Monday, November 17, 2008

Hello!
We departed Beaufort, SC on Monday, Nov.17 headed further south on the ICW. We really enjoyed our stay in Beaufort. We will probably stay there again on our journey home. Everyone on their boats and also the Marina people were so nice and friendly as well as helpful. Today the weather is very cold, but sunny. There is a beautiful ,blue sky. We are motoring along with another 42 ft. Catalina sailboat called “Spirit”. It belongs to Chris and Marie, a very nice couple that we met at the docks in Beaufort. Their boat goes faster than us so they are ahead of us by 30 minutes. They have already called us to let us know that they will find a good anchorage for the night and informed us when they pull in so we could anchor the night there also. We did anchor around Hilton Head Island, SC around 3:00. It was too cold to go much farther. They came over to our boat for afternoon snacks and we went to their boat later for dinner. We had duck with orange sauce and broccoli, sweet potatoes or white potato. It was very good.

Tuesday, November 18, we continued our trip on to Savannah in the freezing cold weather and also very breezy winds. Nelson did most all the steering today and I stayed inside trying to keep us warm with hot chocolate and fixing a hot meal at lunch trying to keep us warmer. At least, it was not raining! We left the ICW headed down the Savannah River. We both docked at the Hyatt Water Front Marina. After getting the boat secured, Nelson went to the office to check us in and when he came back to the boat, he noticed a large metal drum beating the side of our boat. It was wedge between the boat and the dock. It took he and several others to get a rope to it while me and others pushed the boat far enough to pull it out and move it further down the dock and tie it off so it would not come back down the water front again. We were lucky that it did not do any big damage, only scratches to the side of the boat. Another reason not to stay here again.
But, the weather was so bad, we were just glad to be tied to a dock and out of the heavy winds and freezing cold. We connected to electricity and fired up the heater right away. Boy, did it feel good. We went for al long walk down the River Street where there were many shops and markets with people selling their crafts. It was a nice place to walk. We did buy some chocolate peanuts at the peanut shop. Boy, were they good! After our walk, Nelson napped and I check our e-mails. We had a late spaghetti dinner and then our friends came over and we played “Farkel” (a dice game) until 11:00.