Month: May 2019

From Georgia to South Carolina

Posted on by Maggie Selo

Wednesday morning we headed to a marina just south of Savannah. We had stayed overnight in Savannah when we drove back to Marathon, so we decided to skip Savannah and stay in Thunderbolt GA.

We passed this marker overlooking the marina when we walked to a nearby restaurant for dinner. It’s amazing how many sites along our trip have been involved in wartime activities.
The next morning we woke up to half a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts delivered to our boat, compliments of the marina!

Thursday we traveled all of 18 miles to get to Harbour Town Yacht Basin at Sea Pines Resort, Hilton Head, South Carolina.

This is the lighthouse at the entrance to the yacht basin, built by Charles Fraser, the founder of Sea Pines Plantation, and completed in 1970. It was built to attract yachtsmen to this area, but it was quickly discovered by television networks that cameras looking down from the top of the lighthouse could be aimed directly at the 18th hole on the Harbour Town Golf Links where the PGA Heritage Golf Classic is played. It has become a symbol for Hilton Head and widely recognized. And it was easy to spot by us as well! Our boat is in a slip behind the big boat in the background.
Standing at the bottom of the lighthouse, looking across the entrance to the marina, at the 18th hole.
From donuts delivered to our boat in the morning to the bottle of wine given to us when we checked into the marina – yesterday was a major score of goodies!
There’s a long public pier with several charter boats. We watched this one come in – see the next photo to see why this was so much fun to see.
It’s had a few upgrades since the America’s Cup race – engines, roller furling, etc.
Last night we noticed a lot of fish jumping near our boat. And then a blue heron landed on the finger pier next to us, watching the fish and seemingly trying to decide if he could get any of them. Eventually he left without trying to catch any of the fish. You can see ripples in the upper right hand corner from the fish jumping.
Sunset, as seen from our boat.

St. Augustine and points north

Posted on by Maggie Selo

We did a trolley tour of St. Augustine – very touristy, but we got to see the old historical part of the city without having to rent a car and figure out how to get to various sites.

The Old part of the city has many shops and restaurants in the old buildings. Kilwin’s ice cream and fudge have made it all the way to St. Augustine!
As a retired teacher, a visit to this schoolhouse seemed mandatory. I’m not sure I could have been a teacher in this building.
This was a closet under the stairs in the schoolhouse. It reminded me of Harry Potter living under the stairs.
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get a shot of the entire tree – it was quite impressive!
One of the stops was at the fort. We went under the bridge in the background on our way to the marina, so it was fun to see from land where we had traveled on the water. It’s hard to imagine what life must have been like for the soldiers who were stationed at this fort. The rooms were hot, not much light, and very primitive conditions. The “outhouse” was actually inside and positioned in such a way that the high tides that occurred twice a day would come up and wash away all the waste – very clever engineering!

From St. Augustine we went to Jacksonville for two nights. I spent the time catching up on laundry (some things need to be done no matter where you’re living.) There was a very good restaurant next door to the marina, so we had dinner there both nights – cooking is one thing I do less of on the boat 😊

This sign was posted in the parking lot of the restaurant.

From Jacksonville we headed to Jekyll Island for two nights. They had golf carts that you could borrow for 90 minutes, which didn’t seem like it would be long enough to see or do much, but we were wrong. The island is not quite 7 miles long and only 1 1/2 miles wide at the widest part, so we visited a beach and drove around half the island in less than 90 minutes.

Courtesy vehicles come in all different makes and models!
Jekyll Island Club Resort. The grounds were beautiful! This is where rich people came to vacation in the late 19th and early 20th century.
The only way to get to the island was by boat – and “the only way that a person was allowed onto Jekyll Island from 1886 to 1942 was by this dock, and access was only granted to members, members’ guests, and employees of the Jekyll Island Club.” Talk about exclusivity!
This was taken from the wharf. Can you see our boat at the marina in the background? Where the water is in the foreground will be mud flats at low tide.
A walk on the beach at low tide.
This reminded me of how the sand blows into the parking lot at Oval Beach in Saugatuck.
Sand dunes, beach, and the Atlantic Ocean
Shrimp boat! I had local fresh peel-and-eat shrimp and they were delicious!

From Jekyll we went to a marina in rural Georgia – no internet, no cell phone service. Restaurant was closed on Tuesdays, handle was missing on the water connection so we used the water in our boat’s tanks, and the electric went out for half an hour this morning. But we didn’t hear any dueling banjos and the dockage fee was cheap. The docks were floating docks, which was good because the tide goes up many feet.

Low tide – notice how steep the ramp is.
Near high tide
I’m not sure how these trees stay upright at low tide – obviously their root systems are deep enough to keep them in place.
At dusk the egrets started flying into the trees by the docks. There are at least three visible in this shot, but we saw as many as 8 at one point.
I zoomed in to get a better shot of one of them perched on a tree top.

We’re not in Florida anymore!

Posted on by Maggie Selo

Today we officially left Florida behind us and are now at a marina in Jekyll Island GA. We arrived in Melbourne on the 11th for a one night stay at a small marina just off the ICW. We got there in time to get lunch at a restaurant right at the marina and decided it must be a good place because the place was packed with locals. It didn’t disappoint!

That night we walked to the Melbourne Seafood Station and got a seafood dinner for two, which was enough food for 2 nights. We didn’t realize until we got there that the only seating was outside at picnic tables under the canopy where gas pumps used to be – hence “Station” in the name. It took almost 45 minutes to get our food because it was packed with locals and people who had called in orders. We took the food back to the boat and were so tired and hungry I didn’t take time to get any pictures. You’ll have to take my word that it was delicious!

We headed to Titusville the next day and got tied up just before it started raining. We stayed two nights there because of constant rain. I got off the boat to check in and didn’t get off again until we got to our next destination.

Parts of the ICW are very shallow if you get out of the channel. We weren’t sure if this was someone’s fishing chair or if it ended out there after a storm.

It was a quick run last Tuesday to Daytona Beach. Again, we got there in time for lunch at an Irish pub. There is a trail along the ICW with lots of restaurants and shops along it.

Walking along the Sweetheart Trail in Daytona Beach
This statue is along the trail. The next picture explains the story of Brownie.
There was a chocolate shop and factory near the pub where we had lunch, so of course we had to buy some chocolate. Chocolate covered bacon and white chocolate egg seems like a great breakfast!
Sunset in Daytona Beach
As we left Daytona we passed under a bridge that had dolphins painted on all the supports.

From Daytona Beach we headed to St. Augustine for a 2 night stay at a large marina. Unfortunately, transient slips are often the furthest away from the marina office, bathrooms, laundry, etc. and this was no exception. It was an 8-9 minute walk to get from our boat to all of those things. There was a courtesy car available (Toyota Highlander with 120,000 miles on it ) so we got it at 5:00 so we could keep it all evening. Publix was a 2 minute drive away so we were able to do some major provisioning, park in a lot close to our slip to unload, and then take the car to a restaurant on the far side of the marina.

I took this photo of our boat (in the middle of the picture) from the table at the restaurant at the marina. Would you believe it took 15-20 minutes to walk there!
Taken from our boat later that evening, looking across at the restaurant where we had dinner.

My internet connection is getting very slow, so I’ll continue this later.

Bridges, bridges, and more bridges

Posted on by Maggie Selo

This week has been spent slowly traveling up the ICW. We spent two nights in Ft. Lauderdale, then traveled to Palm Beach on Wednesday, Stuart on Thursday, and today to Vero Beach. Tomorrow we will head to Melbourne, and then Titusville, St. Augustine, and finally last stop in Florida in Jacksonville. We had hoped to be able to travel outside and get further each day, but the waters have not been good for traveling outside so it will be the ICW all the way up.

The number of huge mansions and yachts along the ICW has been amazing. The marina in Palm Beach was within walking distance of Worth Avenue, where there are lots of exclusive shops and restaurants. We passed by a real estate office as we walked there and of course had to look at all the pictures of houses and condo units for sale. We saw a couple of small condo units just under a million dollars, but most were well over a million, with many of them with multi-million dollar asking prices. Several of the condo units listed the quarterly maintenance fees – they were all $4500-5000 per quarter!

A marina filled with yachts that make our boat look like a dinghy! This was just one of many marinas that we saw filled with yachts like these.
I love a rooftop garden with big palm trees!
This was a drawbridge leading out to the Atlantic – the only bridge we could pass by and not have to go under. Note the lighthouse on the left side. That’s the first lighthouse we’ve seen in a long while.

Since we left Miami Beach Monday morning we have passed under 56 bridges, including 14 drawbridges that we had to request openings because they were too low for us to pass under in their closed position. That’s a lot of bridges!

Ft. Lauderdale

Posted on by Maggie Selo

We left Miami Beach this morning, headed for Ft. Lauderdale which we thought was going to be 25 nautical miles away. Unfortunately we had to backtrack to the channel where we came into Biscayne Bay on Friday and then continue west to pick up the ICW and then head north. We started up a channel to get to the ICW and obviously missed the info that we couldn’t go that way because there were more than 2 cruise ships tied up along the channel. The officer in the patrol boat who stopped us was very kind in explaining why we couldn’t go that way and then gave us directions to the channel we needed to use.

Three cruise ships lined up on the left side of the channel
Container ships on the right side of the channel we had to use. Miami skyline in background
These container ships are gigantic! This one was loaded with the trailers you see on our highways, each one 53’ long.
Miami skyline
This building looked like it was tilting to the right. There is such interesting architecture here!
Another container ship at Port Everglades, just before Ft. Lauderdale. On the rivers we saw barges – here, it’s container ships.
We assumed this is a control tower for ships coming into Port Everglades.
This is a fast ferry from Ft. Lauderdale to Grand Bahama Island. It takes 2 1/2 hours for a 107 mile trip. That’s 43 mph – fast!

The ICW is wide in some places, narrow in others. Speed limits vary from idle no wake speeds to 35 mph ( we should be so lucky to go that fast – our optimal speed is 16-20 mph.) It’s deep around shipping channels and can be very shallow if you get outside the channel markers.

This was a party boat, obviously outside the channel. If you look carefully, you will see that they are standing in the water! That’s shallow! It reminded us of watching people do that in Lake Kalamazoo in Saugatuck a few years ago.

We arrived at the Bahia Mar Marina about 12:30, 4 1/2 hours to go 29 nautical miles (33 statute miles). I forgot to mention we had 5 drawbridges to contend with too! This part of the trip is slow going!

We’re not in the Keys anymore

Posted on by Maggie Selo

We had originally planned to finally leave Marathon last Friday and go to Key Largo. But there were no slips available there so we decided to go all the way to Miami Beach. It was an 8 hour trip, going on the outside instead of inside on the Intracoastal Waterway, with choppy water at the beginning, then fairly flat waters for many miles, and finally choppy, rolling waters for the last 10-12 miles. The last part was really uncomfortable, with several doors and drawers popping open down below. At least nothing spilled or was broken.

One last sunset in Marathon
One last look at the Seven Mile Bridge as we left Friday morning
Coming through Government Cut into Miami Beach
Now that’s a yacht!
Once we were docked we realized we were starving. Fortunately the marina was right next to an area with lots of restaurants so we had a fantastic pizza and a beer.
Lizards are everywhere!

Saturday morning we got on a trolley (they’re free!) that we thought would take us to South Beach, but instead it took us closer to the Holocaust Memorial, so we spent an hour there, then walked back to the boat.

This is what you see from the street. There’s a pool with beautiful water lilies in front of this wall.
When you walk around the pool you come to a covered walkway that leads to the back side of the sculpture. The walls are covered with stone tablets which have engraved names of individuals and families who died in concentration camps. There were approximately 100 of these in two different places with 200-250 names on each. We assume with a donation you could have names added because there were several at the end that were blank.
This was at the beginning of a series of stones with background on the camps and pictures.
The stone was so reflective that it was difficult to get pictures of them.
Poem by Hirsh Glick , written in the Vilnius ghetto, the song became the anthem of the underground resistance movement. Later it spread to the other ghettos and camps.

Today we worked on cleaning up the boat, paying bills, and relaxing. We had planned to go to a nearby Tequila restaurant and bar to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, but it started raining as we were getting ready to leave and poured for the next two hours. So it was Mac and cheese and green beans for dinner on the boat.

Home sweet home

Posted on by Maggie Selo

Monday morning we got a call that our boat was ready to go back into the water later in the morning. So off to the boatyard we went, to check on the new rudder before it went in. We discovered that a special protective coating that was supposed to have been put on the props had not been done. The prop guy said to go ahead and launch and he would dive the boat the next day, remove the props, get them coated, and put back on Thursday. We had hired a captain to do a sea trial with us, because he had noticed water in the bilge when he brought the boat over to the boatyard. We wanted him to look for water coming in as we motored around for a while – water on the inside of a boat is never a good thing! He arrived and the travel lift moved our boat to the well and lowered it into the water. I must admit, it’s a bit scary to watch your home being moved and lowered into the water.

My video was too big to insert so here’s a screen shot of the boat as they were getting ready to lower it.

We were out for about half an hour and no sign of water coming in, so we went back to the marina and got settled into a slip. We discovered after tying up that our generator was not working – if it’s not one thing, it’s another. The guys who installed the new rudder had to work in the compartment where the generator is, so they were contacted. They came out yesterday and decided there’s a broken wire somewhere so they’ll be back Thursday to fix that. Fortunately we have shore power here but we’ll need the generator when we need to anchor out overnight as we head north.

We unloaded all the stuff that had been in the car and finally headed back to the hotel for one last night there. We celebrated finally getting the boat back in by having King of the Jungle rolls at one of our favorite restaurants.

I posted a picture of this roll previously – it’s a lion fish.

Yesterday we got everything that we had in the hotel onto the boat and then the unpacking began. Where to put all of the “stuff”we brought back??? By this afternoon I had found places for all of it!

Last night we had dinner at Sunset Grill. The weather was perfect, the live entertainment was very good, the sunset was gorgeous.

We even got to watch Jeopardy while we ate!

Tomorrow we’ll get the props put back on, the generator will hopefully be fixed, we’ll do some provisioning and laundry, and return the rental car. And then it will be off to Key Largo on Friday.