Brunswick to Birmingham

09 - 15 Oct 2019

Well, as is typically the case, Heather got through her list of things that need to be done before me. This causes tension because then the only thing on her list is supervising me on my list. Heather's mother came to the rescue by getting sick, so we quickly arranged flights and I ran her down to JAX to fly home. While maybe this didn't seem completely necessary at first, it turned out to be a good thing Heather was there. Health care in Las Cruces can be poor to just plain bad. After my experiences at the beginning of the year I know it's nice to have someone who's not hurting looking after you while the medical system is doing its thing, or at least should be trying to.

We had originally planned, first thing after leaving the boat, to go back to Annapolis for the boat show. Then Heather and I would drive to Kansas City, put her on a plane to PHX for her now four times a year appointments, and I would drive the last couple hours to Wichita for my meeting. Because of the fixed gap between the boat show and meeting, and the need to get Heather to her appointments, I was going to be in Wichita for almost a week and a half.

As for the boat show now, I wasn't really interested in going without Heather, and it added another couple days of driving by myself to boot, so we'll miss this one and catch it again next year.  I think we already spent enough time in Annapolis this year anyway, and certainly enough money.

Well now I also had to get to Wichita myself. It was an awkward distance for me to go in two days even with Heather, so I broke it up into three pretty easy days of six or seven hours of driving each. Also I could go straight to Wichita rather than the nearest big airport in KC.

I tried to work my boat list like I was still going to the boat show, and the extra days came in handy to actually finish up with the chores before I really had to leave for Wichita. I had arranged for an AirBnB there which was suspiciously cheap and was now already paid for, so I figured I would still get there by Wednesday and work on writing and such for the handbook meeting the next week.

I finally hit the road on Monday. South of Atlanta there is a liquor store with lots of billboards, and I needed gas anyway, so I stopped there. It's difficult keeping track of various state and county liquor laws, so I thought I would stock up with travel sizes while it was convenient. Inside they had all sorts of GA and experimental type aircraft hanging from the ceiling, including this guy who looked a little familiar.

The first night I spent in Birmingham AL. I went to the local Hattie B's there and picked up some takeout chicken because once I got to the hotel I wasn't leaving until morning. The area where the Hattie B's was was obviously working hard and doing pretty well at it, but it was sporty in parts of the center of town. The outskirts looked a lot like suburbs anywhere.

The next day in Alabama, farther down the road towards Memphis, I came upon this. It looks like this guy was hauling a long trailer that was in turn hauling a short but overloaded trailer that blew out a tire. He's lucky the whole parade hadn't flipped. Safety, people!



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Wrapping Up in Brunswick

07 - 08 Oct 2019

Some folks live on their boats year round and decorate them just like any other home.

One of my remaining chores was to change the boat zincs one last time this year. The heat exchanger zinc looked a little wasted, even considering it had been in a week longer than the others. I'm now hoping some of this is due to the constant use. The engine was running for most days for more than a month, averaging more than eight hours a day. That's a lot of water flowing by. We'll see how this compares to the next two or three months of still water, with the fish hanging of the side of the boat for backup.

Since our usual bottom cleaning guy hadn't gotten back to us yet and we only had a few days we were fortunate to catch Bobby in the parking lot after after he had finished someone else's boat. He said there was just a light scum since our last cleaning in Annapolis five weeks ago. We'll see how it looks at the beginning of the year, but we have a bottom paint job in our near future. The prop zinc was still there, but obviously we  had lost a lot of weight in just five weeks. Again, I hoping it it the agitation from use rather that some sort of other electrical problem but we'll see at the beginning of the year.

A lot of what needed to be done was just cleaning, sorting, and organizing. I also needed to pack for an almost three month road trip. This included a meeting, which compared to my current lifestyle is relatively formal, like shirts with collars, closed toed shoes, and for the first time in six months - pants! After that we were going to be in some warm places like the valley, and some not so warm places like northern Arizona. I know I'm overpacking, but it's easier than whittling down the list any further (some variant of "My note would be shorter if I had more time"). The birds in the marsh across from the dock make a racket every morning to get me going.

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Getting Settled in Brunswick

04 - 06 Oct 2019

We spent our first night back in Brunswick at the fuel dock. We arrived too late to get diesel and a last pump out. This was okay since we wanted to pick our time to make our final docking, especially since we wanted to go stern in. Since we were arriving so late in the season they had us this time all the way up at 15 dock, and the very end of the inlet. We're about halfway down the length, so we'll get some steps in.

The next day we took an Uber to SSI to get one of our last rental cars for the year. First we had to get blueberry pancakes at Palmers to celebrate our return. From the end of the dock this is the view of the wrecked container ship.

Then we took the rental up to the Charleston airport to pick up our car. We had linner at a place we had on our list for some time but had never quite made it to - the Codfather! It was a traditional type British fish and chips place, and was very good. This from a guy who really doesn't like fish that much.

One night we grabbed some takeout from Fox's, a little pizza place in downtown Brunswick. This plaque caught my eye.

It felt good to finally be here, but we had burned through most of our reserve days. We had to wrap things up here quickly if we were still going to make it up to the boat show.

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Sapelo, St. Simons Island, and Finally Brunswick!

03 - 04 Oct 2019

The next night we were anchored again off of Dog Hammock, but this time on the other side of the channel a little more out of the way.

In the morning we passed by St Simons Island - almost there! The big, white ship on the right is a casino ship that goes out to sea.

New to the St. Simons scenery is the container ship wreck that happened a few weeks before. The red is bottom paint that should be in the water. Apparently it had 4000 Hyundais in it. The boat must have been highly automated because I think only four guys were running the whole show. Supposedly some system started moving water around, unbalancing the boat, but maybe that was difficult to immediately perceive in the weather they were in at the time. Before they were able to identify and correct the problem the boat rolled in a wave and just kept going. I had heard soon after it happened that they had rescued three of the guys. In the Uber over to SSI the next day the driver said they also got the fourth guy out.

Well, after SSI, we turn right up the river, under the bridge, and right again into the Brunswick channel towards town. We made it!

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Edisto, Beaufort SC, Savannah

30 Sep - 02 Oct 2019

We didn't get stuck behind the bridge just south of Charleston this time, although we were a little early. Down a few miles, off to the side a barge was in dry dock. The barges don't seem that big (tall?) in the water, but they displace a lot of water to float all that crap they are carrying. It looks like there is more under water than above. We anchored that night at Edisto.

We got to Beaufort the next afternoon after passing through this last bridge, where we regretted not taking the dockhand's advise to turn around and head up the river current to dock. We came in pretty fast but we had a wide open dock so it worked out fine fine. We ate at a little bar and grill overlooking the waterfront park.

On our way down past Savannah we passed by the cemetery from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. We had visited it on that same southern tour we had taken years ago. There were a lot of big marinas and dock yards doing all sort of work around Savannah. The ship below caught our eye.

We spent that night at the City of Hope marina again, forgoing pizza this time and having dinner at the highest rated place in the area. We had a nice little table overlooking an overgrown creek.

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Charleston

28 - 29 Sep 2019

Since we were so close to Charleston we got there by mid day. On the way you could see all the traffic on the water, ferries going to the forts, huge container ships and cruise ships, and the newish bridge. The main span of 1546 feet is the third longest for a cable stayed bridge in the western hemisphere.

Getting closer to town you can see the effect of building ordinances on the skyline. No building is allowed to be taller than the church steeples.

I didn't realize at the time just how good a job Heather had done docking in the swift current at the dock. I thought we were coming into the slip pretty hot after having made our turn. Apparently she had it in reverse the whole time, slowing us down.

Since we arrived in Charleston so early in the day Heather had the idea to shuttle the car that afternoon and free up the following day. This turned out to be a good thing. On our way up to Fayetteville we got hungry and I started searching for a nice spot around Florence. As we approached it seemed very familiar. We had stopped here at Julia Belle's Restaurant on our first tour of the southeast more than a decade ago, long before everyone had a computer in their pocket. I must have found this place then in one of our guide books (remember those?).

Well, it looked the same inside and out, and I once again had their signature pork chop sandwich. It was more of a novelty the first time, but still one of the best.

This time I did notice that their electrician perhaps left a little to be desired.

It's good we had freed up the next day because it went fast. After a long day I was too tired to take the car to the airport that night, so I decided to do it early in the morning. When I left it was almost high tide and anything that wasn't floating was getting wet. When I got back maybe 90 minutes later the old fixed dock was almost completely underwater and creeping well into the parking lot.

On my way to the airport I stopped at a great little bagel place on the east side for some bagel sandwiches, spare sliced bagels, and more coffee. When I say small I mean it. There was barely enough room for three people to stand, which was awkward because I was in between the uniformed cop and the clearly freaked out long haired musician who reeked of pot. Everyone played nice, took their bagels and went their separate ways. On the corner this building was in the process of being moved.

Once I was back on the boat we got out of there as soon as possible before the current switched.

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Dewees Creek

27 Sep 2019

Making our way down from Georgetown we encountered some of the skinniest water we've seen. Like floating docks floating on mud skinny. 

Like ships that were completely aground skinny (where is the keel?).

A dredge was working part of the area. We ever so slowly crept around the dredge and barges, reading nothing on the depth gage more than once. We were probably technically aground, but just oozed our way through.

We spent the night anchored in the same spot just north of Charleston.

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Lockwood's Folly, N Myrtle Beach, Georgetown

25 - 26 Sep 2019

So we made our way south from Southport, arriving at the other end of Oak Island at the aptly named Lockwood's Folley. We encountered a situation where the channel markers on the chart were different from what was actually before us. When we have encountered this before we try to follow the actual channel markers unless the chart and/or our eyes are strongly recommending another path. Okay so far, but it is almost low tide, and appears that Dorian and such have perhaps done some recent remodeling not accounted for by some or most of our guides. At which point we run aground in the sand. We had slowed down a lot by then, so really just a couple bumps, but we clearly weren't going anywhere until we had some more water.

Now we had more time to discuss our options! We were at most barely off the line indicated by the green channel marker. The chart showed that one of the least objectionable paths lay just to the right of the marker, so when passing boats threw us a wake I tried to use them to bump our way in our intended direction, which worked maybe half the time. It felt weird wanting boats to wake us as they passed. At least we had a nice view.

After maybe an hour we had plowed maybe a dozen yards to the correct side of the marker, but we were still aground. There may have not been any good options at low tide. It took another half hour of the tide rising to finally get us going. This would prove to be an important experience over the next few days. This was the longest we had been aground since the disastrous Sarasota episode a couple years ago.

Once free of the sand we continued down to Myrtle Beach. We planned on going across the ditch to some highly rated restaurant, but when we got to the top of the stairs we just stopped at the marina restaurant, which turned out to have good food and drinks. Mine came in a little bucket advertising some sort of rum.

The next morning we continued down to Georgetown, which we had skipped on the way up. It was a cute little town that was obviously trying real hard. As we were leaving the boat we saw this just off the dock. We're still not certain, but it appeared to be an alligator that had gotten tangled up in a trash bag. It was gone when we got back.

At dinner Heather finally cracked the code on what vegetable means in the south. It means not meat.

It looked like a paper plant was off in the distance, giving Georgetown yet another similarity with Brunswick.

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Surf City, Southport

23 - 24 Sep 2019

South from Beaufort the sound is wide, but the channel deep enough for us is pretty narrow. We quickly were confronted with this guy. Note the red channel marker in the background for reference. He had both nets out and was blocking most of the channel.

We made it past the fishermen and then were confronted with something more unusual. I don't specifically remember these on the way up. People had them as decorations in their yards along the waterway. At least I can tell that the second one is a giraffe. I'm not quite sure what the hell the first one is. Maybe the witch from The Little Mermaid?

Since we had learned to call and reserve a slip before the day we needed it they had room for us this time in Surf City, so we didn't have to anchor off of Camp Lejeune again. Surf City was an awesomely walkable little beach town, with many restaurants, a liquor store, and even a small grocery all within a short stroll. The light on the water in the picture below almost makes it look like a sandy beach.

The next day we made our way down to Southport. We have tried to get much more specific on the radio and phone on what we will be dealing with when we dock, and now we have a fairly detailed list of questions. What we hadn't accounted for was young folks who had never docked an expensive boat between even more expensive boats answering the questions, perhaps without even realizing they were making assumptions that made little sense. Here Heather earned here docking t-shirt. I'm sure she didn't expand the young dockhand's vocabulary, but it was entertaining, at least afterwards. Now our list is even more specific. The learning continues.

We had dinner at another Provisioning Company, this one strictly a restaurant on the other side of the marsh, a short, pleasant walk away. It is one of those seafood shack type places that is friendly enough but expends most of their effort on the food rather than the service or decor, which is just fine by us. For once I had fish, which was very good, while Heather continued with her shrimp streak. I think she may finally be reaching the limits of her seafood desires. The sunset while we ate was particularly colorful.

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Oriental, Beaufort

20 - 22 Sep 2019

The weather had broken by the time we left Belhaven and we had a very pleasant day making our way down to the sleepy little town of Oriental. We docked in the very same place. This being our second time we did a much better job with those aft spring lines. After settling in I headed back over to the Provision Company where I had found the used shower hoses earlier in the year. They had really scrubbed and organized their used parts inventory. I found a $5 used pulley to help with the dinghy handling and a nice swiveling attachment for the galley faucet that allowed us to to squirt the entire base of both sinks. What luxury!

They also had a t-shirt which Heather seemed to think was for me. A few days later she admitted she might need one, too. If they have t-shirts for it , then it can't just be us.

On our walk to the M&M Cafe for  dinner we saw that some of the precautions for Dorian had not yet been been unwound. Oriental around the waterfront is at most inches higher than Elizabeth City.

In the morning I went across the street to the cute little coffee shop for some hi-test caffeine and fresh pastries. That and a bag of ice and we were ready to depart for Beaufort. When approaching Beaufort the waterways got very crowded. One boat was anchored directly under one of the bridges. Since Heather couldn't believe that anyone would be stupid enough to block the main channel so they could fish, she assumed that the adjacent span was correct. Fortunately there was enough water over there to avoid drama, but the buzzing of many boats continued all the way to the dock. On the other hand, I am always willing to believe that people could be that stupid.

After we had settled in at the Beaufort city marina I availed myself of the land based high flow toilets. After a few moments I felt I was being watched. Some movement caught my eye. Along the base of the shower was this little guy, maybe a couple inches across. Not the sort of thing you see in Arizona, although I guess the scorpions come close. Later we had a late lunch, early dinner (properly referred to as linner) at what is apparently the oldest continuous business in Beaufort. The Royal James Cafe is some sort of bar, pool hall, music venue with a tiny little grill and deep frier tucked away in the corner. It was a cheap, good meal, and it was fun watching the locals hang out. To all my friends!

Our first choice for dinner was very crowded with a long wait, so we took a flier a walked into the place next door, which had good food and drinks, and really great views. Below are some of the bigger boats docked down the way from us. Boats this big are typically coming in for the night for fuel then making their way outside on the ocean. We'll try and do more of that next time, especially on our way up when we're headed the same direction as the gulfstream.

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