On December 7, we left Charleston, hooked up with Sea Sloth and headed down the ICW towards Steamboat Creek where we planned to anchor for the night. Roger took Levi to shore at around 3:00 p.m. and while there, met an older lady sitting fishing and tearing into a BBQ sandwich. No one else was around. Between her southern drawl, mumbling, and eccentricities, he only could catch about 50% of what she was saying. But she was sweet, Roger smiled and nodded, and they laughed. She asked about ‘those people on them there boats” (that would be us and Sea Sloth).
Sea Sloth invited us over for dinner but since Kim felt like she was coming down with something, we invited them with their food over to our boat where we could enjoy each other’s company with enough distance between us outside in our cockpit. We had a great time and shared fun stories with Tracy and Gaz, such a fun-loving couple. There was thunder and lightening that night and the anchor alarm went off but Kim and Levi both slept right through it. It was a warning, not an actionable item.
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| A view of Murray Blvd in Charleston from the Ashley River as we depart. |
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| Levi likes the ICW because it is almost always nice and calm. |
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| A house on the Wappoo Creek near Charleston. All the houses along here have super long docks out to the water. |
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A bridge on the Wappoo Creek.
If you look at this area on google maps, it is so interesting to see all the docks going over the muddy/marshy areas. |
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| The Wappoo Creek Bridge |
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| The Wappoo Creek gets very narrow before it connects to the Stono River |
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| An industrial location on Yonges Island |
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| Any guesses as to what this is? In Steamboat Creek. |
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| At Steamboat Creek, Roger and Levi are on shore leave. |
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| We're coming Mom! |
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| All ready for Tracy and Gaz to visit for supper. |
The next morning, Gaz delivered warm cinnamon buns to us at 7:15 a.m as promised! We decided we might just have to follow them around for awhile. Both boats left around 9:30 a.m. While we were underway towards Beaufort, SC (pronounced Bu-fert), we were receiving mixed messages between Navionics, Aquamaps and our visual observations. The shallow water looked too close: danger Will Robinson! After slowing down to digest the information more, it appeared that the markers we saw weren’t actually correlating with the channel - so either the markers had moved or the shoaling had changed. We inched forward and ignored the chart plotter, visually guiding our way through. After going aground recently in similar circumstances, we were quite glad to get back on track without incident. After that, Roger was dealing with a downpour, trying to get through an upcoming bridge on time, while Kim and Levi slept through it all. Once we got to Beaufort, we moored at Safe Harbor Marina. Roger took an Uber to a drug store and picked up a Covid-19 test kit for Kim. The first test was negative, but another test in 36 hours would be needed.
On December 9th, we went for bike ride with Gaz and Tracy. When we got the bikes out of the dingy and onto the dock, Kim’s e-bike bucked on her and almost went into the water. Scary! We explored the town, enjoying the feel of the live oaks and Spanish moss draping over the streets, and had lunch together at the Plum Bistro. Afterwards, we went to run some errands across the bridge. Kim did not like the narrow path on bridge at all. Later over at Walgreen’s, Kim's bike bucked again and she ended up jamming her knuckles onto the brick wall, what a bloody mess, literally. We eventually figured out that if the power is on and the peddles move at all while you maneuver the bike, it will give the bike a burst of energy, resulting in the bucking behavior. Roger had steering issues on his bike this day too, but was able to fix it later. We were glad to get our errands done; we even found a little rosemary Christmas tree and a few decorations.
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| We were charmed by the feel of the trees and Spanish moss draping over the streets. |
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| So many beautiful homes here. |
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| This property was on the river. |
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| The view at the end of one of the streets. |
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| A whole hedge of blue trumpet vine. |
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| At the waterfront park with Gaz and Tracey. |
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| Roger was taken with this cruise ship. He swore he saw the Independence in Booth Bay Harbor. We looked it up online, and sure enough, it goes there in the summers. |
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| Lillian Gray on the mooring. |
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| Knuckles meet brick wall. Knuckles lose. |
Bright and early on December 10th, Sea Sloth brought over some fresh biscuits before they headed out, Kim was not feeling the best, and we decided to stay on in Beaufort. Luckily, the second Covid test was also negative. The next day, Kim had a slight fever and cough and felt miserable, so she slept and suffered. Roger and Levi went for a walk, and Roger trip-planned. Later in the day Kim mustered some energy for a walk and we decorated our little rosemary Christmas tree. A day later, the over-busy doctor finally called back and assured Kim the Covid tests were pretty reliable and gave the usual instructions for getting over the flu.
Savannah - December 13th to January 23rd
On December 13th, we headed to Savannah and arrived at Hinckley Yacht Center. Despite earlier communications, they seemed surprised by our arrival, but rallied to get us on dock and to make us feel welcome. One thing we loved about the Hinckley Yacht Center is that they had a free loaner car available 24/7 and not much competition for it. They also had a free washer and dryer, with nice bathrooms and showers. They are a working yard, so they aren't set up as a well groomed marina, but we had all the amenities we needed and a great view of the Wilmington River.
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| Morning at the marina in Beaufort. |
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A set of three bridges to navigate at the Islands Expressway near Savannah.
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| As the Wilmington River ran parallel to the Savannah River we could see boats, including this freighter, that looked like they were going right through the marshes. |
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| Some peaceful dolphins trolling the river. |
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| On the dock at Hinckley Marina. We are on the far side, the boat with the tallest mast. |
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| Next to Hinckley, there is a little park with a pier where folks come and fish. From there, we could see the docks and the East Victory Drive bridge beyond. |
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| A view out over the marshes near the marina. |
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| Here we are in the loaner car, out getting cold medicine for Kim. While Roger was in the store, Kim was on a FB video chat with her Mom. |
Savannah is the place where we planned to get a lot done on the punch list of things to fix on the boat, and over five weeks or so, with a week break for the holidays, we did manage to get most of it done. We got to know many of the different tradespeople and Roger got to stay busy because of how swamped the marina manager was - He did much of the managing himself. A big bonus was that because we were getting work done there, we didn't have to pay to stay on dock.
During a time when the interior of the boat was getting torn apart to get at wires underneath the the ceiling and walls, we took ourselves to a Residence Inn in the historic district of Savannah. It was a great opportunity to learn more about the city. We were particularly charmed by the squares. These had been designed during the city's inception and have been preserved. Every few blocks there is a picturesque park. One of them is the place where Forest Gump sat on a bench and said "Life's like a box of chocolates," but the bench is now inside a museum.
We had a quiet time with Christmas. There was skeleton staff at the marina and only one other boat with occupants. They had their own vehicle, which meant the marina car was basically ours for the week. On Christmas day, we enjoyed our usual traditions and missed our kids. We then went to Tybee Island for a walk. During New Years's we stayed at the Alida hotel in downtown Savannah for a few days. Out our window we had a view of Plant Riverside, and Roger saw the fireworks. Kim was too lazy to get out of bed and Levi actually slept through them. We really enjoyed the hub bub and vibe of the city.
Kim's bout of the flu passed by but unfortunately, the symptoms hung on and she was becoming worried that it was a sinus infection. This would be the first sinus infection since leaving Berwick Academy six years earlier! One evening after Roger had gone to bed, she started feeling an ear infection and that was the only proof needed that things were getting out of control. We rousted ourselves and went to the only urgent care clinic that was open. There, she was treated very well and taken seriously after giving the history of prior infections and low immunity for respiratory infections. She was kindly given two shots in the gluteus maximus. Within the two needles were pain killer, antibiotics, and steroids and prescriptions for the same were provided. A few days later, she was feeling much better with only lingering symptoms.
We took Levi to the vet to continue the quest to find out what was causing his horrible, painful bouts. We put him on a special soft-food, low fat diet and a 14 day round of antibiotics, with the suspicion of pancreatitis, and sent some blood away for testing. The test came back negative for pancreatitis, but the vet said it didn't rule it out. After a week and a half, there were no more bouts and we were able to wean him off the low fat food. The vet agreed with us that Levi could go to his boot camp training in Jacksonville that we had planned. Afterwards, we had a follow up visit with the vet, and she was convinced that he had gone through a round of pancreatitis.
Boot camp was an expensive endeavor to see if we could get Levi to be friendly with dogs again. To make a long story short, we had tried everything else we knew how to do without success. He would be given the regular bootcamp obedience training, with sit, stay, heel, down, and place deeply engrained in his doggie brain along with controlled exposure to other dogs. Levi had been attacking other dogs, even though he would sometimes approach them with a wagging tail and look like he wanted to meet them. It was down to no new dogs in Levi's life - he could only behave around his doggie friends that he knew before he was three years old. Over the three weeks he was there, we were given updates. He was doing an excellent job with his training, but meeting other dogs was another story. They were able to refine his reactions to this: Levi is fine with other dogs as long as they don't get in his space. If they do, he will correct them and the problem is that he does it by attacking; not in a socially acceptable way as most other dogs would do. So, he was given more training to help him be respectful around other dogs when they are not in his space, and before he came home with us, we were given training on his commands and how to advocate for Levi to keep him out of trouble.
After picking Levi up from bootcamp, we continued on for a visit with Roger's parents in the Villages. We played golf on a very cold day for Florida, had a belated Christmas dinner, and otherwise greatly enjoyed the visit.
Our new friends, Lynn and Brian arrived after the new year. We kept meeting them as they were getting their catamaran ready to go in the water. In the water, they were docked near us and we had lots of conversations and went to dinner together to talk about their plans for going to the Bahamas. In the end, we decided we would buddy sail with them. Hearing about it from them, knowing we would enjoy sailing with them, all the delays we'd had with boat problems needing to be fixed, and the distance to Key West - all of these influenced us to make a decision to go to the Bahamas instead of Key West.
Phabulous Photos, especially the sunsets!! Really enjoy your stories here, Rog & Kim, take care.
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