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!

Beaufort, SC - Day 38

Day 38

10/29/15

It was a crisp morning when we left Charleston, so we bundled up and took some pictures of a German cruise ship and the waterfront on the way out.

WE docked at the very nice municipal marina in Beaufort, SC.  This town is called "Bew-fort", not "Bo-fort like in North Carolina, and the natives are very quick to call you on it if you make a mistake.  We were tired from the trip, so rather than walk around the town we decided to take a guided tour by horse-drawn carriage.  We saw the major sights of the town and were regaled with many local stories by the guide/carriage driver.  It was so interesting that I forgot to take many pictures.  Oh well.

This is the bridge across the river near Beaufort.   During the filming of Forest Gump, this bridge was transformed into a bridge across the Mississippi River, including signs, for filming the scene where Tom Hanks as Forest runs across the bridge over the Mississippi.  Apparently many tourists to the area during that time commented that they were unaware that the Mississippi came this far east.

The day we were in Beaufort the whole town shut down from 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm so the town children could trick or treat at all of the local merchants,  I'm not sure why the picked Thursday, especially since Halloween was on Saturday, but in this town it was a very big deal, there were hundreds of children in costumes walking for blocks around with their parents to attend this function.

This is a view of the marina at Beaufort from the water.  While I was walking the dogs in the evening, I saw several dolphins swimming in some of the empty boat slips about 10 feet from where I was walking.  We have been seeing dolphins every day that we are on the water, but never that close!

We borrowed the marina's courtesy for a run to the grocery store for a few things and called it a day.  Since we had seen what we wanted to of Beaufort, we decided to move on the next day.

Charleston, SC - Day 36 & 37

Day 36 and 37

10/27/15 - 10/28/15

We woke up in McClellanville thinking we would be stuck there due to rain.  Yes, I can pilot from the inside of the boat and be out of the weather, but visibility is limited from there and unless I really have to I'd rather pilot from the flybridge.  Anyway, when I checked the weather forecast it had changed so there was now very little rain forecast, so it looked like we could make it to Charleston without much trouble.  

I spent a couple of hours on the phone with various marinas trying to find a place to stay.  I had initially picked out a nice downtown marina, but they were full due to the snowbird migration being in full swing.  Several said they would call me back if they had cancellations, and finally my first choice marina did find a space for us, so we threw off the lines and took off.  We made our marina in good time, and I only had to pilot from inside for part of the trip.  We pulled into our marina near a Carnival cruise ship and got tied up behind a protective sea wall.  With predicted tides for the day being over 10 feet from low to high we were thankful for the floating dock.

Since we were low on supplies due to my mistake of turning off the shore power while we were in Virgina, we walked to the nearby Harris-Teeter grocery store and restocked.

The next day we walked for hours viewing the various sights and the waterfront.  We found a fire station where they had preserved their old fire engines.  One we saw was from 1916 and was horse-drawn.  The replacement in 1926 had its own gasoline engine!

We went to the historic Charleston City Market and walked from one end to the other, the market is blocks long and full of just about anything you would want, including many locally made crafts.

We walked along the waterfront park, seeing the beautiful landscaping and many waterfront mansions.

We finally caught the free trolly to back toward the marina.  Our stop was at George Street, and I kept telling Sharon that the name of that street was ringing a bell with me.  We had visited Charleston almost 30 years ago and stayed at a bed and breakfast, but we didn't remember the name of it or where it was located.  I said I thought it may have been on George Street so we decided to walk a few blocks to see if I was right.  We went about a block and there it was!  Even though the area around it had a number of new buildings that were not there 30 years ago, the bed and breakfast had hardly changed.

We finally made it back to the marina after a full day of sight-seeing.  Below is another view from the marina.

We decided to eat dinner that evening at another place we had stumbled upon and loved 30 years ago, Jestines Kitchen.  We found out that since we were there the restaurant had been featured by both Anthony Bourdain and Rachel Ray on their TV shows.  I guess we must have given it some good word of mouth!  The restaurant had really not changed a bit, including their menu, and the food was even better than we remembered.  I don't think the prices had changed all that much either!  It was a great end to a wonderful visit.

McClellanville, SC - Day 35

Day 35
10/26/15

McClellenville, SC is a very small town of 300 people. The economy here depends primarily on shrimping and fishing. The marina here is basically a commercial fishing and fuel dock that also accepts transient boats for overnight stays. It was conveniently located between Myrtle Beach and Charleston, so we stopped for the night.

There is not much in McClellanville, but we did walk a couple of blocks to the seafood market along a street lined with beautiful Spanish moss-draped live oaks. There we bought some very nice shrimp just off the boat for $6.99 a pound. If you wanted smaller shrimp you could pay $4.99 a pound. We bought three pounds of the large shrimp, some to freeze for later and some to eat right away. The local restaurant was closed, so we had steamed shrimp for dinner. I'm glad we thought to stock our pantry with Old Bay! We went to bed with storms in the area and more predicted for the following day, so we went to bed we were thinking we would be stuck here eating shrimp for the next two days. It could be worse!

Time Off From Boating Again - Day 21 through Day 34

Day 21-34
10/12/15 through 10/25/15

The flooding in the Myrtle Beach area had may boats holding in marinas waiting for the water to recede, especially sail boats that were unable to get under bridges due to the high water.  The Osprey Marina was jam packed.  We spent a couple of days at the marina cleaning the boat and getting it ready for our week and a half away.

 Before driving to Culpeper, VA to watch our grandchildren, we decided to spend a few days in Myrtle Beach since neither of us had ever been there.

Jake and Kimi loved the beach.  In the evening when the beach was relatively empty I would throw their water toys in the ocean for them and they had a blast swimming and retrieving.

One day there was a wedding on the beach.

We walked out on the fishing pier at our hotel and saw a number of large sharks under the pier where people were cleaning the fish they had caught.  We decided not to swim in the ocean since these were only a couple of hundred yards from our beach!  All in all we decided that we liked Ocean City, MD, where we have spent many summers, a lot better.

After Myrtle Beach, we drove to Culpeper and spent the week driving two of our granddaughters to and from school and various other activities while our son Michael and our daughter-in-law Maureen were at a veterinary conference in upstate New York.  One day I drove to Baltimore and back in order to see my orthopedic surgeon and get a shot in my knee.  One day Jake and Kimi went to Michael's veterinary clinic and got caught up on various shots and had their teeth cleaned.  The last day when Michael and Maureen got home we went to Maureen's birthday party where Michael had hired Maureen's favorite band from Ocean City, "Scott's New Band", to play, and had the party catered by a local Italian restaurant.  About 80 people showed up for an evening of music, dancing, good food, and an open bar.  Michael throws the best parties in Culpeper!

My brother David and sister-in-law Terri drove up from New Bern for the party

Sharon and I with our son Michael.

Maureen having "Happy Birthday" sung to her by Scott's New Band.

Our three lovely granddaughters, Rebecca, Emily, and Elaine at their mom's party.

After the party, we drove halfway back to Myrtle Beach and then finished the journey to the Osprey Marina the next day to pick up the boat and continue on our adventure.  

One tip for other boaters, when you leave the boat for a week and a half, don't accidentally turn off the shore power breakers.  You'll come back to a refrigerator and freezer full of bad food.

Flooding in South Carolina - Day 20

Day 20
10/11/15

When we left Southport, NC this morning it was COLD!  We bundled up with sweatshirts and long pants for the first time on the trip.  A cold front had passed during the night and the day was cloudy and cold until late in the afternoon

We crossed into South Carolina and began to see very tropical looking houses along the waterway as well as trees with Spanish moss hanging from them.

As we arrived in the North Myrtle Beach area we began to see large fishing yachts and this floating casino.

The farther along the waterway we went the more and more we saw flooding of houses and properties.  The Waccamaw River, toward which we were heading, was experiencing extreme flooding due to last week's torrential rains in South Carolina and the high water was also affecting the waterway.  The good thing for us was that the high water made our passage through the infamous "Rock Pile" section of the waterway near Myrtle Beach a non-event.  Since the residential properties along this section were so flooded the Coast Guard had instituted a LOOOONG no wake zone to avoid further damage to houses and property.  We spent hours at no wake speed, so our passage to our next stop took a lot longer than anticipated.

Below is the sign at the turn to our marina, luckily all of the docks there are floating docks, so the marina itself was basically unaffected by the high water.

This will be the last blog post for a few days.  We plan to leave the boat here while we explore Myrtle Beach and then drive up to Virginia to spend some time with grandchildren.  Hopefully when we get back the river flooding will have subsided and we can move on without worrying about flood debris in the water.