Leg #5 -- 9/19/13 to 10/1/13 -- Hampton, VA to Baltimore, MD

We arrived in Nor­folk early and drove to Vir­ginia Beach which looks like all of the other beach towns along the Atlantic.  We had lunch and went to Whole Foods for pro­vi­sions.  Back to boat at Salt Pond Marina.   Ken took the rental car back while I veg­ged with a book.  We had din­ner at the Marina and took off early the morn­ing of the 19^th head­ing  to Cape Charles.

Old cement ships used as a breakwater.

On the way we took a look the inter­est­ing break­wa­ter at Kip­topeke State Park that is made up of ten cement boats built around 1940.  After they were built, some­one decided that they were not work­ing out, and then used the shells out­side the ferry land­ing at the park site as a breakwater.

Cape Charles turned out to be a very charm­ing town with a cou­ple of nice restau­rants and a sprin­kling of shops.  The town has many his­tor­i­cal houses that are very well main­tained and the whole town was very pleas­ant.  We hit the cof­fee shop for lunch, then later to Shanty’s for appe­tiz­ers and Kelly’s Pub for another beer and snack.  The sail­boat next to us had four men on it and they were doing a “Boys on Board” trip !
I walked all around the town in the morn­ing after mail­ing Vail’s 2^nd postcard—the last post­card in town for this sea­son ! (Vail has a project at school that has asked for post­cards from wher­ever any­one is traveling.)
We left Port Charles at 8:30am head­ing to Tang­iers Island about 45 miles north.  The weather was beau­ti­ful and the water was flat—great.  We made a quick trip of it.

A pic­ture per­fect shot of the crab shacks on Tang­iers Island.

“The Mr. Parks” of Parks Marina

On to Tang­iers Island and a stop at Parks Marina.  Mr. Parks was very inter­est­ing and help­ful.  The lit­tle town has quite a his­tory and now has a small museum and infor­ma­tion cen­ter that tells you a bit of that tale.  The local accent is fun and the peo­ple are very engag­ing.  We took the $5.00/15 minute local golf cart tour and learned where every­thing was.  We are a lit­tle off-season so din­ner was a bit early—dessert first and a take-home.  One of our crew needs to want to cook !

We left Tang­ier Island and headed up the Potomac.  We’d had a few dis­cus­sions on whether to include this river because of the time involved get­ting to the north end.  We finally agreed to go ahead and head to Alexan­dria for a few nights.  Our first stop was Colo­nial Bay Marina.  We rented a golf cart and headed off to see what else was around.  We had lunch at one of the 3 Ori­en­tal restau­rants in the area, an ice cream at a lit­tle stand and just drove around to get a feel of the area.  We had din­ner, along with music, at the restau­rant at the marina.  I did find a post­card at one of the local art shops to send…so far, so good on the “Vail Post­card” project.

Mt. Ver­non atop a hill over look­ing the Potomac River…Gorgeous !

We left early and headed north to Alexan­dria.   We were not able to dock at Mount Ver­non because there were fer­ries at both sides of the dock so we kept on going.  We thought that we were going to stay at the National Har­bor Marina on the east side of the river but were able to get into the Alexan­dria City Marina.  It turned out to be a great loca­tion for see­ing the city.  We were straight out of the Tor­pedo Fac­tory which is now filled with great artists’ stu­dios.  There are lots of local restau­rants, 

shops and won­der­ful his­toric neigh­bor­hoods to walk.

Rose and Pel from home.…we ran in to them at Mt. Vernon.

We rented a car and drove the 8 miles south to Mr. Ver­non.  It’s a beau­ti­ful spot over­look­ing the Potomac.  Again, lots of inter­est­ing his­tory.  The small world that it is, we ran into Rose and Pel from home.  We made arrange­ments for later and they came to the boat around 5:00 for a drink and then off to dinner.

We met some boat neigh­bors on a Ranger Tug and they gave us some local knowl­edge of the Potomac and Chesa­peake mari­nas.  We just hung around and toured Alexan­dria for another day.
We took off in the morn­ing at daybreak—6:40am head­ing south on the Potomac.  We were head­ing to Cobb Island but got there so early that we kept going to Pt. Look­out.  This was an absolutely quiet spot espe­cially after being under the flights going into Ronald Reagon Wash­ing­ton National Air­port for a cou­ple of days.
We left Pt. Look­out and headed to Soloman’s Island and stayed at the Spring Cove Marina.  We walked to “town” and had an excep­tion­ally good lunch at the CD Café….walked fur­ther to have a drink at the infa­mous Tiki Hut Bar.  We took a walk to West Marine later and then spent a short Happy Hour at the Water­front Restaurant—back to the boat for left­overs for dinner.…remember.…eat and drink.…..

Light­house at Cam­bridge and smoke­stack from boat that brought Roo­sevelt here to open the new bridge.

We left Solomon’s after my morn­ing walk and headed to Cam­bridge, MD on the East­ern Shore.  A charm­ing lit­tle town that is the Dorch­ester County Seat.  Quite a con­trast of extremes in hous­ing around the town.  There is enough here to make an inter­est­ing visit.  We stayed a bit longer in the morn­ing for break­fast since it’s only 11 miles across to Oxford.  The wind is blow­ing a bit stronger this morn­ing so it might be a lit­tle rough.

Well, the water was fine and the sun came out but we decided to head over to St. Michael’s and go in the back way via Broad Creek to San Domingo Creek. We anchored out for the first time in quite awhile.…it was beau­ti­ful and so quiet.  I had for­got­ten how nice it is to be at anchor.  Well, until we had a few prob­lems with the batteries/electric.  Ken slept on the couch watch­ing the bat­tery bank light.  Every­thing was fine in the morn­ing though we did have to run the gen­er­a­tor to make coffee.

St. Michael’s is a beau­ti­ful lit­tle town full of fun shops and restau­rants.  It was really busy since it was Sat­ur­day.  We heard that a lot of peo­ple come here on the week­ends from the D.C. and Bal­ti­more areas.  They are all here today.  We walked around and had ice cream first, stopped at Alva’s for pizza and drinks and a nice con­ver­sa­tion with a cou­ple from the other side–the West­ern Shore.We went back to the boat for a rest and took the dinghy back around 8:00pm for din­ner.  We made it back to the boat with a tiny, lit­tle flash­light.  Luck­ily, the stars and anchor lights led the way home.

We left the anchor­age early in the morn­ing and decided to go to Rock Hall for a night.  We went through the Knapps Nar­rows and Knapps Nar­rows 12′ Bridge on Tilgham Island.  We went north through the East­ern Bay to the Kent Nar­rows then on to Rock Hall Marina.  After tying up and check­ing in, we hailed the local trans­porta­tion and took a tour of the penin­sula.  We got off “down­town” and walked around.…ending up with a great lunch at a restaurant/soda shop.  With full bel­lies, we walked back to the marina.A din­ner at the Water­man next door while watch­ing the sun­set made another great day.In the morn­ing, we headed out to our final port.…Baltimore.  We are keep­ing the boat at Hen­der­son Marina at Fell’s Point.

We went under the Fran­cis Scott Key Bridge into Bal­ti­more Har­bor.  This is a very large port with a great deal of com­mer­cial activ­ity.  There is a red, white and blue bouy on the west side of the bridge that marks the spot where Key wrote the poem dur­ing the war of 1812 that would become the “Star Span­gled Banner”.

We are keep­ing the boat in an area of Bal­ti­more called Fells Point–a funky, his­toric area filled with 180+ bars and restau­rants.  Sev­eral peo­ple at the marina imme­di­ately through that num­ber around.  We fig­ured we were going to have a hard time pub crawl­ing to all of them.  The first day, we walked around and hit a few of the rec­om­mended places. Also, found Kil­wins in Bal­ti­more! The sec­ond day, we walked to the Pres­i­dent Street Sta­tion to catch a local trol­ley tour.  We’ve been on a lot of bet­ter lit­tle city tours but it did give us an overview since we are not get­ting a car this trip.  We also did the Water Taxi and went to the Amer­i­can Vision­ary Art Museum.  Din­ner back at Fells Point and Ken got his oys­ters.  Wednes­day was a clean­ing and orga­niz­ing day–and then we left for home.

Leg #4 -- 8/4/13 to 8/18/13 -- Southport, SC to Hampton, VA

We flew in to Wilm­ing­ton via DC and took a rental car to Whole Foods then got to Deep Point Marina around 11:00am.  We got boat ready and kids sit­u­ated and took off for Wrightsville Beach that afternoon

                                       .
Wrightsville Beach Marina was a great spot to lis­ten to the music and people/boat watch.   We walked to the Yel­low Mush­room for good pizza and then went back to the marina where the kids took a dip in the pool.
We left Wrightsville Beach very early so that we could make the Wrightsville Beach Bridge and the Onslow Swing Bridge on their timeta­bles.  We made it to Beau­fort, NC around 3:00pm.  Randy from Loon came over to wel­come us into our slip at Beau­fort Marina—what a nice sur­prise.   We met other Loop­ers from Snow Daz and com­pared notes.

The kids and I walked around town while Ken caught up with Randy.  The next day, Randy brought his truck over for us to use and showed us some sights while dri­ving him back to his house.  We took a dinghy ride with the inten­tion of tak­ing the short­cut  to Shakelford Island but  instead got stuck in the mud which proved to be the excite­ment for the day.  The kids swam in the river, walked the beach, gath­ered mud and saw a few of the wild horses—it was a sim­ple and beau­ti­ful day.
The next morn­ing we headed off to Fort Macon for our his­tory les­son.  It was very inter­est­ing to hear how this fort was used over its’ life­time.  A visit to the nau­ti­cal museum in Beau­fort, which is hous­ing an exhibit on Black­beard, and a stop at the boat build­ing museum sealed out edu­ca­tion for the day.
On to Ori­en­tal in the after­noon and a stop at the Ori­en­tal Marina & Motel.   I took instruc­tions ade­quately on tying up to the fixed dock!   It’s a quiet lit­tle vil­lage so we walked around and ended up bring­ing back 4 desserts to eat after we had left­overs for din­ner.  I have to laugh at how Cierra LOVED this dessert buffet !
We took off to Okcra­coke in the morn­ing.  It was a fun spot where we rented a golf cart and also got the bikes out.  Again, a lot of eat­ing  and walk­ing.  The kids and I vis­ited a bunch of shops to find some­thing for User­ica and Tri­ton as gifts.  We went to the beach which was quite a long walk from where we had to leave the golf cart.  We had hoped to take the ferry to Hat­teras but the lack of trans­porta­tion to the ferry land­ing made that impos­si­ble.  We walked to the Light­house, ate break­fast at the new Fly­ing Melon and had a nice din­ner at Dajio’s—we even kind of got dressed up.
8/10/13 — On to Man­teo where we tran­sited a very shal­low and nar­row entrance to this marina.  It was a nice, cute town with plenty of food and shops—it was just so unbear­ably hot that it was hard to stay out too long.  I did the boat laun­dry while a storm blew through.  We ate din­ner right next to the marina because of all of the rain.
After walk­ing in the morn­ing and see­ing a bit more of Man­teo, we left and headed to Eliz­a­beth City.  It hap­pened to be Sun­day and though the city appeared to be strug­gling any­way, today it looked deserted.  We tied up to the munic­i­pal bulk­head and took a walk around.  There really wasn’t any rea­son to stay in town so we headed over to Pel­i­can Marina.  We were hav­ing trou­ble with the gen­er­a­tor and Ken was able to find a guy to work on it and replace the bat­tery because of a bad cell.  We ate din­ner next door and since I had a bet going with the kids—we all ate alli­ga­tor bites as an appe­tizer !  We had another storm with a great deal of light­ning when we got back to the boat.
We left Pel­i­can Marina at 6:26am to make the Eliz­a­beth City Bridge before 7:00am.  Then we cruised pretty fast to make the South Mills Lock by 8:30am.  We then entered the Dis­mal Swamp.  It was a beau­ti­ful tran­sit.  The area is a wind­ing and nar­row chan­nel for most of the way with beau­ti­ful trees hang­ing over the water.  We hardly saw any other boaters the entire trip. 
We stopped at the Vis­i­tors Cen­ter and bought a few hats and shirts.  We made the Deep Creek Bridge and Lock in time. The Lock­mas­ter edu­cated all of us on the his­tory of the man­-made canal.  We learned that the Belt­line Bridge to the south of Nor­folk was closed until 7:00pm so we had to find a place to hang out until we could tran­sit the water under it—so we tied up at Eliz­a­beth River Boat Land­ing.  We made it into Water­side Marina in Nor­folk at 7:15pm.  The amount of mil­i­tary ships in this area is amaz­ing and you can see them best from the water.  Din­ner at an Ital­ian restau­rant on Granby Street.
We had a great cou­ple of days tour­ing Nor­folk.  We toured the USS Wis­con­sin and museum—a must see with infor­ma­tion about the whole Hamp­ton Roads area’s his­tory.  We did some shop­ping and Lynx got a “hair­style” cut.  We hit as many dif­fer­ent “types” of restau­rants as pos­si­ble because Cierra wanted to explore dif­fer­ent cuisines.
8/14/13 – We left Nor­folk for Hamp­ton in very strong winds so we trav­eled slowly and arrived at Hamp­ton Pub­lic Piers around noon.  We walked around some and then Ken took the kids to the Vir­ginia Air & Space Museum.  I rested and then took Lynx to some crazy 3D movie after din­ner at the  
VASM IMAX Theater.

The next morn­ing, we left Hamp­ton for Salt Ponds around 8:00am and it was a long, rough 11 miles once we hit open water.  We got into the marina around 9:45am.  We rented a car and went to York­town for a tour and din­ner.  More his­tory for all of us.
We had quite a rou­tine going by now– I get up and walk, the kids study for 3 hours and then we go do fun stuff.  Every­one has gone along with this work/play schedule.
We went to Williams­burg and walked through the whole area—another day of his­tory lessons.  We then took the kids to a race care/amusement ride place for a few hours as we all had had enough his­tory lessons by this time.  Cierra learned to greatly appre­ci­ate the twirl-a-ride.
8/17/13 is a work day.  Every­one pitched in to clean boat.  I did the much need laun­dry and then we hit the beach for a bit.  We ate din­ner at the marina.
The next morn­ing after fin­ish­ing clean­ing the boat and gath­er­ing up all our belong­ings, we drove to Rich­mond Air­port , with a stop in Jamestown, to leave to back home.

Leg #3 -- 6/2/13 to 6/12/13 -- Savannah, GA to Southport, NC

We flew to Savan­nah with the Wat­sons and Larry Schn­abel picked us up and took us to the boat at the Isle of Hope Marina.  I made a quick trip in the loner car to pick up the items on the gro­cery list.  Ilene Schn­abel rode with us on the boat for the 10 mile trip to down­town Savan­nah and that gave us time to catch up with her.  We all had din­ner in the Mar­ket area, lis­tened to some music, walked around a lit­tle and headed back to the boat.  After say­ing good­bye to the Schn­abels, we worked at set­tling in for the night.  Watson’s had to work around sleep­ing in our lit­tle guest room.  They could be the tallest cou­ple that will ever join us on this boat.  We talked about their alter­na­tives if they couldn’t sleep in there.……the couch, the fly deck, so we put out sleep­ing bags just in case.   Some­how they must have slept.…. with the door open so as not to get claus­tro­pho­bia.  Any­one think­ing about join­ing us please keep this in mind–it is a lit­tle room.  The next morn­ing after a nice exploratory walk and Star­bucks we take off to Beau­fort.

Beau­fort is a nice small town with a beau­ti­ful new har­bor walk, nice restau­rants and art shops.  A few walks, sev­eral beers, food here and there and we call it a night. Three of us took a nice walk in the morn­ing (just guess who is miss­ing) and we hit a nice deli for some pro­vi­sion­ing before we left for Charleston. The extra excite­ment was that Beau­fort was wait­ing for me !
The trop­i­cal storm Andria was loom­ing all day while we were trav­el­ing, but the rain stayed away from us most of the trip until about an hour out of Charleston. We got into the Charleston Mar­itime Marina in time to stroll for din­ner in the driz­zling rain.  I think we agreed to pub crawl through a few places and three of us went along with the pro­gram.  The fourth per­son was dif­fer­ent this time !
The Charleston Mar­itime Marina is much more open to the wakes and waves from the river.…but it is the best loca­tion for vis­it­ing the city.  Watson’s went to their house on Kiawah Island the next morn­ing and then Ken and I took all of the three trol­leys to try to see as much of the city as we could.  The Spo­leto Fes­ti­val was tak­ing place so we saw some really good artists in one of the park.
We were able to have a great din­ner with our Ft. Myers boat neigh­bors, Den­nis and Joanne from Ms. Cameron who live in Charleston and who picked us up and took us to Shem Creek in the pour­ing rain.
We took a beat­ing from Andria and we were both up dur­ing the night to check to see if we were still float­ing.  We had a lot of things fly off the coun­ters dur­ing the rock­ing and rolling…I don’t think we’ve ever rolled that high before.  All that said, I still would pick this loca­tion over the city marina for vis­it­ing the city.
We spent one day vis­it­ing Kiawah Island where Watson’s have a house.  A nice visit to their house, a great lunch at their club on the beach and a trip to a local win­ery made up our day.…and it was great. We spent an extra day in Charleston to wait out the storm so we took the water taxi over to see the USS Nor­folk.  What a walk through his­tory.  We have vis­ited other mil­i­tary ships before but each time it reminds us of the sac­ri­fices oth­ers have made…oh, if only these ships could talk.  A big music fes­ti­val was can­celled because of the storm but we hit a few places for food and drink.
We left Charleston after refu­el­ing on Sat­ur­day morn­ing and headed to George­town.  A long day with no friends to share the driving.….oh, back to our old rou­tine.  We arrived in George­town and walked around the quaint lit­tle town.  It looked like down­town was strug­gling a bit except for the bars that spilled out on the board­walk.  Too many empty store­fronts that you know used to be full.  We had drinks, then a rest, then din­ner later.  We had sev­eral con­ver­sa­tions with locals that were inter­est­ing and very pleasant.
We headed north on the ICW in the morn­ing and stopped at North Myr­tle Beach, Bare­foot Land­ing Marina.  It was an inter­est­ing stop with all of the shops and restaurants.…one night only though.  We had dinner.…much too much food at Umberto’s, a favorite of Gary Bryant.  I did walk the mile to the beach the next morn­ing and then we took off for our next and final stop.
We made our way to South­port, NC and the Deep Point Marina after a slow tran­sit.  We throw such a wake that we never make good time when there are boats or docks on the canal.  Deep Point is a newer marina where the ferry to Bald Head Island docks.  The facil­ity is very nice and clean.  It is a bit too far from town to walk eas­ily but we rented a car to do some pro­vi­sion­ing and to go to the air­port.  We did take the ferry over to Bald Head Island and rented a cart for a tour.  It’s a very pretty island with few cars allowed.  Back to the boat, laun­dry and clean­ing before we leave for home.
On our next leg we hope to make to Nor­folk or the Chesa­peake.  We will need a dif­fer­ent plan­ning scheme since after Nor­folk there will be no more ICW mileage markers.

Leg #2 -- 4/17 to 5/1/13 -- St. Augustine, FL to Savannah, GA

We are back in St. Augus­tine for two days.  We stopped on the way to the boat at Whole Foods and the World Golf Hall of Fame and Museum.  With your ticket they have a nice lit­tle hole set up so that they can give you one ball to hit over the water to a nice lit­tle green and then they sell you more balls until you make it on.…good income source.

 

\We did more walk­ing in this beau­ti­ful city.  We have pre­vi­ously vis­ited a lot of what is here but this time went into Fla­gler Col­lege, the pre­vi­ous Ponce de Leon Hotel, and the City Hall and Light­ner Museum grounds, the pre­vi­ous Alcazar Hotel.  Both hotels were built by Henry Fla­gler in the late 1880’s.  I could stay here for a long visit if time allowed.

 

Lobby of Ponce de Leon Hotel now Flager College.

Court­yard of the now Fla­gler College

Inte­rior Court­yard of the pre­vi­ous Alcazar Hotel which now serves as the City Hall and Light­ner Museum

One of the many beau­ti­ful cob­bled streets lined with lit­tle restaurants.

We took off around 8:00am on Fri­day head­ing to Fer­nan­d­ina Beach.  We docked at the munic­i­pal marina on a beau­ti­ful and warm day.  We walked around this quaint lit­tle town and were impressed with the charm and avail­able restau­rants and shops.  We made plans with Den­nis and Joanne from Miss Cameron (neigh­bors in Legacy) to join a groups of MTOAers for din­ner the next night.

 We woke to a cold and rainy morn­ing.  I was able to get in a walk–then it poured for a cou­ple of hours.  When the rain calmed down to a sprin­kle, Ken hit the hard­ware and we had break­fast at a lit­tle cafe and later checked out the Farm­ers Mar­ket. If we wouldn’t have been so full, I’m sure we would have bought a pie !  I was able to hit all of the gal­leries in town and really enjoyed talk­ing to a few of the local artists.  We got the bikes down and rode to the other side of the island and back.  Ken, the for­ever “be care­ful” per­son, took a video of us while rid­ing and, if asked, would love to show every­one me “#%@$!” at him in the back­ground because I’m truly afraid he is going to kill himself.

We had din­ner later with Den­nis and Joanne and a group of boaters that stayed over from the MTOA Ren­de­vous.  We just became mem­bers of this group a cou­ple of weeks ago.  They are another large group of boaters that offer great friend­ship and advice !  We now have to fig­ure out how to fly the MTOA burgee along with our AGLCA burgee.

Early Sun­day morn­ing we were plan­ning on head­ing out.  The heavy winds and rough water are going to keep us in Fer­nan­d­ina Beach another two days.  Brunch at 29South with Joanne and Den­nis and a walk around town make for a nice morn­ing even if the wind is seri­ously blow­ing.  We went back to the boat for a rest­ful after­noon.  We wanted to take a bike ride but the wind seemed like it might blow the bikes out from under us.  Later, Ken and I walked the North side of town and did our own lit­tle pub crawl–Green Tur­tle Tav­ern, The Palace and the Salty Pel­i­can.  Back to the boat for a night of rockin’ and rolling.

The boats next to us on the out­side dock, Aqua Vitae from Green­land and Sea Flat, had a really hard night.  We watch them seri­ously rock for two days.  They had to put out extra lines and bumpers but with the waves it looked as though they might hop up over the docks.  This weather went on for two days.  We tried again the next day to hit as many restaurants/bars as pos­si­ble while held up in this great town.We headed out Tues­day morn­ing around 7:30 to Cum­ber­land Sound where we anchored for the day and night.  We took the dinghy to land and did about a 4+ mile treck around the island.  The old Dun­ge­ness Estate owned by the Carnegie’s once occu­pied most of this island and the ruins are still stand­ing after a fire destroyed a good por­tion of it in the 1950’s.

The his­tory on this area is amazing…again.  There are wild horses still occu­py­ing the island.  They don’t act or look very wild as they allow you to get some­what close and they look well kept–not like my horses when I was a kid that looked hag­gard when you didn’t brush them enough.  We walked over to the beach on the east side and though it was a very windy day, it was a beau­ti­ful beach with only a few peo­ple.  This was a beau­ti­ful, unspoiled island and a great anchorage.

We headed out Tues­day morn­ing around 7:30 to Cum­ber­land Sound where we anchored for the day and night.  We took the dinghy to land and did about a 4+ mile treck around the island.  The old Dun­ge­ness Estate owned by the Carnegie’s once occu­pied most of this island and the ruins are still stand­ing after a fire destroyed a good por­tion of it in the 1950’s. 

The his­tory on this area is amazing…again.  There are wild horses still occu­py­ing the island.  They don’t act or look very wild as they allow you to get some­what close and they look well kept–not like my horses when I was a kid that looked hag­gard when you didn’t brush them enough.  We walked over to the beach on the east side and though it was a very windy day, it was a beau­ti­ful beach with only a few peo­ple.  This was a beau­ti­ful, unspoiled island and a great anchorage.

Ken as Tarzan swinging on the vines.

On Wednes­day, we moved north to Jekyll Island.  We were able to ride our bikes up to the Jekyll Island Hotel area and have lunch at the Raw Bar on the water.  We rode over to the east/beach side, then south, then back to the marina.  We had a nice din­ner at the marina restau­rant and rode bikes back in to the hotel in the morn­ing for breakfast.

Off to Brunswick the next morn­ing.  We were boarded by the Coast Guard right before we turned up the chan­nel to Brunswick.  Very nice young men and women try­ing to find boats to train the rest of the nice young men and women of the Coast Guard–we had no prob­lems to report !  Brunswick has poten­tial but sure has seen bet­ter days.  Half of the stores were empty but you could see the archi­tec­ture was there from the past.  The Schn­abels joined us for din­ner and Larry stayed on board for our trip to Savan­nah.  Ilene ended up sleep­ing on board instead of mak­ing the long trip back home that night.….
Off to Sun­bury Crab Com­pany Marina the next morn­ing.  A longer travel day than we’ve been doing but we made good time since there were not many other boaters out.  Ken, Larry and I had a fun din­ner up at the fam­ily run bar/restaurant.……

Off early in the morn­ing for a run to Isle of Hope Marina to drop off Larry.  We stopped and had lunch with both he and Ilene then off to down­town Savannah.That few miles took 2.5 hours before we tied up at the River Street Mar­ket Marina.  The no wake zones made it take a lot longer.
The two mari­nas, River and Mar­ket, whichever one is which…are both han­dled by the same peo­ple.  We don’t care about show­ers, restrooms, laundry.…it’s the best loca­tion to have access to down­town Savan­nah.  Again, eat, walk, eat, drink, walk.  We did the tour of the his­toric dis­trict with Larry and Ilene.  These tours always give you a nice view and under­stand­ing of the his­tory of the city.  Then we hit one of the local brew­eries, ate in the Mar­ket Dis­trict and hit Leopold’s Ice Cream for dessert.  We walked a lit­tle more and then headed back to the boat for a snooze.

The sec­ond day we took the trol­ley to go back to a few of the places we wanted to see fur­ther from the day before.  So much his­tory to take in but won­der­ful sights at every turn.  Churches, muse­ums, B & B’s, inns, restau­rants and shops.…..all within a short walk.
The deci­sion to end this leg at Savan­nah instead of Charleston after the two day lay­over in Fer­nan­d­ina Beach gave us the oppor­tu­nity to stop and really take in the Geor­gia coast.  We both are glad it turned out this way.
We took the boat back to Isle of Hope Marina to leave it this time.  Clean­ing and laun­dry and a lit­tle repro­vi­sion­ing took up most of the day.  Larry and Ilene came and picked us up, took us for a tour of Ski­d­away Island after see­ing Chad and his fam­ily and then shared a nice din­ner at the Drift­away Restau­rant.  Off to home in the morning.