Savannah, Georgia

December 7-8, 2006

We’ve spent the last two days touring around Savannah, Georgia. Kristen, like so many others, has always wanted to visit Savannah after reading “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” which paints a vivid portrait of Savannah and its citizens. Savannah is as beautiful as all the tourist brochures that are printed about it. Almost all the trees have Spanish moss hanging on them and the majority of the houses in the downtown historic district have been restored so at times you feel as if you’re walking through Savannah in the late 1800s. The town is laid out around 21 squares that were originally designed for wells, baking, and general social gatherings. Almost all the squares are still intact and are all well kept, landscaped, and right now are all decorated for Christmas.

Hans fueling up with some fika (coffee & cake) before starting the walking tour.
One of the many squares—most have either a statue, fountain, or gazebo in the middle.
The Mercer-Williams House—featured in “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.”
We also decorated the boat for Christmas!

Yesterday morning we started a self-guided walking tour and in the afternoon decided to bike to the marine store to get a few supplies. We were told it was only 3 miles away, but it turned out to be over 6 miles away. We definitely got our exercise! We stopped at the Bonaventure Cemetery on the bike ride back to town. The Cemetery is listed on the National Register and is spooky, even in the daylight.

Kristen biking down pretty, but busy, Victory Drive on the way to the marine store.
Kristen at a bridge that crosses the ICW.
One of the roads through the cemetery.

Some headstones & family monuments.


We went to dinner at the Moon River Brewery (thanks Nigel!) where Kristen had some baby back ribs and Hans had a sirloin steak. We started the meal off with roasted oysters with garlic and artichokes. Very good!

The City dock is located on the Savannah River which is also a very busy shipping river. Large (HUGE) container ships pass us during the day and in the evening hours. Whisper usually seems pretty small to us, but at times she feels downright miniscule!

This morning we woke up to 30 degree weather, but nevertheless, put on warm clothes (we are from Vermont and Sweden so we should be able to handle a little cold weather, right?!), and continued the walking tour.
The central fountain in Forsythe Park. This park is at the south of the historic district. The northern end of the park is a landscaped in a very formal manner, with the fountain being the focal point, the southern end of the park is for the citizens of Savannah with a playground, playing fields and tennis courts.
The Andrew Low House. Mr. Low was the grandfather of Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of the Girl Scouts. She and her husband inherited the Low House and the Charter for the Girl Scouts was signed here in 1912.
A boot scraper on the main steps of the Davenport House. The house was scheduled for demolition in 1955, however seven Savannah women got together and raised $22,000 to rescue the house from a near-death. This was the start of the Historic Savannah Foundation which is the leading force behind the restoration of Savannah’s Historic district.
The Pink House, built in 1789 for John Habersham. This is the only major structure that survived the 1796 fire and is now converted to a restaurant.
River Street
A bridge leading from the old warehouses to Bay Street.
We are docked right next to the Factors Walk and River Street, the site of the original cotton warehouses. The Cotton Factors wanted their offices on Bay Street (one street south of River Street) so elaborate iron bridges were built to span the distance between the warehouses which faced the river and Bay Street.

We spent the afternoon doing a little shopping, and went back to the boat around 4PM to have some tea and cookies to warm up. Hans is currently being very masochistic and is washing Whisper’s deck. I won’t be surprised if the water freezes on deck! Tonight we’ll make a chicken dinner from a recipe from Hans’ mom, and then we’ll hit the local pubs for some Friday night drinks. We’ve asked around and have gotten some recommendations for some non-touristy pubs.

We’ve put cushions next to the port window in the vee-berth so KitKat can keep a sharp lookout while we’re not on the boat.

We’ve had so much fun in Savannah that it will be hard to leave tomorrow morning, but we’ll probably push off from the docks in the mid-morning.

Charleston, South Carolina to Savannah, Georgia

December 5-6, 2006

Whisper's off on her first offshore adventure!

Tuesday morning was spent in a flurry of activity to get some last minute projects done before we left around 2PM for our first offshore trip. The weather was forecast to be sunny and calm with light winds. We weighed anchor at 2:10PM and were quickly motoring out of Charleston Harbor. The inlet was straightforward and the imposing stone jetties on either side of the inlet were fairly obvious.
The jetties which create the inlet to the harbor and keep the breaking waves safely away from boats.

Hans had put in all of our waypoints for the 80 mile trip, so it was simply a matter of keeping a good watch and a steady compass course towards the Tybee Roads Inlet. We saw a few container ships leaving the Harbor but besides that, we shared the sea only with the dolphins, pelicans and seagull. We took turns sleeping and kept a good log of our position & speed every hour. The highlights of the trip were the sunset & moonrise over the water.
Kristen and the sunset.

Sunset.

We arrived at the Savannah City Docks at 11AM and promptly fell asleep! Now we have our proper sea legs (or at least the start to them), we’ll probably go offshore again to get to Florida in order to skip what is reputed to be a poorly maintained section of the ICW.

A fishing boat at work on Wednesday morning outside of Savannah.

Charleston, South Carolina

December 3-4, 2006

We woke up on Sunday morning (yes, still in the same place with no anchor dragging), to drizzle, fog and overall unpleasant weather. We spent the morning cleaning Whisper and trying to reorganize some of the contents of her lockers to distribute the weight more evenly.
Cleaning out the cockpit lockers

We went ashore around 1:30 and met Don and Deedie Rose, Whisper’s previous owners. They took us to “Fleet Landing,” a restaurant located in an old Navy headquarters. We talked about Whisper, sailing, Charleston, etc. They are a fun couple and it was great to meet some of Whisper’s old friends.
We were invited to an impromptu dinner on Zen with Michele & Monique from Quebec and we had a lively discussion about the American Dream, politics, sailing (of course), and other such topics. They have college-aged kids in Canada so are taking a short 8-month cruise to Belize & Mexico while the kids are in college for the year.

We spent Monday touring around Charleston, which is a really beautiful city. Lots of grand houses with multiple level porches, Spanish moss, and a slow-paced easy way of life.
Kite shop in Charleston where Kristen's sister, Angela. bought a kite on a family vacation to Charleston almost 17 years ago.







Many of the streets in the historic distric have their names imprinted in the sidewalks.



After an hour city bus ride to the main post office, along with an exercise in customer service (or lack thereof), we were picked up by Cedric, a fellow Vega owner who lives on his Vega in Charleston with his wife, Melissa. After talking with Cedric about Vega improvements and renovations, it appears that there are people who have done more work on their Vega than we have! We went to a great Mexican restaurant and talked all things sailing and Vega-related, then went for a quick dinghy ride over to Whisper so they could check out what we’ve done. They’ll be off to the Caribbean in 2 years time—maybe we’ll meet up in Trinidad!
Cedric & Melissa

Georgetown to Charleston, South Carolina

December 2, 2006

Although the majority of people will contend that tides and currents are a matter of science, on this trip down the ICW we’ve found that they’re purely a matter of luck. Usually, we’re unlucky and have the current against us, whether the tide is going in or out. But, for the trip from Georgetown to Charleston, we got lucky and had the current with us the whole way. We were able to motor for 11 straight hours and go 70 miles—at one point we were speeding along at 9.1 miles per hour.
Along the way we saw various kinds of wild fowl, including snowy egrets and pelicans, as well as Santa Claus on a flying inflatable dinghy! You wouldn’t believe it if we didn’t have the pictures, right?
A snowy egret on the banks of the ICW
Pelicans
Santa on his sled
Santa landing his "sled"

Anchoring in Charleston was a little tricky since the depth was 25 feet and the current ran in and out of the river at over 1.5 knots. We set two anchors on a Bahamian mooring for the first time, which inevitably ended up with some midnight (or was it 2AM) modifications to stop the clanging on the hull and to keep the level of paranoia at a minimum for Whisper’s crew members. We’re a little on the conservative side when it comes to anchoring and although we’ve never dragged an anchor before, we are both hyper-sensitive to the fact that it could happen. Some say imagination is a good thing, although at 2AM it’s best left for kids playing in forts in the woods.



A boat in Charleston all decked out for Christmas

Traffic stopped as the bridge opens for us to pass.

Georgetown, SC Part II

December 1, 2006

We’re at anchor in Georgetown, SC, a town of about 10,000 with a large steel mill and a large paper plant. We’re waiting for some boat supplies to come via UPS so we’ll probably push off tomorrow morning. It’s really windy today anyway (about 20 knots on the water), so it’s just as well that we’re staying put for the day. It was nice to sleep in this morning (until 7:30) and have some pancakes for breakfast. Our friendly neighbors from Quebec dragged anchor this morning, so we put out a second anchor just to be sure. The cold front should pass through in a couple hours and the wind is forecasted to subside later this afternoon. We did laundry yesterday afternoon and I took a very cold shower this morning on deck so I’m feeling clean which is a nice change! We’re anchored right next to the Independent Seafood Fish Dock. Last night we had shrimp, pimiento cheese & crackers for appetizers, followed by fried flounder, mashed potatoes and carrots for dinner. Hans talked with the captain of one of the shrimp boats to see if he could go shrimping with them today, but unfortunately they’re not going out today because of the weather and the next time they go out (probably Monday) they’ll be gone for 3-4 days. We rowed over a shared some wine with the Quebecois. They are on their way to Mexico, Belize & Guatemala. Since they’re Canadian, they’re stopping over at Cuba on the way down. I’ll go ashore later today and take some pictures of Georgetown for the next post.


Sunrise at our anchorage at Thoroughfare Creek, South Carolina (near Bucksport, SC)

Kristen pulling up anchor at Thoroughfare Creek. Kristen's been doing the majority of anchor dropping and weighing since Hans is having some aches in his left shoulder.

Georgetown, South Carolina

November 30, 2006
written at Thoroughfare Creek, SC (near Bucksport, SC)

Old houses in Southport, SC

Kristen eating ice cream in Southport, SC

Hans at the computer in Southport


SC/NC border

An inlet to the Atlantic.

We’re anchored tonight in the most undeveloped section of the ICW that we’ve come across in the past 2 weeks. Granted, we had to motor through hours upon hours of sprawl (see development blog entry) before getting here, but it’s well worth it. It is completely silent, except for the birds and mosquitoes, and we were able to go ashore to Sandy Island to hike around, which is co-owned by the SC Department of Transportation and the Nature Conservancy. Our neighbors tonight are a couple from Quebec on a 40 foot steel sloop. The woman mentioned that she was having trouble with her English and her ability to understand the bridge tenders over the VHF, but Kristen reassured that we’re all having problems understanding the bridge tenders who speak fast and with a rather heavy southern accent that is often hard to decipher over the radio.

Hans motoring through a bridge.

The only pontoon bridge left on the ICW.



Yesterday we had an unintended short day of only 30 miles. Whisper and Boris are capable of getting us over 50 miles in the daylight, but we’re having trouble contending with opposing tides which set our speed down at least 2 miles an hour (about 25% reduction in speed!). We also lose some time waiting for bridge openings. But, at least we’re not racing with anyone. We anchored last night in Little River, off the town of Callabash, SC (or is it NC, it is hard to tell on the chart). We went exploring in the nearby salt marshes and then made our way to town. It is an interesting place with some derlict tourist fishing boats tied up to rickety piers and about 10 restaurants in a matter of one mile. We may have stumbled upon South Carolina’s biggest deep fried tourist trap. We didn’t succumb, and dinghied back to Whisper to cook up some shrimp and grits. Fabulous.

We left the anchorage at dawn and spent the morning motoring through patchy fog until the sun came out in full force around 9:30AM. We’ve been waking up at 6:15AM or so and are generally moving before 7AM. The majority of the morning was spent passing housing developments, both new and old.

aerial tramway traveersing the ICW.

Around 10AM we motored through the infamous “Rock Pile” section of the ICW which is renowned for outcroppings of rocks reaching out to the edge of the channel. It turns out, however, that it was mostly hype, and while there were indeed rocks bordering the ICW, you would have to be half drunk to run your boat into them.





Kitkat spent the whole morning in the sun before retreating to the clothes locker to rest after her hard morning.
Around 11AM, shorts were dug out of the recesses of the clothes locker and we fully enjoyed the 75 degree weather post-Thanksgiving!




We entered the Waccamaw River this afternoon which was a welcome change after the Myrtle Beach area. The Waccamaw is almost completely undeveloped marsh and mangrove land with a couple marinas here and there, but mainly just oaks with Spanish moss.

We arrived at our anchorage around 4:30PM and after exploring, had a dinner of bacon spaghetti (some may call it spaghetti carbonara), red wine and truffles.



Tomorrow we’ll head to Georgetown to pick up some mail and then we’ll be off towards Charleston.