Kilkenny, SC - Day 39

Day 39
10/30/15

We left Beaufort, SC on our way to our next major stop at Jekyll Island, GA, but since it was more than a day's travel we picked one of the very few marinas at roughly the half way point for our next overnight stay, Kilkenny Marina, GA.  I had read on Active Captain that it was a rustic "fish camp" style of place and that it was not really a transient marina, but we just needed an overnight stop so we headed there.  On the way, we passed Parris Island where Marines have boot camp.

We saw this party boat chugging along on the ICW.  It was called the Delta Queen and resembled an old paddle wheel riverboat.

While near Savannah we saw the above boat, "Fighting Irish", at the Thunderbolt Marina.  Since our son Patrick graduated from Notre Dame it caught our attention.  Later I looked it up and found the following:

As the president and chief executive officer of The McGraw Group of Affiliated Companies, Michael McGraw oversaw a number of significant insurance interests for more than a decade. He came to the position after serving the company as a vice president and chief operating officer. Over the course of his career, Mr. McGraw also held senior administrative positions with the Pacific Specialty Insurance Company and the Employers Direct Corporation. He prepared for his career with a bachelor’s degree in business administration with a concentration in finance from the University of Notre Dame. 

Mr. McGraw currently honors his alma mater as the owner of the Fighting Irish, a 140-foot, custom-built, motorized yacht that can travel at speeds of 27 knots while offering accommodations for up to 10 guests and 8 crew. Named after Notre Dame’s beloved mascot, the Fighting Irish has been featured in a number of boating industry websites and publications, including Yacht Charter Fleet and the Superyacht Times.


We finally found the turn off for our marina.  Shades of things to come.

Rustic was an understatement for Kilkenny Marina.  The floats for the floating docks were old barrels (you can see the blue barrels in the picture below), and the dock sections were joined together with hinged joints, meaning each section moved independently when you walked down the dock.  Don't stop here if you have any balance problems, as you just may wind up in the water.  There were no cleats to secure lines, just pieces of 2X6 boards sticking up.  With 9-10 foot tides, the ramp to the floating dock was so steep it was almost a ladder at low tide, and there was a scary 6" gap where it joined the dock at the top.  With no real alternatives close by we decided to make the best of it.  Don't plan to buy diesel fuel here if you can help it.  Diesel was a dollar more a gallon than we paid in Brunswick, GA the next day.

Due to the huge tidal swings I suppose a boat ramp for launching trailered fishing boats was out of the question, so this crane was used by the locals to launch and retrieve their boats.  They would back the trailer and tow vehicle out onto the pier platform and then use the crane to take their boats off of the trailer and lower them into the water, and then at the end of the day they would hoist them back up onto the trailers.  The blue tanks up on the pier were full of shrimp that the marina sold for bait.

Kilkenny was apparently a plantation at one time, and this slave house was on the property.  Also located next door to the marina was a restaurant.  We decided to try it for dinner and the food was amazingly good for a restaurant in the middle of nowhere.  They also drew quite a crowd and the restaurant was full of people by the time we finished.  Oh, and the waitresses said "ya'll"more than I have ever heard anywhere!

Apparently most of the local egrets roosted just outside of our boat windows.  The trees lining he river bank were full of them.

A couple of things nice I will say about Kilkenny are: the night sky there was beautiful and filled with stars as bright as I have ever seen, and the sunrise over the marsh was gorgeous.  However, as soon and it was light enough to see clearly we were out of there!