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.