When we were last in Saint Augustine, Florida, we had enjoyed the Tini Martini Bar restaurant right in front of the anchorage and said that someday we were going to have our own boat sitting out there, right in front of town. So upon arrival, we did just that! Once again we enjoyed several days in Saint Augustine, visiting the distillery, an Episcopal Church from 1825, a winery, some fine dining and other fun.
From there we spent five days in Jacksonville, Florida. The city is 15 miles upriver which takes a very long time to travel as the current coming out is quite strong. But to entice you, they offer free city dockage with water and pump out stations. We stayed in a great spot on the edge of a city park and right across the street was the Jacksonville Jaguars NFL stadium, a minor league baseball park and the veterans memorial concert venue. We had a great time here attending a baseball game, a Luke Bryan concert and touring the destroyer USS Orleck, which served the US Navy from 1945 to 1982 and then the Turkish navy for many years before being returned. We also had a mechanic finally diagnose the problem with our alternator blowing fuses. It will require servicing at the factory.
After that, we made our way up to Brunswick, Georgia, and a stay at the Brunswick Landing Marina. It is easily the most cruiser friendly marina we have ever found. Little things like free happy hour Monday-Wednesday-Friday with all you can drink beer and wine, free laundry, free use of bicycles, free barbecues on every dock and non-stop events in the clubhouse made for THE most enjoyable marina. We spent one day on a group event at a local golf course that was absolutely magnificent with all the Spanish moss. While the course was otherwise closed, our group of 50 played games on various holes such as who can use a flyswatter to knock a ping-pong ball from the tee to the hole in the fewest strokes. We had a drink cart that followed us around and after hours of hilarious fun we had a luau dinner in the clubhouse with live music. We also met up with some cruising friends and together we enjoyed the magnificent resort town of St. Simon, each other’s boats and the local speakeasy. One day we rode the free beach cruisers on a 24 mile round-trip to Saint Simons Island in the brutal heat and over the two big bridges along the way. Probably wouldn’t do that again, but it sure is a beautiful place.
Another day we rented a car and checked out Jekyll Island, where the monied folks spent winters in the previous century. We saw the “cottages” built by J.P. Morgan, the Astors, Vanderbilts, Pulitzer, Goodyear and such. They had a very private, exclusive club of 100 of the world’s richest people here. Lasted until WWII. Wow, what a place! We will return and bike ride all around it. We also drove up to Savannah, Georgia, for a couple days of sightseeing. Along the way we checked out Fort Pulaski, a brick civil war fort. The battle fought here in 1862 changed the course of military history as it was the first use of rifled cannons. They proved to be far more accurate and had a much longer range than any other weapon of the time. As a result, the concept of building ever bigger fortresses came to an abrupt halt and a thousand years of siege warfare as a strategy ended.
From there we hit the intracoastal waterway for stretches without low bridges, admiring the amazing geography of the “low country”, as this corner of America is known, with its endless swampy grasslands and literally thousands of rivers and creeks. Fishing here is a way of life, not just a pastime or hobby as in other parts of the country. There are people fishing off the bridges, sides of buildings and basically any place you can possibly get a line into the water. Rain or shine, light or dark, on every inch of water in every direction. Every home that can possibly reach water has a dock that stretches a quarter mile or more to water deep enough for a fishing boat of some kind. We’ve never seen anything like it but country music sure makes a lot more sense now!
After dodging or suffering through a few of the monstrous afternoon thunderstorms that come up most days, we cut the sightseeing short and made a beeline to Charleston, South Carolina. We knew that there were people interested in seeing the boat on July 1st and we wanted a couple days to clean up the boat before showing it.
The MSC Michigan, below, was leaving here three weeks earlier when its throttle got stuck in full-ahead. It came barreling past our marina and others, threading around the other giant ships, under the big bridge and out to sea where it was safe to shut it down. The coast guard closed the bridge, afraid of a Baltimore bridge collapse repeat. It was towed back in and has been under repair for two months now. The captain got a lot of praise for managing to avoid hitting anything at full speed.
In a seeming bit of karma, as we came into Charleston, we saw the ship that brought FKL to us from Europe to California in 2019. Seemingly a nice bookend to this chapter of our sailing life.
The showing seemed to go well and our broker stopped by the next day to talk about some things and casually mentioned that he was expecting an offer to come in in the next few minutes. And so it did — and we accepted! That same day we had the alternator removed as it had to be sent back to the factory for an internal problem that had cropped up. Well, of course, the sea trial and boat inspection then got scheduled for the following Monday so we had to have the alternator overnighted and installed on Sunday afternoon. As luck would have it, once the alternator was installed we got a new alarm and the engine went into “safe mode“. That meant the engine would not exceed 1600 RPM and the high-pitched alarm cannot be silenced. Timing is everything! The next morning, the buyer’s inspector showed up at 0640 and we all left our dock an hour later to head to a boatyard for the required haul out. We didn’t make it but a half a mile before there was a dreadful cacophony of noise from the engine room. It seems the belt decided to break at this most unfortunate time. So we coasted off to the side of the river and dropped the hook. The two brokers and I then spent an hour with two crescent wrenches and one screwdriver, trying to remove the belt so that we could trim off the broken section and then reinstall it. Why did we only have those tools, you ask? Because, of course, Theresa and I decided to move everything off the boat into a storage unit so that the inspection could take place without all of our stuff blocking access to everything within the boat. We carry multiple spare belts and all the tools required but they were now sitting in a storage unit! Isn’t that special… I think the local phrase here is, “Aw, bless your heart!”
While this was transpiring below, Theresa was on deck with the buyer helping the inspector who chose to go up the mast for a rigging inspection at this very time. He wasn’t phased by it at all. “It’s a boat,“ he said. At one point they had to use a fat dock line tied to a flag halyard to raise the boat hook to him so that he could pull himself 25 feet to the backstay. She said it was as if the guy was a monkey flying through the air. Oh, did I mention that he is 74 years old!?! And the “feels like“ temperature this day was 117°. We got the engine working again and slowly motored at 1600 RPM (with the nonstop alarm!) a couple of hours up to the haul out yard, finished the inspection and everything seemed to go reasonably well from there. As absolutely mortified as we were, we eventually heard a lot of stories from the three professionals on the boat, about boats on sea trials catching fire, sinking, smoking and otherwise having problems far worse than ours. I guess this was just a run of the mill sea trial after all!
Once we could catch our breath and recover from the horror and embarrassment of our boat breaking down at the absolute worst time, we got to enjoy the city of Charleston. We watched the 4th of July fireworks from an open air rooftop bar, toured Fort Sumter, where the Civil War began as well as the CSS Hunley, the first submarine to ever successfully sink another vessel. Fort Sumter required a ferry ride and just an hour or so to actually tour. The original three story fortress was magnificent but the Civil War reduced it to just one level of ruins. The red band on the flagpole shows the original height of the walls.
The Hunley, on the other hand, was lost after successfully sinking a Union ship just outside the harbor. 137 years later the author Clive Kessler funded an expedition that found her and eventually raised her. She now sits in a huge tank of chemicals that are slowly removing the salts for preservation. It is a fascinating tale. It sank twice in sea trials, killing all but two volunteers. A third crew took her out Feb 17, 1864 and successfully sank a Union war sloop with a “torpedo” mounted to a pole on the front. She gave her light signal to allies on land and then disappeared. The current thinking is that they went to the bottom (30′) to hide and await an incoming tide. It appears they simply ran out of oxygen and all fell asleep and died in their positions. The Captain was still holding a candle and the other seven crew were all at their stations manning the hand crank that turned the propeller. The museum is equally about the cutting edge technology used to clean and preserve her.
Finally, we attended the oldest congregation in Charleston (1681), St Phillips Anglican Church. The current building was finished in 1836 and the churchyard has signers of both the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independece as well as a Vice President of the USA. Our broker said it is the church of the city’s pinky-up crowd.
