We are working our way down the ICW, inside of Cape Hatteras,
sometimes sailing and sometimes motoring across open sounds and through rivers
and man-made canals. It takes us a total
of four days to make it to the ocean again at Beaufort/Morehead City. Our plan
is to sail out to Cape Lookout, anchor for the night, and then depart down the
coast on the outside for a 30 – some hour passage to Charleston, SC. We visited Cape Lookout
a year ago and are anticipating another night in a spectacular anchorage. In addition, with our first access to truly
clear, warm water in months, Burt wants to snorkel the boat to check the zincs. But, nothing goes as planned. The wind has picked up as we motor out the
channel, sails are hoisted, and we are moving along at a nice clip. It time to shut down the engine, but as I
lean over to do so, I notice the engine panel is no longer functioning. In all likelihood we won’t be able to shut
off the engine and also won’t be able to restart it. Burt makes a cursory investigation of the
situation and can come up with no logical explanation. This is not a good
scenario, so we call a marina in Morehead
City to see if they can
accommodate us, and if they could get an electrician to our boat. With a
positive reply, we turn around, motor in to the marina, and find, yes, we can
not shut off the engine. Burt is
tinkering with the panel while I go in to register. When I get back, the engine is off, and Burt
is smiling. As usual, when things go
wrong, it’s mostly likely the simplest solution that solves the problem. In this case, one of us had accidentally
tripped a switch that provides power to the panel. Cape
Lookout was not meant to be, and as we later find out, that’s a
good thing. Apparently, it is known to have large schools of bull sharks in the
anchorage, and thus is not a great swimming hole.
We have an uneventful passage to Charleston in the company of several other
boats and arrive at an anchorage we used last spring. Awaiting us are friends
we made while at the boatyard in Deltaville last summer. We set the anchor
solidly as this spot is known for less than perfect holding and strong tidal
currents. In the next three days we see three different boats without people on
board adrift. One broke its mooring line,
one managed to break free by wrapping its anchor trip-line around its rudder,
and the final one just dragged its anchor.
In all three cases, the boats are rescued unharmed, but it is a bit
unnerving.
But, we are back in Charleston,
one of our favorite cities. Besides tending to basic necessities and chores, we
spend time biking through the quaint side streets. Instead of smelling the jasmine of last
spring, we hear the sounds of leaves crunching underfoot. It is fall in Charleston, and the trees are just beginning
to turn.
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| Home along Charleston's waterfront |
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| Garden behind a home in Charleston |
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| Window boxes with orchids along Charleston street |
One of our cruising friends
mentions that there is a Lightning regatta in progress on the other side of
town. As we had competed in Lightnings
many years ago, we dash over to the club to see the spinnaker finish of the
last race. Forty racing boats with their
colorful spinnakers out in the harbor is a beautiful sight. After the race, we enjoy greeting several
skippers with whom we had sailed many years ago. Another day we ride our bikes
to the top of the new suspension bridge that spans the Cooper River.
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| Bridge over Cooper River in Charleston |
In a moment of enlightenment, the designers
included a wide pedestrian lane that accommodates both foot and bike
traffic. It is well utilized by an
assortment of people, and we enjoy the view of the city and the opportunity to
see the structure of this bridge up close.
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| People bike and walk beside the impressive structure of the bridge |
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| Who (excepting my brother-in-law) knew a bridge could be so beautiful? |
Late in our stay we host a happy
hour on our boat for three other boats, all past residents of Great
Lakes states. One boat is
from a neighboring sailing club in Sandusky –
it’s a nice opportunity to reconnect with the crew who we have known for years
and who are helping deliver the boat to Florida.
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| The guys from Sandusky appear to be behaving themselves |
The next day all our guests are all taking
off for an off-shore passage south. All,
that is, except our friends from Deltaville who can’t retrieve their anchor. They call in a diver who discovers the anchor
has dropped down a hole in some metal framework lurking on the bottom, and he
is unable to extract it. The only option
is to cut the anchor chain and lose the anchor, a very expensive
proposition. We agree to help them the
next morning. At the appointed hour we are ready to get into the dinghy when we
notice the boat is gone. A call on the
VHF reveals that they had taken all the slack out of the chain, to save as much
of the length as possible when they cut it, but it just kept coming and coming
until suddenly they had the anchor back on the roller and were adrift. One is
thankful for small miracles! The next
day we plan to leave and, in preparation, we pull up a secondary anchor we had
set to control our motion in the current. But, it is an unusually difficult job
and part way down the rode, we find a small outboard motor entangled in the
rope. Yes, this isn’t the greatest
anchorage and the bottom is littered with junk, but it affords excellent access
to a wonderful city.
Our next passage is an overnight in lumpy seas to Savannah. We have made
arrangements to stay two nights at a marina near bus access into the city of Savannah. Over the past
few days we have been hearing about the possible formation of a tropical low
that could develop into a hurricane with its sights set on the US east coast,
and now our weather service makes the predictions sound increasingly dire. When we arrive at Thunderbolt Marina I plead
for an extension to our reservation as now our nemesis has a name – Sandy. Docks are suddenly
at a premium, and we are delighted to find out that we can stay put as long as
necessary; we take the last dock available at this facility. Rather than take a day off to tour Savannah, we spend our
time preparing our boat for a potential hurricane. Extra dock lines are retrieved from the bilge
and spare fenders are inflated and put into position.
And we wait. We bike
around the town of Thunderbolt, visiting the
nearby Bonaventure
Cemetery, a huge Victorian
styled cemetery with fascinating tombstone sculptures and crypts housing the
remains of many historical significant Georgians. The cemetery was featured in the movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
With moss draped live oaks swaying in the building breeze, it is a spooky place
to visit just a few days before Halloween.
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| At Bonaventure Cemetery, the Gates of Heaven overlooking the river - this is the plot of one of Savannah's leading families |
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| Old headstones and hanging moss combine for a surreal experience |
And we wait. We
wander through the extensive Thunderbolt Marina yard and basin. This is one of the few facilities on the east
coast that can service the largest megayachts.
A number of them that are over 200 feet long are at docks, on the hard, or inside the huge painting facility.
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| Our little sailboat seems dwarfed in comparison to these megayachts |
Uniformed crews with foreign accents scamper about supervising the refits that
are in progress. Another cruiser informs
us that one boat just had a $4.4 million dollar extension added to its stern to
house a second hot tub. It’s hard for us
to comprehend such wealth.
And we wait. We have
a nice dinner at the local open air restaurant, holding on to our napkins to
keep them from blowing away. We watch the local high school’s homecoming parade
with a group of proud mothers.
And we wait, for what? Sandy passes well off the coast of northern
Georgia, and we see no more than 30 knots of wind, no waves along our protected
stretch of the ICW that is five miles inland of the ocean, and no storm surge
of notice. This is the only stretch of the Atlantic coast that does not have
either hurricane or tropical storm warnings.
The seas outside in the ocean are huge, so we will stay here until things
subside, but we are never in any danger.
It is a great first close encounter with a hurricane, but we do worry
about our cruising friends in less protected places that are closer to the path
of Sandy.
Emails are flying amongst our community and the daily ham nets are abuzz – who
is where and what they are doing to prepare, what are boats closer to the storm
experiencing, and the frightening details of the mayday and rescue of a large fishing
boat with over 30 people on board adrift without power in Bahamian waters
during the height of the hurricane. We
hear the stunning news that the Bounty, the replica tall ship that was featured
in the movie Mutiny on the Bounty,
has sunk off the shore
of Cape Hatteras, leaving
two crew unaccounted for. It strikes home as we had seen her up close this
summer in Newport.
We suspect we will be hearing “Sandy”
stories well into the winter cruising season.
The aftermath of Sandy
is still with us. We have sunny, but
cool days and the winds off the trailing cold fronts are at times brisker than
what we experienced during Sandy.
We will stay put for a few more days until the winds and waves subside. The
weather gives us a good opportunity to visit the old city of Savannah. We take the local bus into town
with our folding bikes in the convenient exterior racks. Once we get into the city and obtain tourist
maps, we take off on our bikes through the historic neighborhoods. The city plait contains square neighborhoods
with central parks and side streets in orderly fashion. Savannah
is unique in the south as it was never attacked during the Civil War. Instead, Gen. Sherman stopped just short of Savannah in his March to
the Sea, claiming the city was too attractive to level. The antebellum homes,
parks enhanced with monuments and fountains, and the rows of moss draped live
oaks are enchanting.
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| A charming Savannah home now converted to an inn |
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| The Forsyth Fountain in the historic district of Savannah |
We weave through various neighborhoods to the river front
where we find four story rehabilitated warehouses, now occupied by shops and
restaurants, along a new brick river walk.
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| Looking past a rehabbed warehouse to the river front |
We stop along the waterfront docks to chat with a boat that did the Charleston to Savannah
passage with us; finally we get to meet this Australian circumnavigator in
person. We end our day of tourism with
dinner at a waterfront restaurant. When
this warehouse was remodeled into the current restaurant, they found a map of Sherman’s March to the
Sea drawn on the wall by the officers that were billeted there. This portion of
the wall is now under glass and climate controlled, and we marvel at the
opportunity to see history at such close range.
We hope to leave shortly for an ocean passage from Savannah to St.
Augustine, a distance of 120 nm, but the weather
situation will be the controlling factor.
Many boats have resumed their southern migration down the waterway, but
the Georgia and north Florida sections of the
ICW have many shoal areas, and, with our deep keel, we will have a much easier and
safer trip if we stick to the ocean. And, meanwhile, we think of those people up
and down the coast who have been confronted with so much devastation. When you travel the coast so intimately, Sandy and its
repercussions seem much more vivid.
