Our new home.

A big ship headed out the inlet.  Just trying to stay out of the way.

What not to do.

We are here!  This is our home for the next 5 months.  I plan to drive back to Michigan with my friend Mary on June 4.  Will see some of you then.
We have been having fun.  Stopped in Southport, N. C. then on to Swan Point Marina  (quite the character marina) then spent last night at Morehead City Yacht Basin.  Got up this morning and did a relaxed 40 mile run into New Bern.  Feels like home already.
2 days ago we had to go around the training area for the marines, Camp Lejeune.  I called the day before to find out if it was OK to go thru that area and was told that there were no scheduled maneuvers going on for the next day.  We had to go under a lift bridge and apparently you can't get passed the bridge if the Marines are around.  We could hear artillery fire in the distance and big booms.  I hope I never have to spend time in a war zone.  I jumped every time it got loud and was glad to get out of that area.  Then yesterday we were going down the icw which parallels the Atlantic there and we heard a "mayday" call on the boat radio.  Lots of people are on there talking about stupid stuff normally, which they are not suppose to do.  But all of a sudden things got very quiet.  We were all listening to this fishing boat say that he just saw two planes crash and saw 4 parachutes come out.  He went and rescued two of them.  That was just the other side of that spit of land from us.  Guess they were Navy planes and pilots.  Guess each plane was worth $58million dollars.  Oh well.  At least no one was hurt.
Hope to see some of you soon.  It feels good not to have to get up and get ready to leave tomorrow.

There we are at the end of the dock at Georgetown, S. C.

It was a beautiful  night with a full moon at Georgetown.

This is the beginning of the rock pile.  Doesn't look like much.

This is a navigational aid for the airport near by.  I thought it looked like something from outer space.

We made it through the "rock pile"!  It is a man made part of the icw that has rock shelves on either side and rocks piled up beyond that.  So it is not a problem if you stay in the middle where there is plenty of water.  We are now just North of North Myrtle Beach, S. C.   We are in a very nice very large marina.  Met some people who told a story about a guy who just last week went outside the channel and tore a hole in the bottom of his boat.  Just amazing because really, all you had to do was stay in the middle.  We heard another story about people on a sailboat who had a small dog who got to their destination and had no dog.  (Our dog can't get off our deck without help.)  We also heard that there is a small alligator living in this little bay with all the boats.  We will be keeping a watch out for him.  We haven't seen an alligator yet but people keep telling us they are around.
The water here is mostly fresh water which is amazing because we are close to an inlet from the ocean.  Most of the icw in this area is fresh water.  It is a very dark color maybe because of minerals (?)
It is a cool and sunny day here.  Just perfect.  It is suppose to get into the 90's by the end of the week.  We expect to be at our destination, New Bern, N. C. by Friday.  We will be there for 5 months.  So everybody, come on down.

We have been having fun on the water.  Spent an extra day in Beaufort, S.C. because of heavy rains and thunder storms.  Nice little town.  The marina had a courtesy car so was able to go to the grocery store.  Met the captain of a 90 foot mega yacht.  He told me that he gets a little nervous in these waters because it can get very shallow.  The boat he captains draws 7 feet.  (We draw 4)  That means there is 4 feet of the boat that is below the water line.  If all we have is 4 feet of water beneath us then we are probably scraping the bottom.
Then we went on to Bohicket marina.  We went 9 miles off the icw to get there.  It was nice but expensive and hardly any people around.  Probably won't go back.  Not worth the extra travel.
Today we just got here to Isle of Palms marina.  Seems very nice but we are anxious to get north and away from these expensive marinas.  We crossed Port of Charleston this morning.  We were prepared for it to be very busy and rough but it was not.  It was windy and wavy but not much boat traffic.  We were hoping to spend a night there but could not get into the marina we wanted to.  Everything is expensive here too.  May try to hit it on the way back down in the fall.  At least see some of the sites.  Would like to tour the US Yorktown which is a retired aircraft carrier I believe.  It is docked in the harbor.
All is well for us despite the shallow spots today.  We are watching the weather again.  Would like to move on to Georgetown tomorrow.  Depends on the storms all around us.  Anxious to get into North Carolina.

Sunset last night.

Downtown Charleston. 

That is the US Yorktown sticking up in the middle of the picture.

This is the spot from Forrest Gump.

This is a famous statue of a girl waving a towel.

This is the African American memorial.

This is the Holicost memorial.

This is Johnny Mercer's grave.

This is a grave stone that I liked.

We have been having fun in Savannah.  As always it's the people we have met that make it the best.
We did have a rental car and we did do some site seeing.  We went to the Bonaventure grave yard which is close to the marina.  Saw some very cool, old grave markers.  There were groups of families so easy to see if you found one you found the whole family.  We saw Johnny Mercer's family.  He wrote Moon River, Accentuate the Positive, and many more songs.  We saw General Anderson who fought in the civil war.  There was also a whole area of jews, including a building that housed the cremation remains of 42 holicost victims.
Then we went into downtown Savanah.  Saw the birthplace of Juliette Low who started the Girl Scouts in America.  Also visited the area that Tom Hanks sat in for the filming of Forrest Gump.  When he was waiting for the bus.  We also walked down by the waterfront.  The area had been where the cotton was brought to and shipped out.  I believe that it was also the area where the slave market was kept.  There is a statue dedicated to African Americans there.
Now it is an area of restaurants and shops.  Really fun to walk down.  We did a lot of walking yesterday.
We are currently preparing to leave.  We will go to Beaufort, South Carolina today and then reassess the weather situation.  We are suppose to be getting several thunderstorms for the next few days.  Luckily we are not in a hurry.  Hope to get to New Bern, North Carolina before Memorial day.  We shall see.

We made it through Hell Gate on Friday the 13th.  Incredible.  We timed it right, arriving on a rising tide.  But not high tide.  We needed to get to Thunderbolt before 5pm so couldn't wait for the 2:30 high tide.  The shortest the water got at Hell Gate was 4 feet and that was only for a minute.  We were mostly above 5 feet which is actually more like 7 feet of water under the boat because the sensor is not on the very bottom of the keel.  So we did good.  Not that I watched.
We were also traveling with another boat who had been through there many times.  All we had to do was follow them.  It's always reassuring when you are traveling with others that know the way.  Even though we do OK on our own.
We are now in the lovely town of Thunderbolt.  It is just outside of Savannah, GA.  We decided to rent a car for the weekend.  Stock up on food and do some sight seeing.  Hope to find the graveyard from the book-movie....Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.  There are some famous people buried here also.  Will let you all know what we find out over the weekend.

This is the entrance to Hell Gate.  Doesn't look like much.

This is sunrise this morning over the water.  Kilkenny was primitive but beautiful.

These were snowy white egrets sitting in the trees early this morning.  They were so beautiful.

The view of our boat from Kilkenny marina.

A beautiful tree right next to the boat.

Can you see the boats in the distance?  They look like they are floating over the grasses.

Spent a night in Fernandina, Fl. and a night in Brunswick, GA.  Both very nice little marinas followed by easy cruising days.  Yesterday was 65 miles, pushing our limit.  We are now at Kilkenny marina.  Back woods Georgia.  Interesting. We have decided to stay one more day and get a good run at "hell gate".  Suppose to be very shallow requiring that you pass thru at high tide.  We are only 30 miles from Savanah and Dick  has already rented a car for the weekend.
Here we are under the lovely Georgia sky just dying of the heat and biting flies.  We are so grateful to have ac.
Lots of wild life to watch.  Everything from turtles to dolphins to herons.  Lots of birds.
We had an interesting occurrence yesterday.  We were traveling through lots of grassy areas that had a deep river running through it.  Many switch backs and there were boats in the distance in front of us.  Gave the illusion that the boats were moving on land.  Would have been one of the best parts of the trip if not for the biting horse flies.  Our poor little dog suffered the most.  But we are happy here for now.

Dick and his friend Greg.

Some local art that I fell in love with.

 An old church.

Fort St. Augustine.

We had a lovely time in St. Augustine.  Met up with Dick's friend from high school and had dinner with them.  Very fun.  Had dinner out for Mothers Day.  The town was very busy all day.  Lots of kids and Moms.
Had some excitement on the dock.  Talk about a bad day.  There was a 55 Fleming across the dock from us (Dick's favorite).  It's for sale for just under a million dollars.  He was trying to get away from the dock but his line was caught on a cleat.  Finally got it off then came the fight with the current and the wind.  He bumped the boat next to him then powered away from him and slammed the dock in front.  He stopped for awhile to regroup then finally was able to get away from the dock but the current pushed him into other boats down the dock.  That's when a woman on board started screaming and got everyone's attention.  He finally got away from the marina.  Dick said the price of that boat just went down.  Hope their day improved after that.
We got out without a problem this morning.  No wind and a rising tide approaching slack tide.  Lots of help on the dock.  All made for an easy out.  Very smooth water.  Not much traffic.  Engines are humming.  We are good.

It was another good day on the water.  At least for us.  We passed a boat on the ICW that had run aground.  A marker had moved and we heard about it luckily.  We needed to go outside the marked channel to get safely through the shoaling area.  We were on on the water about 2 hours to get to St. Augustine.  We needed to get there around 10:30am to get there at slack tide, when there is the least amount of current.  Unfortunately that boat that was stuck was finally able to get off with the rising tide and came into St. Augustine shortly after us.  The tide had changed dramatically by then and they got that very large boat pushed around every which way trying to get into the slip next to us.  They ended up one slip over from where they should have been and were

sunset off the back of the boat last night.

This is that boat that is hung up on the shoals.

This is the water rushing around a pole that demonstrates the big tide here.

These are fish going nuts feeding on minows.

happy to be there.  Talk about a bad day on the water.  They are good now.  Hope we don't have too much trouble getting out.
So here we are in lovely St. Augustine.  Very pretty town from what we have seen so far.  Going out for dinner tonight with a friend of Dick's he has known since grade school.  More to come.

We had a perfect day traveling yesterday.  Sunny and not too warm.  It was however, very windy.  Up to 30mph at times.  Not too much of a problem till we had to dock.  Came in a little side ways and really only hit the dock once.  No permenent damage.  Nice little town of New Smyrna Beach.  Caught up with some looper friends and went out for dinner together.  Set the alarm for 1:15am and went to bed early.
At 1:15am we got up to watch the rocket launch.  We are about 25 miles north of Cape Canaveral and were able to see pretty well from our back deck.  We followed along on the Web site spacex.com.  They kept us up on what was happening in real time.
Very exciting.  Looked like a street light initially that was moving.  Once it got higher in the sky it looked more like a rocket.  I checked the update this morning.  This was a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Japanese satellite called JCSAT 14.  It released the satellite into orbit then it came back down and landed upright on a drone ship called "Of course I love you" in the Atlantic.  Guess it went well.  Fun for us too.
Captain is getting anxious to get on the water.  More later.

 Yes.  It's that little dot that eventually just looked like a star.

Well, we moved on to Cocoa, Florida.  Very sweet little town and a very expensive marina.  Unfortunately we have been stuck here 2 days longer than we wanted to because of the rain and thunder storms in the area.  We did manage to reconnect with some looper friends who just returned from the Bahama's.  Sounds like they had fun but spent a lot of time on the hook because the marina's were very expensive and you pay extra for everything.  Like water.  We have heard this from other people that clean water is a little scarce there and so you end up not showering or washing in salt water and rinsing off in fresh water.  Food is apparently very expensive also.  I think rum is cheap.  We are thinking about the Bahama's next spring.  We'll see.
There was suppose to be a rocket launch early this coming morning but it has been delayed a day because of the weather.  We are about 20 miles south and west of Cape Canaveral.  Tomorrow we should be about 25 miles north and a little west of Cape Canaveral.  We should still be able to see it.  They say a night launch is easier to see.  My friend Barb is about 80 miles south of the Cape and said they have always been able to see them no problem.  But I guess the Rockets go south.  Hope we can see it.  Very exciting.  They announce launches on the news down here.  I will try to get pictures.
So the plan is to go 50 miles tomorrow and 50 miles the next day.  Then we will have an easy day to get to St Augustine.  We hear they have a strong current and a high tide.  We will try to go at slack tide when there is the least amount of current.
It's all just another adventure.

This is an osprey sitting on its nest.  They like the channel markers.

We did see dolphins off and on but did not get any pictures.

We had a lovely cruising day on Saturday.  Except for all the pleasure boats out for a family boating day.  It was quite busy and in Florida they

Me and Barb.

A funny little bird sitting on our power line.

don't care if they wake you by speeding by.  We bounced a lot from the other boats.  But on the bright side we only had one draw bridge to wait for and that was a short wait.  So we made good time.  An easy 50 miles.
We got into Ft. Pierce by 3:30 and caught up with our friends Mary and Larry.  They invited us to join them with 2 daughters and a friend, there to pick up a car and drive it up to South Carolina for them.  Had a really wonderful time with some really wonderful people.
Then on Sunday my friend Barb came out to the boat.  She took me grocery shopping and a tour of town.  We ended up at her house and looking at old pictures of her ex and my ex.  Yes, we have known each other that long.  We ended up going out for dinner, thank you Barb, and another sit on the fly bridge of the boat.  A really wonderful day.
We are now listening to another Mexican band.  They have been playing all day.  Hope they quit soon as we are very tired.  We think they are getting an early start on Cinco DE Mayo.  Time for these guys to roll up the carpet.  We have been at this lovely marina for two days and need to get an early start tomorrow on what will probably be a 7 hour day.  Very tired tonight.