16 November 2012 Charleston to Savannah, Georgia (Day 1)
It was a little bit brighter when we dragged ourselves out of bed and the weather forecast that I picked up was for it to be dry for the next 24 hours. Overnight, the winds were predicted to be 15-20 knots with gusts to 25 knots, so we decided that we would sail down to Savannah. The winds were going to remain as strong northerlies for another week, but at least it should be dry tonight and we’d be sailing down wind.
We received a depressing email from our son Craig. He’s just bought a new maisonette with his partner Kristen and they’ve found out that they’ve got horrible neighbours in the maisonette above them. The neighbours are noisy and have two dogs that bark all the time. Another neighbour has reported the dogs and one dog has been taken away. The problem neighbour suspects that Craig has reported him and they’ve had angry words. I’ve suggested that Craig should try to talk to and get friendly with the problem neighbour – very difficult, but better to try to sort it out now than to let it escalate. Not a pleasant situation and there’s not a lot that we can do to help him.
We spent the day waiting to sail away in the evening, surfing the internet and reading. Our plan was to leave after six o’clock, but at five o’clock, we cracked up, had dinner and pulled up the anchor just as it was going dark.
It was very pleasant motoring out of the harbour with a light wind and calm seas. A huge container ship was heading out of the port behind us and we just made it out of the harbour breakwater before it overtook us in the dark. The seas outside were a little confused, but only three feet or so and there was very little wind, so we resigned ourselves to motor all night. We started our usual three hour watches and I went to bed at half past seven.
Just after nine o’clock, Glenys woke me up and I had to get up to help her because the wind had picked up to 25 knots. The wind was behind us, so I decided to roll away the main sail and we ran almost downwind with just the genoa. Once we were settled down, Glenys went to bed and I stayed on watch.
It was bloody freezing. By midnight, the wind was gusting to 35 knots and the seas were getting bigger making it difficult to do anything but sit and stare at the sea. I tried to read but started to feel a bit queasy in the chaotic seas.
17 November 2012 Charleston to Savannah, Georgia (Day 2)
It became progressively worse overnight – we recorded a 45 knot gust at some point. As I was approaching the entrance to the Savannah River, we had nine foot seas which were occasionally breaking.
I was very concerned about our safety because the winds and seas were from North-north-east and the river entrance has a 2 ½ mile section that heads North West – we would be hard on the wind. In addition, there’s a very shallow sand bank to the north of the channel – would the waves be breaking over the sand bank and making the seas even worse?
Our only other alternative was to carry on for another 24 hours and sail down to St Augustine in Florida, but the weather forecast was for the wind to increase some more. Glenys came up to give me some moral support and, just as the grey dawn was breaking, we switched the engine on and turned the corner.
It wasn’t pleasant. We motor-sailed into the 30-35 knot wind and waves with the genoa sheeted in as tight as we could get it. The combination of the sail and the engine enabled us to go along at 4 to 5 knots and fortunately the seas didn’t get any worse. It took us 30 minutes to fight our way up to the turn in the channel, where we were able to turn down wind and sail into calmer waters behind a break-water.
After that, it was a pleasant, if cold motor-sail up the river for a couple of hours. It was two battered and weary sailors that gratefully tied up to the city dock in Savannah. Glenys rustled up bacon and eggs for breakfast, we had a shower and went to bed for a few hours – bliss.
In the afternoon, we wandered around a little bit and picked up maps and tourist information, before retiring back to our nice warm boat and collapsing with a cold beer.
18 November 2012 Savannah, Georgia
We had a tourist day. The weather was pretty miserable – overcast, drizzling and a strong, cold north wind, but we pulled on warm clothes and set out to walk around the town.
The city of Savannah was originally laid out in 1733 as a grid containing four “Squares” which were landscaped with trees and monuments. The head of the new colony (a chap called Oglethorpe) allowed for expansion of the grid and by 1851 there were 24 Squares. Two have been lost to re-development, but there are 22 Squares remaining. We walked around the city and visited them all, which was an interesting way to see the city.
Most of Savannah's Squares have gardens with huge Live Oaks and are named in honour of people or historical events - many contain monuments and other tributes. We’d printed out a document explaining the history of each Square so Glenys turned into a tour guide. It was a very pleasant way to see the city. Some of the parks are very picturesque and our route took us through residential areas as well as commercial sectors. It’s a very lovely city.
I chilled out on the boat in the afternoon while Glenys did some more trudging around. The city dock is convenient for the town being right on the river front, which has converted warehouses that remind me of Porto in Portugal. The river has an incredible amount of traffic - mostly big container ships disappearing up river to unload their cargo.
We treated ourselves to a meal out in the evening and finished up in an outside bar listening to live country music and freezing our nuts off…
19 November 2012 Savannah, Georgia
First thing in the morning, I went to try to find an internet connection and I ended up on a park bench with my laptop on my knee typing furiously wearing gloves against the biting wind. The weather forecast is for 10-15 knot winds from the north, so we’re planning to go down to Florida tomorrow.
The most famous restaurant in Savannah is Mrs Wilkes Boarding House – even President Obama went there when he visited the city. It’s not possible to make reservations and they only do lunch from 1130 to 1400. They randomly put twelve people on each table and place food in the middle like a buffet. You get to meet all sorts of people and the food is said to be brilliant. We’d heard that a queue starts to form at 1030 and that it gets very busy. We thought that it would be quiet on a cold November Monday, so we strolled up at half past twelve. Unfortunately, there was still a huge queue of over one hundred people waiting to get in, so we abandoned the idea – what a bummer.
Instead, we ended up having a greasy, tasteless meal in the Savannah history museum and then walked around the small museum which had some interesting things. Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Guides & Scouts came from Savannah, so there’s a whole exhibit room dedicated to her.
We had a quiet night in ready for an early start tomorrow.
20 November 2012 Savannah to St Augustine, Florida (Day 1)
We left at seven o’clock with blue skies and light winds. Fortunately, the tide was perfect and we had a following two knot current pushing us out of the river, so we soon arrived at the river entrance. Outside in the open ocean, the winds were pretty light from the north and again the seas were very confused. The coastal waters are very shallow in this area (less than 30 metres out to 70 miles offshore), so I think that the seas just heap up if there’s a northerly swell.
We started sailing on a broad reach at 4-5 knots, but the wind gradually backed, so I had to put out our spinnaker pole to port to keep the genoa inflated. It takes me about fifteen minutes to rig it all up, but the pole stops the sail crashing and banging as it loses wind and then re-fills. I barely had time to sit down before the wind backed more and I had to swap it all over to the starboard side – what a pain.
By three o’clock, the wind had dropped down to below 5 knots apparent, so we put the engine on. The wind was so light and the seas so confused that I couldn’t even play with our cruising chute. I don’t seem to be able to get it right at the moment – we either have too much wind or too little.
It was very cold as we continued motoring up to midnight.
21 November 2012 Savannah to St Augustine, Florida (Day 2)
The wind started to pick up around three o’clock in the morning, so we sorted out the sails and turned off the engine at our four o’clock watch change. After that we had a nice sail until we approached the outer buoy at the St Augustine Inlet at eight o’clock.
The buoys for the channel through the St Augustine inlet change as the sand banks shift around, so the positions of the buoys are not shown on the charts. The inlet looked awful – through our binoculars, we could see one red buoy (No. 6), but then nothing other than a green buoy about a mile away and big waves breaking over the sand bar in between us and the shore.
I tried to ask the St Augustine Municipal Marina about the entrance, but they refused to give me any local knowledge about the inlet and suggested that we ring Tow Boat US. The manager of the St Augustine branch was extremely helpful and described the channel – “It’s just a matter of following the red buoys; we shouldn’t see anything less than 4 metres; oh and by the way, the second red buoy has been reported as being off station” - super…
I watched a power boat coming out of the inlet which gave me a good idea about the course to take I called him to ask him how it was. He said it was okay – just follow the buoys and watch out for the big waves …
To Glenys’s dismay, I decided to “go for it” and we headed slowly past the first red buoy maintaining a heading lined up the red buoy and the outer sea buoy. It was horrible. The waves were very large and breaking – at one point we had a 3 metre wave break directly on our starboard quarter, which I thought was going to swamp us. The water depth dropped to 5 metres and we were surfing down the waves heading directly towards the shore. Glenys had the binoculars and was searching for the next red buoy.
Finally after what seemed a life time (because I was holding my breath), we spotted a green and red buoy amongst the crashing waves, but it was still half a mile away. We remorselessly continued, scared because if we went aground there would be no way that we’d be able to get out of the breaking waves. We breathed a sigh of relief when we passed the red buoy. It was Number 2 red buoy which meant that the Number 4 red buoy was missing, which is why it was so difficult to see the channel.
The waves decreased from this point and we safely made it the rest of the way to the Intra Coastal Waterway. After passing through the pretty Bridge of Lions, we picked up a mooring owned by the St Augustine Municipal Marina and collapsed – going through the inlet generated more adrenaline than leading a steep ice climb.
After lunch, we dinghied into the marina and picked up some tourist information. St Augustine looks to be a lovely place – it’s an old Spanish town dating back to 1565 with lots of very Spanish looking architecture. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day and most places will be closed, so we’ve decided to have a quiet day in and walk around the town on Friday. We went to a small supermarket and bought a chicken and vegetables to have a Thanksgiving lunch tomorrow.
Tony and Rachelle from “Saltwhistle III” came over for a beer – they have a Hallberg Rassy 42 like ours and we last met them up in Long Island near New York.