Mer Sea

Okay, St. Augustine…well, we were wrong about the marina in St. Augustine – the municipal marina is BEAUTIFUL, fabulously maintained, and has a wonderful and knowledgeable staff. And, it’s right downtown so you can walk everywhere. It’s now our marina of choice when visiting St. Augustine.

 

We had a great time and a delicious dinner in St. Augustine, and were off early the next morning with an anchorage near the Georgia border as our destination. It was another beautiful day with calm seas and clear skies and minimal wind. I just kept looking around and saying, “Isn’t this just gorgeous?” And it was. We saw lots of dolphins in the water, swimming and jumping, often traveling with us for a distance, riding our wake. It just doesn’t get much better!

 

The anchorage had the feeling of the Georgia “low country”: marshy lowlands with few trees, lots of sea birds, and significant tides. I woke up the next morning and had tea on the upper deck, watching and listening to the marsh wake up. The sounds of the birds built from just one little call to a chittering chattering symphony. The tide was fairly low, and I watched the little sandpipers scurrying around on the exposed shoreline. Then I heard a sort of whooshing noise, like a horse blowing air hard out of its nose, and looked to see a pair of dolphins swimming alongside the boat. The sound was the sound of them breathing! What a serene and spiritual time that was for me!

 

We weighed anchor and set out for Brunswick, GA. Roy had been there by car, but never by boat, and I’d not been there at all. It’s a couple of miles off the ICW up the Brunswick River. We took on fuel when we got there, and then headed to our slip. Our plan was to spend a “rest” day there doing laundry (the machines are FREE!! – we washed everything on board!!) and exploring the town. We checked the weather when we got there, and it looked as though we might be staying longer than anticipated, since there was our first bit of dicey weather moving in.

 

As it turned out, we did spend a couple of extra days in Brunswick, but were able to put the time to good use, as we met a wonderful couple on a Nordic Tug with whom we had a chance to spend some time, and we got a lot more planning done on our trip (look for additional float plan links on the float plan page of the site).

 

All that being done, the weather settled down a bit, and it was time to leave Brunswick. We planned to leave at oh-dark-hundred, so as to cross as many of the Georgia sounds as possible before the wind really came up. We had success doing that, and only had two really bumpy crossings, and even these were no problem for Mer Sea. We got to Isle of Hope, just below Savannah, in the afternoon, and pulled up to their face dock. I hooked up the internet, and, lo and behold, the American Tug we’d passed in Sapelo Sound, Tardis, had taken photos of us as we passed, and had found us on the American Tug owners website, found our website, and emailed us the photos and a nice note! They were coming in to Isle of Hope the next day, and we planned to get together.

 

One of the reasons for choosing this particular marina is that they have a courtesy car, so we’d be able to reprovision easily, and the town itself is on the National Register of Historic Places. Supposed to be beautiful. It is. Totally charming. AND we were able to drive to the Piggly Wiggly to get the groceries we needed. It was an excellent stop.

 

The next day we met Jeremy and Janet on Tardis - they are a great couple, and have lots of experience boating. Each time we meet a couple like this, “George” and Ken on Buster in Brunswick, and Janet and Jeremy on Tardis in Isle of Hope, we learn so much from their experience and knowledge of boats. Tardis is also doing the loop, so we look forward to seeing them all along the way over the next year or so.

 

We left Isle of Hope with our waste holding tank empty and our refrigerator full, and motored on towards South Carolina! There were a couple of shallow spots to contend with on this run, and we used our “Tide Predictor” computer program to good advantage, passing through one particularly shallow spot at high tide and having no problem! The next dicey spot already had 4 boats aground, so we were reluctant to proceed without some local knowledge, or reassurance that we’d make it without joining them. Roy called “SeaTow”, which is a towing operation that, for obvious reasons, knows where ALL the shallow spots are, and probably how to avoid them. In fact, the guy told Roy exactly how to go through that place in such a way as to avoid the shallow spots, and we motored carefully through, following his directions, and saw plenty of water under us the whole way. Good thinking, Roy!

 

We anchored out that night, and set out in completely calm conditions the following morning. We had an idyllic day of boating, with dolphins joining us often, the scenery lovely, and the conditions perfect. As we pulled into the Ashley River to tie up at the Charleston City Marina, the wind came up, and the water got rough, and we thought we’d jumped to another universe! Fortunately, we were assigned an easy docking position, and Roy put this baby on the dock with no problems!

 

Except for the GNATS!!!!!!!!! These were not a docking problem, but as soon as we were secure, we closed up the boat, turned on the Air Conditioning, and I got out the vacuum and vacuumed up handfuls of gnats from the windows where they had congregated. YUCK! That’s one thing about this area, as beautiful as it is, and as much as I love the food, etc.: the insects can be intense, and many (no-see-ums, for example) are small enough to come right through the screens. It can certainly make things less pleasant.

No matter, we’re keeping them out now, and looking forward to going into downtown Charleston this afternoon and eating at the restaurant Slightly North of Broad tonight. We had a fabulous meal there last fall, and I look forward to another one! Then we’ll set out tomorrow for a series of 5 nights anchoring in a row. We’ll see how that goes – but I expect that it’ll be just fine! Somewhere in that series we’ll be entering North Carolina, so don’t look for any more computer updates until after we’ve entered Virginia.