On to Beaufort & Charleston, SC . . .

On Wednesday, April 13th, we headed off to Beaufort, SC, another beautiful old southern town full of charm.  Much to our surprise we passed this mini cruise ship snaking through the ICW.  Needless to say, we moved way over.

Dave and Darbi take a break from the flybridge and hang out on the bow for a while.  That would mean I was at the helm (aka behind the wheel) and taking pictures at the same time.  Thank God for auto pilot!  It really is like being in a real life video game.

We arrived safely in Beaufort, SC and walked through the beautiful old town.  On the way back to the boat, we spotted a cruise ship like the one we had passed earlier in the day pulling into the marina.  We found out that American Cruise Lines runs week long trips up and down the ICW.  This ship was going from Jacksonville, FL to Charleston, SC.

Darbi and I taking a break on a wooden swing along the River Walk.  Behind us you can see some of the restaurants and shops lining the walk.

Another section of the beautiful River Walk in Beaufort.

After a great evening in Beaufort, Dave & Darbi are walking down the dock to the boat.  As you can see, it was another beautiful sunset on the ICW!!

A typical night on the boat after a long day . . . Dave hits the computer and Darbi hits the bed.  That's when I work on the next day's travel plans.

On day 14 of our journey, we put Beaufort to our stern and headed for Charleston.

Here's a typical southern plantation looking house along the ICW.  Georgia and South Carolina are so different than Florida.  And I have to say I was starting to miss the hot Florida weather.  The mornings and evenings are cool and the days are just warm.  I guess it's preparation for our final destination.  We're hoping it's starting to seem like spring back home.

This was a calm beautiful section of the ICW, somewhere in SC.  That's one of the strange things about traveling the waterway, many times you really don't know where you are other than statute mile XXX on the nautical chart.  You have no idea where you are with respect to "civilization".

And around the bend from "nowhere", we came upon what appeared to be some kind of large shipyard.

So before we left RPM, to get us mentally prepared everyone kept telling us that "something" was going to go wrong . . . it's a boat after all.  We heard unfortunate stories of blown engines, running aground, failed fuel systems, etc.  Well after almost 2 weeks of cruising "something" did, but "we're so lucky to have Dave!!" (that's a little inside joke).  I'll spare you all the gory details, but the starboard engine shut down unexpectedly about 10 miles south of Charleston.  Fortunately Dave had suspected a small fuel leak in the port engine a few days earlier, so he and I spent one evening down in the engine compartment diagramming the entire fuel system.  Having done that, Dave knew the fix, but unfortunately it involved him siphoning diesel fuel.  After about an hour and a half, we were on our way.  Hopefully that's our "something" for the entire trip!!

A short while later, we pulled into the Charleston City Marina.  Yes, that big blue yacht front and center is a private boat!  We were really excited about spending some time in Charleston as the largest racing regatta was here this weekend.  Dave wanted to meet with the onsight diesel mechanic the next day, so we had planned to stay Thursday and Friday night.

After a very long day, we grilled steaks and had dinner watching the sunset.  We had a perfect spot in the marina, which by the way, Dave did a great job squeezing into.  He's really getting good a maneuvering the boat.

And it was another beautiful sunset!!!!

After finding out everything was okay with the engines, we took the shuttle to historic downtown Charleston.  Here's Dave and Darbi again patiently waiting for me to come out of the City Market.

Here's Darbi and I in front of the City Market.

Darbi didn't know what to make of the carriage horses, but of course she had to bark at them like she was twice their size!

The weather forecast predicted severe thunderstorms and high winds for Saturday, so obviously we decided to stay put.  As I type, the boat's a rockin' and the wind's a blowin!  Luckily we only had a light rain this morning, but as you can see the water has been quite rough all day. It's been a very relaxing day.  Tomorrow we are off to Georgetown, SC.

And then there was Georgia . . .

Bright and early Monday morning, April 11th, we pulled out of beautiful St. Augustine.  You can see the city to the left and the fort to the right.  This gives you a much better perspective of the size of the fort.

We caught another beautiful sunrise leaving St. Augustine.

The scenery really changed in northern Florida, but the size of the houses sure didn't.  We can't believe how many huge houses line the ICW!  You can see here how low the tide is, which makes navigating through the channels a bit challenging.

This was one of many really cool boats we passed along the way.

Our plan was to give "anchoring out" another shot, which we did in a small river along Cumberland Island, GA.  This is the island where wild horses run free, which we quickly spotted upon entering the river from the ICW.  Dave changed the anchor from a Danforth to a CQR (aka plow anchor) after having chatted with other boaters along the way.  This anchor did set the first try and did hold extremely well, so we're thinking we're off to a good start.  And then the 'ol take the dinghy to shore to let Darbi pee was even worse than last time when a couple of nice residents told us to be real careful where we walked because of all the SNAKES!! Of course I had to ask what kind, which prompted the response "big rattlers"!  And then I had to ask if there were gators around, which prompted yet another undesired response of "yes, mam, lots of 'em".  And so we've decided . . . we're "marina people!!"  I almost forgot to mention the cabbage size jelly fish in the water all around the boat.  Okay, maybe grapefruit size, but they were big!  Needless to say, we got our fill of wildlife on Cumberland Island!

So we made it safely back to the boat, sat on the back deck, drank a beer, watched the sunset and reviewed the next day travel plans.  We knew that there was a 30% chance of rain heading north through the St. Andrew Sound, which is known as the "worst waters along the east coast", so we decided to take a well charted alternate route.  This was some good information we learned at the marina in St. Augustine the night before, which is just another good reason to be marina people.  It's amazing the helpful hints you get from so many boaters who love to talk for hours to anyone who isn't their spouse!! 

As predicted the rain came, but not until later in the morning.  We had radioed ahead to a marina on the other side of the St. Andrew Sound to get a weather update as we started up the alternate route.  The dock master told us the Sound wasn't that bad at that point and he believed crossing the Sound was a much better option than winding through the alternate route with a boat our size.  He said the sound would be "a little sporty, but not unsafe" so we followed his advise and did a ubee and headed back to the ICW.  It actually turned out to be a fun "sporty" ride across the Sound.

We had a couple of hours of light rain and we're thinking "let's go back to Florida to find the sun!"  We had forgotten how depressing cloudy, rainy days can be.  If you look closely, you can see a few of the flock of seagulls that followed us for hours, obviously thinking we were going to feed them.  They are nasty little buggers, constantly squawking and dive bombing each other to get pole postion.   (Dad . . . check out that bell !)

Later that afternoon, we made it to our planned destination of Kilkenny Creek Marina, which is in a town called Richmond Hill out in the middle of nowhere about 30 miles south of Savannah.  Another interesting place with great, friendly people.

That night while we're reviewing the next day travel plans, Darbi just sits there and looks at us like . . . "when are we getting off this boat?"  Actually she has been enjoying most of it, but hates it when Dave starts the engines.  Do you think she looks like she's lost some weight??

So we got up bright and early Wednesday morning, watched the sunrise and got ready to head off to Beaufort, South Carolina.  The ripple in the water was from a dolphin surfacing.  They are so cool to watch.

Cruising up the east coast of Florida . . .

We stayed in Stuart an extra day due to bad weather.  As we pulled out of Stuart, we got our first glimpse of the Atlantic Ocean.  This is an early morning picture of the St. Lucie Inlet out to the ocean.  Here we made a left hand turn and headed up the ICW to our next destination, Vero Beach.

This was a beautiful stretch of the ICW, with small islands lining both sides.  We saw many boats like this one anchored off shore with it's passagers playing on the beach of the island.

We spent the night here at the Vero Beach City Marina.  Chuck and Mary Beth Cunningham picked us up for lunch, which we ate at their absolutely beautiful home.  It was so great seeing them and catching up on their life as Florida residents.

Our next stop was Cocoa Beach, where we dropped the anchor (or 2 just to make sure we didn't float away!) and spent the night in Indian Cove.  Anchoring out was "interesting", but it's a real pain in the butt to take Darbi to do her thing.  It was a dinghy ride to the shore under the bridge in the distance.

After another beautiful day on the water on Friday, we made it to Daytona Beach.  It's still so amazing to us to see the SUNSHINE EVERY DAY!  It just makes you smile!

We had lots of company following us on the way to Daytona.  The dolphins love to play in the boat's wake.

The ICW from Daytona to St. Augustine is very different than south Florida.  It's not as tropical looking but it is still very beautiful.

We arrived at this marina in St. Augustine late Saturday afternoon, where we stayed Saturday and Sunday night.  St. Augustine is every bit as beautiful as everyone described!!  It was sunny (go figure) and in the high 80's both days, but we walked, walked, walked historic downtown.

We saw the Castillo de San Marcos aka The Fort, . . .

. . . City Hall and Flagler's College.

And Dave and Darbi found some shade in the center of town and waited patiently while I hit the shops.  It was a great couple days!!!! We should hit Georgia by Tuesday.

And off we went . . .

On April 1st, we pulled out of RPM heavy one crew member.  Our new friend and dockmate Tim is seen here showing us the way.  Tim was nice enough to join us for the first leg of our journey since he had just made the trip across the state through the Lake Okeechobee waterway a few months earlier.  We were sooooo glad to have him aboard for guidance and moral support.  We had spent the last 3 months whipping Phase II into shape that we left no time for "practice cruising".  Honestly, we only had about 3 hours of cruising time under our belt when we left!  What the heck, we figured we'd learn as we went!

Our first stop was in Ft. Myers Beach which on our way we passed several parasailors seen here in the distance.  The waters were blue and calm ~ just like we like them!

Along the way, we passed some awesome boats including this shrimp boat.

We actually spent our first night out of the marina "on the hook" on the other side of the bridge to Ft. Myers Beach. With Tim's help, it was easy grabbing that mooring ball line to hook up to.

It's pretty cool being out in the middle of the bay, but it's a pain in the butt to take Darbi to "do her thing" on shore!  Unfortunately the little bugger wants nothing to do with the outdoor potty patch I bought!

The next day we took off for our next stop, Clewiston, which is a little town on the west side of the lake.  Here we are going through the first of 3 locks for the day.  What a cool experience that was.  We ranged from changing water levels from 6" to 8' in the 5 different locks that we went through.  Again thanks to Tim, going through the locks were a breeze.

The trip was so scenic.  Here's a cattle ranch way out in the middle of nowhere (look closely to see the cattle near the house.)  And the "boat" to the left had about a 20' dinghy on it!

So the plan was we'd make it through the last lock just before sunset with about 2 miles left to go to get to the marina where we would spend the night.  Now it was a "miscalculation" that anyone could have made, but instead of having 2 miles left, we really had 12 miles to go!  So with this view to our stern, we headed through the canal into darkness!  For the next hour and a half, with the assistance of GPS and the distinction of land vs. water as black vs. charcoal grey, we navigated through the canal.  Again, thank you Tim for helping us through this "night time" test!!  And yes it was me that made the "miscalculation", but I am much better at reading nautical charts now!!

After a much needed good night's sleep we headed through a short channel into Lake Okeechobee, which is the 2nd largest lake in the US following Lake Michigan.  We actually got to go through this passage twice, the second time being after we had to turn around and go back to the marina to get my purse that I had left behind in the restuarant.  Yes, another bonehead move by the First Mate!!!  Dave, being the wonderful husband that he is, looked at it as a way to get a little more practice pulling in and out of marina docks!  Luckily it only cost us about 20 minutes of travel time.

After such a hard day on Saturday, we decided not to push it to get all the way to Stuart.  We stopped at a marina in Indiantown, where Florida Dave and Florida Shelly joined us for some good eating and drinking on the back deck.

After another day of scenic cruising . . .

. . . we made it to Sunset Bay Marina in Stuart, where we hung out with David, Shelly, Mackey and Jackie.  It was so great seeing them all !!!