, why not? So I said OK without thinking. Paul made a short video at this time.

After this I’m going to study the situation at a bridge, anticipate such a request and decide in advance how to answer it. I should have noted that I had the current behind me and I was much closer to the bridge than he was. It is easier to control a boat against the current and I since learned our boat could assert a legal right of way. Also I should have waited a bit further from the bridge.  I ended up too close but off to the side as I allowed the other boat through. I had to gun the engines and do hard maneuvering to get to the center and keep control, which is frowned upon under a bridge. More current with a bit longer wait could have placed us in an unpleasant situation.

A boat is not like a car. You can’t just stop it and figure out a situation. You have to figure the situation out in advance and use the currents and winds along with your engines to be where you need to at the right time. I knew that already in theory, but it takes being in a few situations, hopefully without banging into something, to be able to but it into practice.

We were docked by 5 PM, kind of late for us, and by 5:30 the manager of the Riverview Cafe came by in a 4 door pickup took us on a wild ride to his restaurant. It had to be fast because he is a busy man. It’s still hard for me to understand how he could take the time (not very much, it really was a fast ride) for four more diners. Apparently the entire town eats there. Well, at least half of it was there, because the other half came in right after we were seated. I think some church function just let out. From a big church. After the meal we understood why everyone ate there and were, just as quickly and with as much interesting commentary about the area, returned to the marina. He absolutely refused any tip for the transportation. We’ll do this again next time we come through. And wear our seat belts.

Swan Point is somewhat down at the heels. A woman and her mother bought the abandoned boat yard 2 years ago and are making a go of it. I guess you could say it has a lot of character. Charleston City Marina was interesting and its opposite turns out interesting as well. Boats in all conditions, except those abounding at Charleston City, are up in the yard being repaired and rebuilt. There are a number of live aboards there that look unable leave the marina, which is a good thing since some docks might sink if the boat bracing them were to leave. The place was so funky we loved it. We travel to see different things, and this was different. Sorry there are no pictures. Due to our initial shock we did not bring cameras when we left the boat and it was too dark when we came back.

Charleston as we sailed away

It rained all day on the 8th the after we got to Charleston, so we just stayed in and caught up with a few things on the boat. That night we went out with Jim and Belinda, two friends and fellow DeFever travelers we met at the Brunswick Marina. It was restaurant week in Charleston, so we got a great deal at Slightly North of Broad, one of the best Charleston restaurants.

Jim and Belinda have been boating a lot longer than us, so we learn a lot every time we get together. Sue learned how to store more clothes in drawers without anything hiding anything else. She put all my stuff in that way and it really does work better. Jim and I talked about more grave issues like sewage storage and treatment. There again he gave me a great idea which I hope to have working in a week or two.

The 9^th Sue and I visited the Middleton and Magnolia plantations. Except for one minor portion most of the Middleton house was destroyed in the civil war and the Magnolia home was the third one, although still built before 1900. Still, they were interesting.

The grounds are what everyone goes to see, and they were great. I do wonder about that bridge across the pond at Magnolia that is “the most photographed bridge in America.” It was very beautiful, but I’ve never seen a picture of it before, while I have seen a whole lot of pictures of the Golden Gate and Brooklyn bridges. Maybe they were stretching things a little?

After my sister and her husband arrived they wanted to see historic homes. Fine by us since Sue and I like nothing better, so we spent the 10^th going through 4 of them. That evening we remembered that restaurant week was still going strong, so we went to another of Charleston’s finest, the Magnolia and had no problem getting in on a weekday.

We had to leave the next day. In order to start before 7:30 and arrive at the dreaded Sullivan Island Narrows at a mid and rising tide we had to leave on the 11^th. Wait another day and we would have to wait another hour before passing the narrows and would arrive too late at Georgetown, our next stop.

Sue’s required cloud picture for this trip

We left Lady Island in Beaufort at 7:10 AM on Sunday September 7. High tide in Beaufort was at 7:58 AM and low tide in Charleston would be at 1 PM. The ICW has mile markers along the way that give distance between them, not in a straight line, but as the ICW winds along the coast. The markers are not physical, but on the charts. We traveled from mile marker 535 at Lady Island to 470 at Charleston City Marina, 65 miles. That’s normal miles, not nautical miles.

This time the spot to watch out for was the Ashepoo-Coosaw Cutoff off St Helena sound just after mile marker 520. Several people at Lady Island talked about boats aground there just the other day. Since I would hit it just after high tide I could do it, but would travel very slow just in case. The marina manager advised to avoid it altogether by proceeding down St Helena sound almost to the ocean and turning up another channel. The ocean was calm at this time in the morning so we did that with no problem.

We passed through an interesting narrow canal with houses on both sides as we came close to Charleston. After 3 PM we saw Charleston City Marina as we came out of that canal.

Narrow canal just before Charleston City Marina

I’m getting the hang of this. They asked us to go halfway down on the inside of the 1/3 mile long “Megadock” with rows of boats on each side. I then turned around in a wider space, came back up a few hundred feet and pulled in just in front of a super yacht 2 1/2 hours after low tide with the current pushing me back along the dock and a pretty stiff wind blowing me away from the dock. Even after Sue threw lines to the two marina people the wind was too strong for them to pull the boat in and they could not hold it against a 2 1/2 knot current either. I had to power it in sideways. No major bumps and it went fairly steady, which is a good thing since nearly all the boats I passed must cost between 10 and 100 times what ours does. Do they refinish the hulls on these things once a month? Anyway it was heartening after my somewhat less than stellar performance in Beaufort.

It is interesting being here with the .001% who can have boats like these. A number are 100 feet long or more. Have not met any owners. Not even sure what they would look like, but we have met a number of crew and several professional captains and had good conversations. I’m picking up pointers every day.

I really really did not want fall back into that 116 foot boat right behind us.

I certainly do not envy these bigger boats. Star Gazer is at the ragged edge of what Sue and I alone can handle, and if I do put a ding into it it won’t be the first. A big part of the fun is learning to be sailors, navigating and yes, even docking this thing ourselves. If we want to go on a boat with a professional captain and crew there are plenty of cruise ships out there. We will step back from the ragged edge for the next few weeks, however. My sister and her husband come to Charleston on the 10^th to join us for two weeks. Looks like Sue will be breaking in new deckhands.

Sue requires that interesting clouds along the way be photographed.

We got away from Savannah at 9:20 AM Wednesday September 3 with a little help on the dock from DeFever club members Jim and Ann who were also staying at Hinckley. Weather was good and the 9 o’clock low tide was past and starting to rise as we entered the dreaded Field’s Cut. This is a narrow channel that, like much of the ICW (stands for Intra Coastal Waterway) has not been maintained and has become silted in in places. A number of people told me to watch out for it. If we did get stuck with the tide rising we should float off in short time.

We did feel that sudden slowdown as we hit bottom once but then floated right through and had no other incidents. I used some apps on the iPad to avoid most of the hazards. How did anyone ever sail a boat without all the apps and electronics we have now? I would not want to try it. There’s even an app for anchoring. If the anchor drags and the boat starts to move where it should not, it wakes us up. Solving an anchoring problem in the middle of the night in what is likely a stormy gale is not my idea of fun, but it beats winding up in someone’s front yard in a stormy gale.

We arrived at a fuel dock and topped off, then over to Lady Island marina in Beaufort, SC at about 3 PM. After a little docking drama we tied up. The drama was due to my ineptness since this was the 2^nd marina we have been to since our training captain left, but also to the marina manager shoehorning us into a side tie just half the length of our boat with a strong current pushing us back toward the boat just behind. I should have just refused and gone somewhere else.

I think I have a way to handle that docking situation now, and it’s not the way I did it then. I don’t like bashing our boat. I like even less bashing someone else’s boat. They are often much newer, much larger and far more expensive than our boat, although in this case it was smaller than ours, and even it did not fit into its half of the dock. Turns out I did just touch the other boat, but fortunately not enough to qualify as a bash. Not going to do it like that again. I don’t care what some of these experts on the dock tell me to do.

We spent 3 days in Beaufort, seeing a historic homes. One of these is open as a museum, although not of the class of those in Savannah. Several others are very elegant B & B’s where we could go inside. We saw an impressive lighthouse (10 floors!) that still operates. Parris Island marine base, where all recruits west of the Mississippi and all female marines are trained, has a museum where we spent the most time in Beaufort. Both of us enjoyed it and learned a lot, Sue especially. Marines have been just about everywhere and done just about everything, at least if it is difficult and dangerous.

The over a thousand dollars for ten a day car rental when we arrived at the Spokane WA airport for our 10 day North Idaho trip was a shocker. We rented cars in Brunswick and in Savannah for a less than a third of that. From the same company. Is it the short tourist season in the Pacific Northwest, the depressed economy here in the South, or what? Car prices here have been great. It would take me 4 years to pay for a decent car at these rates, and that assumes I rent one all the time. Like many boaters in the east, we rent cars whenever stopped at a city of any size. We use the motorbike we carry for really small towns and country areas.

We pay a drop fee that is normally much less than other airport transportation to just leave the car when we fly somewhere. No airport parking fees for us! If you visit us, depending on the circumstances, we may come and get you in our rental, or you may rent a one way and come to us.

Maybe everyone else knows this, but our first one way rental was less than a year ago, when we found that tickets to India out of Houston were much cheaper and better than what we could get out of Austin. We rented a car in Austin, dropped it in Houston airport and got on our flight. Now we find if there is a major airport within a few hundred miles we are often better off time wise and price wise to do this. The way rental prices are here I think we are always better off price wise.

A friend took this while we were in Idaho. Star Gazer is on the hard a bit to the left.

Still here, but hope to leave on Wednesday. Brunswick Landing marina primarily provided slips. A number of people like us lived on their boat while there and some stay many months. Hinckley marina in Savannah is a boat yard with a few slips for transients. I don’t think anyone stays here long term. They have a reputation for good work and we had a few things that needed fixing after our long shakedown cruise out of Florida. We had to move off the boat while they did some of the work so we scheduled it to be the same time as our trip back to North Idaho for my high school reunion and my company’s picnic the next week. Since nearly all of our relatives other than our kids live in that area, and the cousin that doesn’t was also going to the reunion we were able to see a lot of people in 10 days. After that we spent 5 days in Austin seeing the rest of our family.

When we got back July 16^th, the boat was not ready and we had no place to stay. They had somehow got the idea we were coming back days later.

 One of many Savannah squares and us on the Biltmore back porch

We had been planning to see the Biltmore estate in Asheville, NC, the largest home in the US. It was only a 4 hour drive from Charleston, the closest we could get on the waterway. It only took a half hour more from Savannah, so there we went. We spent two days seeing Biltmore, and it was great. We left in the morning on the Blue Ridge Parkway which goes right through Asheville. We took that to Great Smokey Mtn national park and drove through some of that. We went to Clingman’s Dome, the highest point. Not much view with clouds all around that day. The signs there say that even on a good day you can only see one fifth as far as years ago due to pollution. We also drove through Cade’s Cove and stopped a few places. Interesting but nothing spectacular like the western parks we have visited. We popped out of the park on the other side to Pigeon Forge, TN, the home of Dollywood.

Well, we just had to go see that. It had a lot of fairly normal rollercoasters and theme park stuff, but we just took in shows. I’m not sure I should admit it, but I liked it! Sue liked it too. They had Gospel Quartets, the kind with the super bass singer, that she grew up on. In her younger days her friends and her saved their money so when these groups came to San Jose they could go see them. They also had good bluegrass bands. We had a good day there.

I got a call from the marina that day that the boat was back in the water. A boat has to be in the water to live on it. I suppose you could live in it when it’s on the hard but no one does. You would have to climb a ladder just to get to the swim platform which is seven or more feet up. The real difficulty in Georgia is that the A/C is water cooled and so won’t be working.

We got back and found a few more things needed doing. Tuesday the day after labor day they will be finished, so we plan to leave Wednesday morning early.

Right after we got to Savannah with Ethan and Aaron, there were immediate requests for rides on the dinghy and the motorbike. As Sue informed me “we got these things and we’re dragging them with us everywhere we go, so get them down and start using them.” We’d been too busy getting out of Florida to mess with them before.

The main “inconvenience” of loading these items is that the port side has to be toward the dock to load the bike and toward the water for the dinghy. The motorbike went down first and Ethan and I went out of the marina and north, where we ran into Bonaventure cemetery which was huge and a great place to see. I took Aaron out that way also.

A few days later we took the dinghy out on the Wilmington river to the main Savannah channel. I had to bring along our iPad with its navigation programs to not get lost on the various intersecting channels along the way. It has a waterproof case but if I ever drop it in the drink it will sink like a rock.

Huge container ships passed us in the main channel. Because they are so big they appear to be going slow, but they normally move faster than our big boat can go and can be a real hazard. Getting too close can trap us in the turbulence their hulls and huge props make.

These days we might be mistaken for a terrorist boat loaded with explosives if we get too close. Since 2001 we have to stay at least 100 yards from any naval vessel or face a “quick, determined and severe response” (dept. of Homeland Security words, not mine). If anything appears amiss within 500 yards, like going fast, the same applies. To avoid anyone getting the wrong idea about our intentions, we stay away from cruise ships and port areas as well.

We passed this Trident sub base. The nearby boat is for the quick, determined and severe response.

The kids had fun driving the dinghy. Driving our big boat is not as much fun for kids, since it is mainly just holding the wheel in the same place, or more likely just watching for crab pots or other hazards while the autopilot holds the wheel in the same place.