June 2009
ICW to New York – THE GREAT CITIES
Ade had patiently waited while I had my extra mental health week at home, but was fully provisioned and ready to go when I got back. Our next port, Brunswick Landing, GA. This is Voyagers new home and a really great marina and little town, and as we have since learned, not a bad place to keep your boat. It is insurance compliant for us during summer and fall, as it is in Georgia, and in the winter, it is usually relatively temperate. It is about an hour from Jacksonville, and has a good airport shuttle company in “A 2 B”.
This is all territory we’ve done before, so we went “outside” at Brunswick and made the overnight run along the Atlantic to the lovely Charleston harbor. It was a lovely night with a beautiful moon, calm seas and we both actually got sleep, each taking a three hour watch during the 6PM to 6AM period.
Charleston is a great city and the Municipal Marina is well located. It is a longish walk to downtown, but certainly do-able, and the marina offers a shuttle several times a day. We like to walk in, walk around, hit the Harris Teeter Grocery Market and then wait for the marina van to take us home. This is an overnight stop, but Ade promises a longer visit in the fall. The shops are charming; the Market offers all manner of irresistible pretty things, wildly impractical for the boat, except of course fun jewelry and scarves, and trinkets for friends. Since time was short, after lunch on the waterfront, Ade took the opportunity to visit the newest ship in the Navy and I allowed myself more time in the various shops and galleries.
The ICW in South Carolina is slow going again, but pretty. We decided to stop for the night in Georgetown, and chose one of three convenient marinas in town so we would be able to get in a good afternoon walk. As we turned off the ICW into town, we were delighted to see the familiar gorgeous green hull of Kasekuchen tied to the end of the first marina. We tooted and hollered, and almost before we could tie up Cheryl was there on her bike with Ade’s favorites…hot passage cookies. How she does it I will never know. She joked about me madly vacuuming up, but we’d been inundated all day with these strange looking flies and those we didn’t swat to death, died anyway. It was mass carnage, insect bodies littering up the entire boat, ahh, springtime in the south! That night, Bob magically whipped up the most delicious parmesan crusted fresh grouper in caper butter sauce that we’d ever eaten. I wish Ade would take lessons from him, and he wishes I would. The thing is lessons or not, it’s a gift…and Bob Klein has it. Cheryl has it too, but has to fight for the galleyJ. Dinner on Kasekuchen is a real treat.
We followed each other out the next day, they onto Myrtle Beach for a planned month long stay with friends and family, while we gypsies continued onward, determined to get to Maine by August 1st. We tooted goodbye at Grand Dunes complex and moved on, planning to go as far as we could that day and anchor out.
Well, the anchoring out bit didn’t work out as well as we’d planned. We ran hard aground on the ol’ Calabash Creek…no amount of maneuvering helped. It was getting dusky and we didn’t want to mess around with it in the dark, so we swallowed our pride and called for an assist…that’s why we belong to Boat US. It’s inexpensive, offers discounts to many marinas, and with full coverage, tow services are a fraction of what they might be. We wouldn’t cruise North America without it. The Tow Boat US driver had to work hard to set us free, and then checked all the depths of this shallow anchorage until he found an area that would be deep enough for us. He also soothed our bruised egos by telling us that this area is a real rainmaker for tow companies because it is so poorly marked.
It was another long run the next day, but by the weekend we were in another one of those ‘ya just gotta stop here’ places, Beaufort, North Carolina. Ade’s brother Ray and his wife Kathy drove out from their Raleigh home to spend a few days with us. As usual when meeting friends that will cruise with you from port to port, it’s a bit of a puzzle getting ground transportation coordinated. It often involves dropping one car at the point of termination and driving the other one to the point of embarkation, or renting cars to return your guests to their car or airport.
Beaufort is charming, we fell in love with it the first time and if anything, we like it even more nine years later. The marina at the City Docks has a friendly staff, is conveniently located in the well maintained historic downtown, and they offer a complimentary car to run to the big grocery stores just a few miles away. In town, there is a good health food store, great restaurants, live music venues every few store fronts, cute shops and good galleries.
Dreamweaver was just hauled and is up on the hard near here. Dottie and Ken have packed up a U-Haul to take an impossible amount of things home to California. They have cruised for over five years now on their radical sabbatical, and it’s time to go back to work for awhile. They have some great business opportunities that won’t wait. They hope to continue cruising up the ICW to the Northeast in the next two years. We plan to still be nearby to join them. They stopped by for a goodbye visit with all of us, and we wished them well on their cross country truckin’ adventure.
We strolled town and had a lovely dinner out at the Front Street Grill, Ray tried to get us to order Shrimp n Grits, but we declined…and a bite of his didn’t convince we northerners that we’d made a mistake. The next morning they convinced us we HAD to have breakfast out at the Grocery Restaurant. It is wonderful, and always packed for whatever meal they are serving. We stayed in town all day, and Steve and Barb from Maerin, a Solo 43 (our sister ship) pulled in and joined us for Happy Hour.
