Friday 26 October 2012


Monday October 15, 2012

Monday they were forecasting thunderstorms south of where we were located at the anchorage.  We headed on down the ICW & through the Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge.  The only wildlife we saw were a couple of dolphins that were swimming along on each side of our boat.  There was nothing distinguishing about this Wildlife Refuge, it looked the same as all the other salt marsh we’d been traveling through.  We ended our day early & anchored in the Whiteside Creek, about 15 miles north of Charleston, SC.  That nit we had a spectacular light show with lightening & storm clouds all around us, but nothing in our anchorage. 

Tuesday was an even shorter day, arriving in Charleston, South Carolina at 11 am.  We had a quick lunch, then caught a shuttle-bus to the old Slave Market.  There were several companies offering horse-drawn carriage tours of the downtown area & we decided this would be a good way to see the sites of  historic Charleston.  We saw some interesting single room width houses & large churches with huge steeples.  After the tour we went through the Old Slave Market which is a 2 block long building that is full of vendors selling crafts, food and other products.  The market was never used to sell slaves but was where the slaves would go to sell their masters produce from the plantations.  

We left Charleston the following morning & headed south again on the ICW.  We anchored in the South Edisto River, just off the main channel of the ICW.  The river is very wide here so the tidal current was not very fast, making for a calm anchorage.  We saw quite a few dolphins in this area.  

We have been pushing to get to Georgia, as there was not a lot we were interested in seeing after leaving Charleston.  Thursday night we had planned on anchoring in Skull Creek, off of Hilton Head Island but couldn’t find a good spot based on the description in the guide books.  We ended up going aground while trying to find this anchorage.  We were able to reverse off of it & decided maybe it was a good night for a marina, we got a slip at Hilton Head Harbor Marina. The tides are getting really high as we are getting closer to Georgia, about 8 feet at Hilton Head harbor.

We left Hilton Head Friday morning for Savannah, Georgia.  The tide was against us so the current was pretty strong, so with the motor on & the sails up & 14 knots of wind, we were only able to go 4 and half knots (slow!).  We arrived at Isle of Hope Marina in the middle of the afternoon.  Isle of Hope is where the rich people of Savannah, Georgia would go in the summer to escape the heat of the city.  The “cottages” all look like smaller versions of the southern mansions, surrounded with Live Oaks & covered in hanging moss.  

Saturday morning we got a guy from the marina to take us to Walmart so we could catch a bus to downtown Savannah.  The bus could not take us to where we hoped to be dropped off, because Savannah State University’s Homecoming Weekend parade was going across his normal route.  We stayed and watched a bit of the parade which was all the younger kids by the time we got there.  They put their heart and soul into their routine and it was fun to see the antics.  Our idea was to do a tour of downtown Savannah like we had done in Charleston.  We picked one of the trolleys and got lucky as the driver was a character who did a standup comedy routine while driving the trolley around downtown Savannah.  We became her new best friends from Canada and this was a really good way to see the sites.  Savannah is a beautiful city rich in history that they are maintaining to its original state.  They have 22 parks that were built when the city was originally laid out with different monuments to people that were important in the development of Savannah.   These are landscaped and shaded by Live Oak trees that are covered with moss.  The moss we found is loaded with Chiggers which are nasty little bugs that bite and can only be removed by painting them with clear nail polish, according to our tour guide.  Some of the streets near the old harbour area are still paved with ballast stones from the old sailing ships that used to come to load up with cotton.  They have done a great job maintaining the history of the area.

We had been reading & hearing about how shallow the ICW was through Georgia, so Dave asked the dockmaster what areas were bad.  He told us of the 3 main ones:  Hell Gate, Florida Passage & the Little Mud River.  He also told us how to get through them.  So on Sunday morning we left Isle of Hope late to get the rising tide.  The 8 feet of rising tide plus the 3 to 5 feet, that was there at low tide, provided plenty of water to allow us to go through Hell Gate and Florida passage.  We anchored that night in Kilkenny Creek, 25 miles south of Savannah and the next morning we used the same technique to go down the Little Mud River.


The tallest buildings allowed in Charleston are the churches

The Old Slave Market in downtown Charleston 

Our best dolphin picture so far

Savannah State University Homecoming Parade

One of the parks in Savannah

Swamp grass along the ICW, half South Carolina and most of Georgia  looked like this
Storm clouds and light show in the distance thankfully


1 comment:

  1. Hi Anne & Dave - Finally got a chance to catch up on reading your blog.

    Praying that you folks are holed up safely somewhere.

    Love & Blessings

    Jane
    Airdrie, Alberta

    ReplyDelete