Exile: Home for the Holidays

November 10, 2014

Jeff is off on another business trip - this time to Boise, Idaho. I stayed behind, enjoyed a fun day with Cris Haskell, my friend from Maine and Hilton Head. She gave me a tour of Old Bluffton and Palmetto Bluff, where we had lunch at Buffalo's. Yum!

Some of the sights around Palmetto Bluff are demonstrated below. What a quaint little church and OH! the view from inside overlooking the water. I understand this church gets a lot of requests from people to be wed within it's doors. I can see why.

The next day I spent onboard ALL day. We were expecting to have an A/C leak fixed but ended up in the company of the technician while he continued to test, test, test. After almost 8 hours, we still didn't have an answer. So, I buttoned the boat up and took off to Ponte Vedra Beach the next day, where the car would remain until we arrive in St. Augustine. It made sense to take care of this while Jeff was freezing his "pumpkin" off in Boise, where the snow was falling during the first Arctic blast this year.

I also wanted to surprise my daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter - which was pulled off with ease. We spent the next couple of hours together. What fun! I spent that night with my mother-in-law and felt like a kid coming home from college, since I brought our dirty laundry with me to throw in the washer/dryer while visiting! The next day my daughter, granddaughter and I shopped a little in the morning and created a crockpot meal in the afternoon. Most of the time I spent getting lots of hugs from Brooke. Boy, has she grown since the last time we saw her in CT in June for my nephew's wedding. Walking, talking, dancing, oh boy!

That night I spent with my next door neighbor, Barbara. We caught up on everything we could think of and the next morning I rented a car to return to Savannah to pick Jeff up from the airport and then returned the rental car to the Hilton Head airport the following morning prior to our departure from Hilton Head. The logistics of moving the car down the coast can be a little tricky. Next we have to figure out where to leave it when we head to the Bahamas!

Our journey south has resumed. We left Windmill Harbor - back through the lock - at 11:30. It was nice, sunny and in the high 60's. At 3:30 we arrived at the Isle of Hope Marina, where we had pre-planned to meet up with our friends Carol and Jack. We knew they'd catch up with us somewhere down the coast, and this turned out to be a great place. We had a fun and tasty dinner together at Fiore's and would highly recommend it. They left the next morning and we decided to stay put since it was cold and rainy. Jeff used the time to write his report from the Boise trip.

Decided to let this big boy go first!

Open sesame...

Great friends, great food, great time!

Wow! We have to beat feet south. It's getting very cold. At 8:15 on the 18th of Nov. with the thermometer reading 35 degrees (wind chill 22!), we left the dock in 3 layers of clothes, hats and gloves then pushed our keel through the shallow depth of Hell Gate, a man made canal that connects the Little Ogeechee River to the Ogeechee River. Yeah, I'd never heard of them either... (Google "Geechee" for a bit of low country history.) Just after 7pm. we finally reached Morningstar Marina in the dark. No - make that pitch black! It was a perfect night for chili that I had made and frozen earlier in the week considering we were chilled to the bone!

The next day we knew we'd have to head offshore because we'd be passing Jekyll Island at low tide when the ICW depth shoaled to 4'. (We draw 5'9"... no plowing through that!) We had a comfortable run to Fernandina Beach. We tied up to a face dock at the city marina and met up with Dick and Claudia who have moved their boat from Camachee Cove in St Augustine to Fernandina Beach for a while. We had lots of fun catching up and having dinner at Brett's at the marina. The sunsets there are incredible which Dick had alerted us to at dinner - a photo is shown below.

Fort Clinch, the northernmost fort in Florida defending the St. Mary's River

Fernandina Beach shrimp boats

Sailboats on moorings in Fernandina Beach

Off the dock Nov. 20th at 8:45 with an outgoing tide and headed offshore to St. Augustine. We were asked to stop by the Coast Guard to allow an incoming submarine and two escorts to clear the channel and make the turn up to Kings Bay. The submarines stationed at Kings Bay are "Boomers". They house nuclear missiles and Tomahawk cruise missiles and patrol under the sea for 6 months at a time all over the world. A pretty impressive sight!

Out the channel we went and motored all the way to St. Augustine. The winds were too light to get us there by nightfall. We were secure in a slip at Camachee Cove at 4:10 and will be here until the end of the month visiting family and friends over the Holiday season, then begin our sail to the Bahamas. Can't wait! This year our friend Kevin Oliver is going to make the crossing with us and spend a couple of weeks away from the ice and snow in Maine. You may remember, he joined us in Portland on our way up the coast and spent three days onboard. We're excited he'll be joining us again!