It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

We are underway southbound in the ICW, which here runs down the middle of the Indian River Lagoon. We are finally back in more temperate weather, and I've even worn a couple of short-sleeve shirts in the past week. We've been running the heat occasionally for weeks, but today we turned on the air conditioning for the first time since leaving the northeast.

Vector at anchor in Titusville, as seen from the causeway.

The remainder of our passage last Thursday was uneventful, although seas built shortly before we arrived at the St. Johns and we were glad to be heading inshore. We had a slight push upriver and dropped the hook in a familiar spot immediately upriver of the ICW crossing (map), across the river from the BAE shipyard.

Friday morning when the engine had fully cooled I learned that valving off the water heater had not changed the situation, which has since sent me further down the rabbit hole of cooling system diagnosis. We enjoyed more of the bagels that Dorsey and Bruce had gifted us as we discussed our options if we needed professional help, as that might impact which direction we went from the anchorage.

The chickens are fresh in Vilano Beach.

The worst case scenario is that the coolant is going into the combustion chamber, but at this very slow rate we are probably not doing any damage and can continue to run at our normal pace. That made the much more limited selection of boatyards upriver in Jacksonville less appealing than continuing south, where there would be a lot more alternatives ahead of us. A discretionary side trip upriver thus seemed a poor choice, and we decided instead to continue south directly.

Pesca rooftop bar and restaurant in the Hyatt Place.

We weighed anchor and set out for St. Augustine down the inside, with outside weather unfavorable and also not wanting to be well offshore should the problem become suddenly worse. We held back until we could make the San Pablo Creek bridge with only a couple of knots behind us (it runs as high as six), yet still have a fair tide south from the St. Johns.

Durty Neli's. Promising, but no food yet.

Underway I looked up every Lugger service dealer in Florida, and we also texted with Bruce and Dorsey, who happened to still be docked in St. Augustine. We learned they would be there for another couple of nights, and we made plans to connect for dinner in town Saturday, a fortuitous bonus of our decision to continue south. I ordered a coolant test kit and some UV coolant dye marker to the Amazon locker a couple of miles north of town.

The approach to the Vilano pier is always festive at the holidays.

With the Amazon deliveries not scheduled until Sunday and dinner in St. Augustine on Saturday, we decided to stop just short in our usual haunt of Vilano Beach, dropping the hook in a familiar spot just outside the cable area (map). We usually have this anchorage to ourselves, but today we found three sailboats already here, so word has gotten out. They anchored well north of the cable area, though, and we still got the closest spot.

When we came through here earlier in the year they were just wrapping up construction on an Irish pub, and learning it had opened we were looking forward to trying it. They do not yet have a working kitchen, however, and as lovely as the neat row of draft handles looked, we continued on to a different, but still new to us, place, Pesca. This is the rooftop bar and restaurant in the Hyatt Place, which was built in the Art Deco style despite being only a couple of years old. We sat "indoors," meaning under a roof, but the entire joint is open-air, so we were glad to try it on a very pleasant evening. The food was decent and we've added it to our list. We made a quick stop in Publix on our way back to the tender.

One of the St. Augustine Lions, near the eponymous bridge, with Vector in the background across the river.

Saturday morning we decked the tender and weighed anchor just before the turn of the tide, timing our departure to put us at the Bridge of Lions for the 9:30 opening. We did not need it, because we found just enough room in our preferred anchorage just before the bridge, across the river from town (map). We had the hook down just in time to see the annual holiday parade marching down the street along the waterfront, but it was a cold, rainy morning, and what little crowd we saw looked uncomfortable.

That weather kept us on board the whole morning. Things dried up a bit after lunch, and we tendered over to the city marina to pay the $15 dinghy dock fee and get a little walk in. We returned in the evening, met up with Dorsey and Bruce on Esmeralde, and walked over to Gaufres & Goods, a favorite of theirs, for dinner. We went early and were lucky to score a table; they take no reservations.

Parking is miserable in St. A, and costs more than the $15 dinghy fee. Tensions were high.

This tiny venue, close to the dock, serves a mix of Polish and Greek dishes, and I was surprised to find the same strong Polish porter that I had stocked up on in Sheepshead Bay, the only other place I've seen it. The food and service were excellent, with a warm ambiance, and now it's a favorite of ours, too. A gaufre is a Belgian waffle, which we had for dessert. It was great seeing Bruce and Dorsey and their pups, even though we keep saying "goodbye until Key West." Maybe this time we really meant it, but I am not making any bets.

Sunday it rained all day, and we were basically trapped on board. My Amazon orders arrived, but there was no way to get them without getting drenched. I did tender ashore in the afternoon in a brief gap in the rain to get a walk in, knowing my dingy fee would cover me until 11 in the morning to go get my packages. Our spot in the anchorage afforded us the perfect view of the festively lit St. Augustine waterfront. Tourists come from all over at this time of year to see the annual Nights of Lights display; tour boat or trolley tickets are well over a C-note. It was a nice backdrop to our dinner on board.

Best shot I could get with my phone to capture Nights of Lights. Every building is lit.

Monday morning I ran ashore, hopped on the city bus (actually a 14-seat shuttle van), and ran out to the Amazon locker. I had a good 20 minutes before the return bus, which I spent in the neighboring Winn-Dixie picking up the few items on the provision list that arose in the few days since our Publix excursion.

Cheers from McK's pub, Daytona Beach.

After returning to Vector I started calling Lugger service dealers, including the one in St. Augustine, who allowed there was a small chance they could get to us this week and that they would call me back. As nice as it would have been to go ashore for dinner in town, the wind forecast said we needed a better anchorage, and so we weighed anchor after lunch to make the 12:30 bridge (there is no noon opening) and continue south.

The memorial to Brownie the town dog is here year-round, but Daytona decorates it for the holidays.

Just a couple hours of cruising brought us to the lovely and familiar anchorage across from Fort Matanzas (map), where I settled in to make more phone calls. We had dinner on board to the sound of the surf, and ended the day with a 7pm video conference call, something our Starlink terminal allows us to achieve in this kind of peaceful, fairly remote anchorage.

The south end of the Esplanade.

Tuesday morning I called the local Lugger guys, having heard nothing back, and got the news I was expecting: they did not really have any availability until after the holiday, which is what I had heard from every other dealer from here to Stuart. We weighed anchor to continue south, but just as Louise was bringing the last of the chain aboard, the windlass suddenly made a seemingly uncommanded retraction and the anchor slammed hard into the pulpit. I could not release the pressure with the switch at the helm.

We seldom get to see this bridge at night. That's the slingshot ride at left.

The Matanzas inlet is no place to be messing around with this, with a couple of knots of current wanting to sweep the boat into the shoals, and a tricky shallow section right after making the turn into the ICW, so we just soldiered on until we were in a wider and deeper section. There we learned the circuit breaker for the windlass, which also powers the washdown pump, was tripped. We used the manual clutch to release the pressure on the chain.

Santa and his eight reindolphins.

Underway I called the yacht club in Daytona to make a reservation for the night, and it was a relief to learn they had space, relieving the urgency of getting the windlass working. Still, on a single-screw boat a working anchor is a critical piece of safety gear, and so once everything was settled, Louise cleared off the berth in the guest stateroom, AKA her quilt studio, so I could get to the breaker.

Fortunately that was all it was, and I was able to reach the breaker from atop the berth without having to descend into the carbon-dust-encrusted thruster bay to reach it. Before restoring power I first removed the battery from the remote control, in case that was what caused the uncommanded windlass movement. We may never know the cause but it was almost certainly somewhere in the wireless remote system.

The rest of the cruise to Daytona was uneventful, although we did have a delay at the Knox drawbridge while the bridge tender was in the head, and we passed an anchored unmanned sailboat very nearly in the channel that the USCG had been warning about on the radio for a couple of days. We were tied up in our usual spot at the Halifax River Yacht Club (map), where we met the new dockmaster, Dale.

New windlass solenoid, to reduce radio interference.

As long as we had cleared a path to the thruster bay earlier in the day, I spent a couple of hours working down there to replace the whizzy energy-saving high-power contactors that energize the windlass and thruster with something lower-tech. The fancy ones contain a PWM circuit to reduce power usage, and that circuit has been causing interference on our VHF radios. I was able to replace the windlass contactor with a 200-amp Cole Hersee I bought for the purpose, but my plan to repurpose one of the 400-amp Albright units in a spare reversing contactor was foiled when I discovered they bridged the two units with a solid contact bus bar. I'll need to order something different to finish the project.

I hoped to split these, but the single bar across the lower contacts makes them inseparable.

Since we were going to be at a dock with a good address, Louise decided this was a good place to try out our new Walmart Plus membership to have provisions delivered right to the front door. She chose a delivery window starting at 7pm when we would be back from dinner, and at dinner time we walked down the block to McK's pub, which had some nice drafts and decent pub food. We often just eat at the club, but we remembered the bar is very chaotic  on Tuesdays, when they have a weekly raffle of some sort.

I've put this large filter bag over the top of the thruster motor, in hopes of containing the unending stream of brush dust that now covers every surface in the compartment. 

Not only were the club bar and dining rooms busy, but all the function rooms were busy as well, with several holiday parties. In hindsight we should have chosen Wednesday morning for our delivery. The driver arrived shortly after 7, and, having tracked the delivery on the app, we walked out to the port cochere with a dock cart just before he pulled up. It was all over in just a few minutes and we were never in the way. A tip of the hat to our friends Stacey and Dave aboard Stinkpot, who turned us on to this seamless method to get Walmart orders without me having to schlep everything on the e-bike. I finished the evening with a long walk around the waterfront taking in the holiday decorations.

Street decoration in New Smyrna Beach.

With no particular schedule, and finally in some warmth, we set our sights for Wednesday only as far as New Smyrna Beach, where I had a first-hand report the city dock was once again usable for an overnight stay. That's a short run, and so we lingered at the yacht club dock until 11. I cleaned up from the under berth project and sanitized our drinking water filtration system. We offloaded all the trash and recycling before dropping lines.

The Santa Run streamed past right after we crossed the street.

We made it through the tight, skinny section past Ponce de Leon Inlet and were on track to make the 1:30 opening at the George Musson drawbridge when we heard on the radio that a dredging operation had a pipe all the way across the river just before the bridge and that the channel was closed until some indeterminate time. We pulled off-channel a mile before the bridge and dropped the hook with several other boats that were already waiting (map).

Louise and Vector in New Smyrna. The dock is curved, making for a challenging tie-up.

The closure was apparently not pre-vetted by the Coast Guard and the command center in Jacksonville was scrambling to figure out who was responsible and when they'd get it back open; it's almost unheard-of for us to come upon this kind of closure without having had any kind of notice. After about an hour we started to think about just being stuck there overnight, and we put the dinghy in the water to see if we could get past the obstruction to a waterfront restaurant just the other side of the bridge. No sooner did we have the dinghy in the water and ready to go than a nearby boater shouted to us that they had just cleared the channel.

View of the weird arrangement from the other side.

With a full half hour to the 3pm bridge opening we had plenty of time to lift the tender, weigh anchor, and make our way to the bridge. That put us at the New Smyrna Beach dock at 3:30, where I was happy to see the dock empty, but disappointed to see there is still a 5-hour limit sign. We did not want to backtrack to the inlet this late in the day, so we just took our chances and tied up (map). When I circled back to my first-hand report they said they regularly stayed there for a night with no issues; we just crossed our fingers. Long-time readers may know we'd stayed at this dock a couple of times early on in our travels, before the limit was enacted.

Cheers from Prima. The pizza was very good.

The little downtown Canal Street historic district is more vibrant now, and we enjoyed walking down the street and seeing the holiday decorations. After dinner at upscale pizza joint Prima, a recommendation from friends, we walked a bit more, barely avoiding being run over by the Santa Run. I thought the town was festively decorated and there are lots of nice-looking eateries, so it's too bad about the dock. We're hoping the have the floating dinghy dock back in operation before our next pass through.

We asked for a sample of one of the drafts and they brought it in a demitasse cup.

We had no knock on the hull overnight and awoke to a pleasant morning. With only an average length day to Titusville I spend part of the morning walking the town in the daylight, and of course I could not resist picking up a couple of bagels at the bakery. We dropped lines on the flood for the Mosquito Lagoon and the Indian River, finding ourselves in a spread-out line of southbound boats. Apart from the Haulover Bridge operator deciding to make up rules on the fly, the cruise was uneventful. He did open the bridge when I insisted on it.

Mural in progress on Canal Street.

We had the anchor down in our usual spot south of the Titusville Causeway (map) with just ten minutes to spare before a scheduled rocket launch from the cape, but it ended up being delayed anyway and we saw it from our aft deck just before we tendered ashore for dinner at Pier 220, really the only option here. The food is decent for a pier joint and they have a couple of beers on tap. Their outdoor tiki bar is incredibly popular, and late in the evening we could see some police and fire department action there that went on for nearly an hour.

Where is the tenderness?

Yesterday we weighed anchor after a leisurely breakfast and were on track to arrive at the Eau Gallie Yacht Club early in the afternoon. I had reached out on Thursday to make a reservation. It was a gorgeous day, and as we approached Cocoa, we decided on a whim to stop there instead and catch the annual holiday boat parade, scheduled for last night. We first had to search a little to see if we could still get ashore with the day docks having been removed after a hurricane, and I had to call the yacht club to postpone our arrival by a day.

Centuries-old ruins, either an old fort or Turnbull's mansion, no one really knows.

We had the hook down in the well-used anchorage (map) early in the afternoon and settled in. A short time later an alarm started sounding on our plotter, the response to a Man OverBoard (MOB) beacon being set off nearby. A quick check revealed the MOB beacon to be moving north toward us on the ICW at ten knots; a real person in the water would only be drifting. I called the only boat I could see at that position and speed.

Another batch of Starlink satellites rising to orbit, from our deck. VAB to the left of the sailboat.

The skipper seemed confused, because his own display showed the beacon a thousand feet behind him. Why in the world any skipper would ignore an MOB alarm and just keep going, in violation of the law of the sea, is beyond me. Of course it was a false activation of a device on his own boat; MOB beacons just can't update their position fast enough to keep up at ten knots. He finally sheepishly admitted he had them on life jackets in a locker someplace.

After the drama was over, I was very happy to see that this all worked well on our own boat. We have exactly such an MOB beacon, which is worn by whomever is on watch overnight while the other is asleep. The alarm is both insistent and persistent; they are deliberately hard to ignore or silence, and the MOB icon persists on the chart no matter what you do.

The Nutcracker. We assume just the highlights.

The boat parade was scheduled for 6, so we tendered ashore at 4 to get in a walk and an early dinner. We had read that dinghies could tie up at the boat ramp in the absence of the day docks, but we could see no way to do that without blocking one of the three ramps, so we tied to the seawall instead, closer to where the day docks had been. We had a nice walk around Cocoa Village and good burgers at the Americana Pub, which has an impressive array of drafts. We saw the city tree, to be lit at 7, and a few minutes of a children's production of The Nutcracker in the park.

The tail end of the boat parade, with the rest of it in the background.

We were back aboard well in time for the start of the boat parade, which went right past us through the anchorage. It was just a bit distant for good cell phone pictures, but we had a nice view. We could see the tree all lit ashore through our binoculars, and it turned out to be an enjoyable stop. There is no evidence they will ever replace the day docks, but that does not seem to be a major obstacle to stopping here again.

We had great conditions and a nice view.

Yesterday one of the cordless blinds in the pilothouse gave up the ghost, and I spent about an hour re-stringing it this morning. It's a short cruise to Indian Harbour Beach and the Eau Gallie Yacht club, and I expect we will be there before I get all the photos loaded and captioned for the post.

Update: we are docked at the Eau Gallie Yacht Club (map). Tonight we will make a pilgrimage to Publix for provisions and probably hit dinner on the way. Tomorrow we will move to the anchorage on the other side of the causeway to hunker down for an incoming wind storm tomorrow night.

Georgia

We are underway southbound in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of southeast Georgia, after a two-night stop in the Golden Isles. We will end the day somewhere in Florida, most likely anchored on the St. Johns. My last post was from South Carolina and my next will be from Florida, so I guess this is my Georgia post.

Harbour Town at night.

We had a nice dinner Saturday evening at the Quarterdeck with Dorsey and Bruce. It was very nice of them to gift us the half dozen bagels from Rain-n-Bagels in Beaufort, and they even provided the cream cheese. Later they also gave us a two-pound bag of ground coffee, so our joke in the morning was that it was nice to stay at a place that provides free breakfast. By the end of dinner they were still ruminating about heading offshore in the morning.

Sunset over Daufuskie Island from The Quarterdeck.

They were out of the marina before we could even pry ourselves from under the electric blanket in the morning, and while they reported it was lumpy crossing the Savannah River entrance, conditions were good enough that they continued on to St. Simons Sound. We, on the other hand, lingered in our slip until the noon checkout, basking in the warmth of electric heat and topping up our water tanks.

As we were making preparations to get underway we heard the marina directing an incoming boat to our slip, and I had to call them to say we were still there. Evidently check-in and check-out are both noon. I was going to linger to the last minute and take one more stroll, but with another boat hovering outside the marina we expedited singling up and were off the dock ten minutes early. We proceeded directly to the fuel dock to pump out, which necessitated spinning the boat around both before and after.

This sculpture in the plaza, "Out to Lunch," was very familiar to us from in front of the Sunnyvale, CA Public Library. I'm not sure how many were cast. Louise had a dog who would walk up to it and lick the hamburger.

We had an easy cruise down the ICW, with enough tide to easily get us over the nasty shallow spot at Ramshorn Cut. At the Savannah River we faced the choice of going upriver for a stop in Savannah, or continuing south on the ICW, and we chose the latter after learning we'd have just one day and two nights of nice weather in town. That's a long detour for a short stop.

We instead set our sights on the Thunderbolt area as a stop for the evening. While we normally anchor in the Herb River, this time we would arrive at a high tide of +7', and we decided to try our luck with the anchorage up Turner Creek just before the bridge. That would let us get ashore for dinner and a walk, with plenty of daylight to backtrack to the Herb if the anchorage did not work out.

This was the festive view from our deck. The flip side is that we were the view for the tourists.

There is a 4'-deep shoal at the entrance to this creek, which means it's really unusable for us unless we have at least half tide both coming and going. Long-time readers may know that we basically started our boating life here, as Turner Creek is where Hogan's Marina is located, where we moved the boat for a month right after we took possession. We did not know enough back then to know this was a terrible choice for newbies in a big boat, but it was a friendly marina that let us park and live in our bus while we moved aboard.

After a dozen years, 56,000 nautical miles, and a Merchant Mariner Credential, Turner Creek is no big deal anymore, and at a full high tide it was an easy cruise upriver past Hogan's to the anchorage. We squeezed in to what amounted to the only legal spot to anchor in a line of five other anchored boats and dropped the hook (map). Setbacks from marinas, docks, and the bridge have shrunk the anchorage since our early time here.

This weird mural adorns the unisex restroom at Basil's.

I tendered over to Hogan's, which is now actually called the Sun Life Wilmington Island Marina, before they closed to get some gas and pay the daily ten buck dinghy fee. Dockmaster Bubba (really) still runs the place and it was nice to catch up with him after a dozen years. We returned together at dinner time and walked across the highway to Basil's for pizza and draft beer, followed by provisions at the Publix right next to the marina. It was all very familiar, and I'm happy to now have a track into the anchorage that follows the channel thalweg. It was very quiet overnight.

With access to so many things right there, we contemplated staying a second night. Maybe it was nostalgia for the early days. But in the morning we decided there was nothing further we needed on Wilmington Island, and we decked the tender and weighed anchor at 7:45, while we still had a good 4' of tide to get out of the creek.

One of my current projects: replacing these instrument lamps with LED.

Leaving the creek on 4' and falling put us at the notorious Hell Gate at dead low tide. We need at least 2' to get through, and so we dropped a lunch hook off-channel to wait. A previously scheduled conference call at 1:30 meant we'd actually have to wait until the call was over, maybe close to 3, and that suited us, because it would give us a bit more tidal help, and more of a push on the other side of the Gate.

We were far enough off-channel that everyone could get by us, and a whole conga line did. One boat pulled off channel and anchored a couple hundred feet from us, waiting for the same reason. All was well until Louise noticed the northbound American Liberty, a cruise ship with a 6' draft that is also 56' wide, on AIS well ahead of us on the other side of the Gate. Shortly, I heard them making meeting arrangements with another boat. While I knew he had plenty of room to get past us, I did not want even the appearance of being in the way, and so I called and talked with him. They figured to come through at 2:54, when they had enough tide to be comfortable, and that might well have been while we were on our call. We moved another 200' from the channel before our call, just to be safe.

At one point on Tuesday we had our own personal flock of gulls, feeding on what we were stirring up.

As it turned out our call lasted just a half hour or so and we were back underway a little after 2. I called American Liberty back to let him know we'd shoot through ahead of him, and after we cleared Hell Gate I called and gave him our soundings. We pass these big American Cruise Line ships pretty regularly, and when people tell me they think their boat is too big to take down the ICW I will sometimes point out that these guys do it every day.

With the stop at Hell Gate I figured to make the "top of the hill" (where incoming tide from both directions meets) on a fair tide, and stop at a familiar anchorage there for the night. But it was barely 3pm when we arrived, and still cold, and we decided it was better put push on another hour, even against the tide, to have the heat and power. We instead dropped the hook in Big Tom Creek (map), a new spot for us. We had the place to ourselves, a lovely, if windy, night among the spartina of the low country. We would have gone another hour, but this was the last decent anchorage before St. Catherines Sound.

Our view in every direction from Big Tom Creek. Spartina grass and not much else.

We got a fairly early start Tuesday, another cold day where we wanted the heat afforded by moving. That put us at the Darien River by 1:30, where we seriously considered turning upriver for a visit to Darien. This side trip has been on "my list" for a while, and in all our transits this is only the fourth time we've passed by. But after learning that what was a free overnight dock is now day-use only, and the formerly $1/foot city dock is now double that, we decided it was not worth trying to anchor when the weather was not even good enough to call us to Savannah. We'll save Darien for a warmer time.

Unless we wanted another cold night trapped on the boat, continuing on meant making it all the way to St. Simons, with a bail-out option to the Two Way Fish Camp if it started to look like we would be too late arriving. We lucked out and arrived at the shallow Little Mud River just as the tide came up to 2', the minimum we need to get through. We had just a few inches under keel in spots. The 8' draft tug boat behind us, whom we had overtaken just an hour earlier, plowed right through it.

One of a pair of historic tabby slave cabins at Gascoigne Bluff Park.

When it became clear we would make St. Simons in the daylight or soon after, I reached out to our local friends there, John and Laura Lee, on the chance they might be available to get together. They were busy Tuesday but said they were available Wednesday, and we just decided to make it a two-night stay so we could connect with them. We dropped the hook in a familiar spot between Lanier and St. Simons islands (map) and tendered in to the newly reopened Coastal Kitchen for dinner. It was decent but they are still having teething pains. We got a much-needed walk in before dinner.

With a full day at anchor ahead of me, in the morning I jumped right in to a problem that has been nagging at me: we seem to be losing an ounce or two of engine coolant on every run. I went over the engine and hot water heater very carefully for leaks, checked in all the bilges, double-checked the oil and coolant for signs of cross-contamination, and then hit the Internet for research.

Park rules say no docking after dark. I suspect no one cares but we did not want to test the waters.

Quite a number of sources implicated the hot water heater, which, while not cheap at about a thousand bucks, would still be much preferable to anything wrong with the engine itself. This theory is consistent with the heating loop through the water heater constantly losing prime of late, and my fingers are crossed that this is the issue. I have valved off that loop, and it will take a few days' running to learn whether or not that is the problem. I am having cognitive dissonance over actually hoping for a busted $1k water heater.

After learning that my next step requires more sea time, I took the afternoon off, and I went ashore at Gascoigne Bluff Park and walked the 1¾ miles to the nearest shopping center. I found a Dollar Tree there with some items I needed and then hit the Winn Dixie for some provisions before hoofing it back. It felt good to finally get a long walk in after days on the boat.

This brand new sign is the only new thing in the park. I suspect the result of the horrific incident in nearby Fernandina Beach in July. 

At 6:30 we tendered to the St. Simons Island Marina, after learning that Gascoigne park technically closes at dusk and is also pitch dark. This county marina has allowed us to tie up the tender in the past, but on this visit I found no one to ask. Laura Lee and John picked us up and whisked us to Nest, one of their island favorites, for a nice dinner. It was great to spend a couple hours catching up with them; they are dear friends.

We had a cold dinghy ride home, and with the tide unfavorable this morning until 8:30 we decided to deck the tender in the morning. It was cold this morning, too, at just 49°, but at least it was daylight, which somehow makes it feel warmer. We had the anchor up just ahead of the turn of the tide, and had a nice push out the inlet this morning.

Golden Isles Sunset from our anchorage.

As I wrap up typing we have already passed the St. Marys and are on track to arrive at the St. Johns just as the flood starts. We should be anchored by sunset just off the ICW, and in the morning we will decided whether to continue upriver to Jacksonville for a brief stop, or continue down the ICW toward St. Augustine. In this cold weather we are leaning heavily toward the latter.

Thankful.

We are underway southbound in the ICW, after what turned out to be a pleasant two full weeks in Charleston, including Thanksgiving. Half of that stay was at the dock and the rest at anchor. This morning found us in Brickyard Creek (map), just an hour from Beaufort, SC, and today we are headed for Hilton Head.

Happy, happy Thanksgiving, aboard Esmeralde.

We arrived to Charleston Harbor just as the tide turned and we had an easy cruise up the east side, dropping the hook right at 4pm in a new spot for us, adjacent to the USS Yorktown aircraft carrier museum ship (map) and just across the channel from our destination of the Charleston Maritime Center. We tendered ashore to the nearby Charleston Harbor Resort, which is not in Charleston at all but rather Mount Pleasant, for a casual dinner at their Reel Bar. We remembered this place from our first visit here a dozen years ago, when we docked at the resort's marina.

Approaching our anchorage near the USS Yorktown.

We needed slack to enter the Maritime Center, and that was at 10am on Friday. It was a short 15-minute cruise across the ship channel, and as Louise was on deck setting out fenders, a couple of playful dolphins came over and used them as toys, booping them with their snouts. Making our way into the marina basin at dead low tide we plowed our way through a 5' hump of silt between the entrance and the dock. Thankfully we had a couple of feet under the keel once we got alongside (map).

Twinsies.

Right after we were tied up a lovely 55' Burger motor yacht came in right behind us; it was nice to meet Victoria and Kevin aboard Set Free.  On a lovely Friday evening in Charleston we thought it best to have a dinner reservation, and at dinner time we walked to Vincent Chiccos, an Italian joint on Hutson alley downtown. One of the things we like about the Maritime Center is that there are at least a handful of decent places in walking distance. We did spend part of the afternoon putting the scooters on the ground, but we both needed the walk.

Vector at the Maritime Center. Skipper of the tour boat at right admired Vector and invited us out on one of the cruises but we never had the chance.

The tender battery has been signalling end of life for the last couple of weeks, and I have been needing to pull-start the tender when it's cold. So Saturday I took the scooter up to Walmart in North Charleston with the old battery to swap it for a new one. On the way I stopped by the North Charleston Amtrak station to scope it out for my morning departure on Monday.

As long as I was at Walmart I picked up a bunch of staples we normally get there, and I almost lost half of them when the trunk flew open over a bump on my way home. I think the force of the battery hitting the lid overwhelmed the latch. Fortunately I only lost a microfiber towel that I keep in the trunk, which must have blown out before I discovered it was open. I had the new battery installed and the tender buttoned back up before dinner time.

Between the train station and Walmart I stopped by the outlet mall. Holiday shopping is in full swing.

It was a gorgeous day and we decided to again walk to dinner, and so we had made reservations at Muse, a place we remembered fondly. As we arrived we noticed a city work crew fixing a water main break right in front of the joint. As soon as we walked in we asked if everything was working, and they told us that yes the water was on in the kitchen ans the upstairs restrooms but not in the downstairs restroom. That seemed fine and, at the very start of the evening, they seated us in a choice table upstairs next to the window overlooking the street.

One of our neighbors, Vision of the Seas, departing.

That was lovely right up until the Binford 900 vacuum truck pulled up right outside the window, boomed over to the hole in the street, now full of the leaking water, and cranked the engine up to 11 to suck it all out. It was actually quite comical and we had a good laugh about it with our server. The food was good, and apart from the very brief racket from the vacuum truck it was a nice spot.

Louise toasting the vacuum truck right outside the window.

Sunday was my day to prepare for my whirlwind three-day trip to NJ, the reason we were at the dock in the first place. It was a sunny but crisp day, and we were surprised when the quayside started filling up with kayaks, each being carried down the dock one at a time and launched. We could see little flags with numbers and surmised some kind of kayak event.

Searching online for kayak events turned up nothing, and slowly it dawned on us that this was actually a swimming event. Each swimmer had a safety kayak with their number on it. We had a great view of the start of the inaugural Charleston Trident Swim, which began at our dock and ended on the other side of the city on the Ashley River. Apparently they raised over $100k for the Navy Seal Foundation.

Trident Swim leaving the marina. I was surprised the marina did not kill the power for the event.

I needed cash for my trip and I hoofed it into town to the lone Chase ATM on the peninsula, only to find it out of cash. The bank across the street was similarly out and I ended up paying the vig at the third bank I tried. On the way home I stopped at Harris Teeter and picked up a deli sandwich for the train. We rode out to D'Allesandro's Pizza, locally known as D'Als and one of our favorite spots, for dinner.

D'Als. These pizza paddles fold down from the wall to become the stand for the pie.

The next three days were something of a blur. It was an all-day train ride, 12-13 hours, each way. I packed enough food and drink for both lunch and dinner on Monday, and we pulled into Philly more or less on-time just a few minutes before 10pm. I had booked a hotel only ¾ mile from the station and had a pleasant walk. It was my first time at a Hilton "Motto," where everything was diminutive, but comfortable. Even the front desk was a tiny affair, overshadowed by the upscale Mexican restaurant that occupies most of the space.

My train, the Palmetto, arriving in North Charleston.

Enterprise car rental was literally across the street, and I picked up my car when they opened at 7:30. I had a two-hour drive each way, a nice two-hour visit with my folks, and an evaluation stop at a continuing care facility for when that time comes. I had the car back to Enterprise an hour before their 6pm closing time. Too late to take in any of Philadelphia, but I did have a nice walk around Rittenhouse Park and dinner at a local pub before retiring. A late forecast for rain in the morning also had me in the Target across from the hotel to buy an umbrella, which I foolishly had not packed.

The Wharf, DC, a familiar stop for us, from the rail bridge over the Washington Channel.

Sure enough it was raining in the morning and I arrived at the train station with damp feet but otherwise mostly dry thanks to the umbrella. The underground trolley that would have taken me almost directly from the hotel to the train station was closed for tunnel repair. The train station is classic and beautiful, but entirely covered in scaffolding while it undergoes restoration. This brief taste of Philly has me thinking that we should make another stop there in the boat; lots of renewal and cleanup in the decade since our first visit.

What passes for a workspace at Motto. A combination nightstand/ottoman and a tray table. These and another nightstand containing a mini-fridge were the only furniture in the room.

The train makes a 45-minute stop in DC to change locomotives, and since I know Union Station like the back of my hand, I disembarked, hoofed it up to Pret-a-Manger, and bought a sandwich for lunch time. I actually like Amtrak's dining cars, but the Palmetto, a day train, does not have one. They have only a café car, which sells packaged or microwaveable items. I did end up buying a chicken Caesar for dinner, which I had at my seat with a Pluff Mud Porter I smuggled aboard.

The Philly train station should be beautiful when they are finished.

The whole trip was uneventful, and I arrived back in North Charleston on time at 7:30pm, after a brief glitch wherein the train went into emergency a quarter mile from the station. I ordered a Lyft, got in the car, and when I went to text Louise that I was on my way, my phone lost its mind. I spent the rest of the car ride fiddling with it to try to revive it but it was so far gone that it would not power off or reboot. I had to give the guy a cash tip. Louise could see my progress on a tracking feature built into Lyft.

These built-in shelves and diminutive closet bar were the total of storage.

The demise of my phone sealed my fate for the next two days. Even though they were a couple of the nicest days we had in Charleston, weather-wise, I was in recovery mode. I had a replacement phone ordered on second-day delivery not even an hour after I got home, and we extended our week at the marina by two days, all they had available, so I could receive it and get squared away. That would still leave us just enough time to make our Thanksgiving reservation in Hilton Head.

The restoration is clearly quite extensive.

Like most people I have become unduly dependent on my cell phone. From driving directions to boarding passes to communicating with family and friends, it all revolves around this infernal device. And while I like to think I am careful about making sure everything critical gets backed up, a catastrophic failure like this is often a lesson in just what, exactly, you forgot.

Ice and vending for the whole hotel were in the basement. But they had these fancy vending machines with lots of choices and a couple of microwaves.

My new phone is back up and running now, but in the process I lost my entire WhatsApp chat history, my Signal chat history, and a few dollars of stored value on a Washington DC Metro card. Getting everything else working took numerous hours, and some apps which are no longer supported by the current Android version and which I was previously able to side-load are additional casualties of the situation.

Part of the station already complete hosted the holiday tree.

One of those apps was the remote viewer for our Chinese 8-channel video camera system, and the only way to fix that problem turns out to be to replace the 8-channel DVR with a newer Chinese DVR that comes with a working app. That project took the better part of another day, and drew blood. I still don't have the whole thing dialed in, although it is mostly working.

When I was not beating my head against the wall with my phone, we did enjoy our final three days at the Maritime Center. We rode to dinner at Mario's on King Street, and when our friends Dorsey and Bruce on Esmeralde landed across town at the City Marina, we met them for dinner at Costa one evening, and they met us at D'Als the next. Costa was new to us (and, I think, new overall) and while it was fine, I have to say neither the food nor the service was commensurate with the price tag. It does have the advantage of being one of the very few places in walking distance of that marina.

The DVR is crammed into this barely accessible space for security reasons, which made for a difficult time replacing it.

At one point we also rode out to James Island to offload some Goodwill donations and get badly needed haircuts for both of us. We had breakfast one morning at Saffron, just a couple of blocks from the marina, which was quite good. And one late night bit of excitement was monitoring the radio traffic as the inbound Maersk Frederica container ship collided with the shrimper Jesus Lives, who was trawling in the channel and paying no attention. All five crew were OK but the trawler sustained some damage; the ship had to keep going and the pilot boat Fort Moultrie went out to check on the shrimper.

When last I posted here I mentioned I needed to figure where we'd be on Thanksgiving, and after looking at our schedule from Charleston I settled on a familiar joint, the Dockside restaurant at Skull Creek, on Hilton Head Island. They have their own dock just a short tender ride from a nearby anchorage, and they were doing a prix fixe with all the holiday flavors. I made a 4:30 reservation and we figured to have a couple extra days of buffer on our way from Charleston.

Every city has its causes. I can't say I disagree with this one.

Meanwhile Dorsey and Bruce had made plans to have their Thanksgiving at the dock in Beaufort, SC, just one stop before Hilton Head. When they learned we'd be nearby, they invited us to join them, which is quite a lovely gesture. Home-cooked Thanksgiving with dear friends beats restaurant Thanksgiving alone by a wide margin and so we jumped at the chance.

Our plan from Charleston was to depart the Maritime Center at high slack and, with the tide then unfavorable for continuing south, round the peninsula and drop the hook in the Ashley for one night before continuing. From there it would be a comfortable two days to the Beaufort anchorage, working our way over a number of shallow sections.

A look down the Charleston City Market.

After decking the scooters we dropped lines on Sunday at high slack, made our way out of the marina, and cruised down around the Battery and up the Ashley. The Ashley River anchorage can get crowded and has a foul bottom, and we were hoping to drop the hook in the exact same spot we've used three times previously, where we knew the bottom was clear. When we arrived, however, we found a new green buoy right in that exact spot.

Since our last stay two years ago, the City Marina has expanded their face dock, which is now another hundred feet out into what used to be the channel. So the channel itself has been moved that much further to the southwest and the Coast Guard has placed new buoys to keep it clear. The anchorage is now considerably smaller. We continued upriver until we found a nice clearing past some submerged dolphins, just before the high bridge, and dropped the hook there instead (map).

I came across this Poinsettia exhibit in the library, with a bit of the controversial history of their local namesake, Joel Roberts Poinsett.

We had originally figured to be here just one night, otherwise we might well have left the scooters on the ground. We splashed the tender and headed to a new spot for us, California Dreaming, which is more or less a steak-and-seafood joint right on the water, across the river from Charleston. It has its own dock, and turned out to be surprisingly nice, even though we've both been shrugging if off for a decade. I think as ex-Californians the name alone had been off-putting for us. They had the local porter on draft, which is always a plus for me.

I liked this play sculpture in Brittlebank Park, where we land the dinghy.

Somewhere along the line, Bruce and Dorsey got word from the marina in Beaufort that the slip they wanted was unavailable. As they were already in a perfectly nice spot at the City Marina in Charleston they decided to just stay through the holiday. No way were we going to miss our dinner invitation, and so our one night on the Asheley morphed into five. Our new spot turned out to be ideal, calmer than our previous digs closer to Wappoo Creek.

The problem with anchoring on this side of town is that there are few eateries in walking distance. In the course of our stay, in addition to Caifornia Dreaming, we also ended up at Saffire in the Marriott, a short walk from the Publix that we also needed, and the Charleston Crab House, a mile or so dinghy ride up Wappoo Creek. We've passed this latter joint for years in Vector but this was our first visit. It was just OK, a typical waterfront fried seafood place. They did have some nice drafts.

I ordered this charcuterie board for my entree at Saffire. Apart from the crostini, it was pretty good.

One evening we tendered over to Esmeralde and the four of us Ubered to Hall's Chophouse, where we got the corner spot at the bar by being there before the doors opened at 4. We love the bar at Hall's, and the corner of the main bar is almost like a small round table, so it really worked for the four of us. I also tendered over to Esmeralde a couple of times to get in a walk or to run errands, including picking up at the on-site Amazon locker at the marina, one of the key benefits to being on this side of the peninsula.

Cheers from Charleston Crab House. No great shakes, but they have a dock.

On Thanksgiving day I spent part of the morning re-caulking the shower, which of course is when Amy and David from Selah Way stopped by in their tender to say hi. Louise chatted with them briefly, and after I was done I swung by and said hello to them at Corporate Approved at the dock, where they were having Thanksgiving with friends. They anchored upriver of the lift bridges, which we might try on our next visit as it is closer to the dinghy dock with the restaurants and grocery store. It was nice to meet Brian Donovan of Corporate Approved.

I had sold a couple of items on eBay and I hoped to drop them in the mailbox Thursday, but the mailboxes in Charleston have been modified to just a letter slot. I ended up leaving them at the front desk at the Hilton, and I hope they make it out. We did not want to delay our Friday departure for me to run the ashore in the morning.

I was stunned to see this bird come out of their tiny oven. It was perfect.

At the appointed time of 3pm we arrived at Esmeralde bearing a large salad, a bottle of wine, and a few beers. We had a pleasant hour or so of cocktails and conversation before the main event, wherein Dorsey plied us with home-made turkey, stuffing, potatoes, green beans, gravy, and the best cranberry relish I have ever tasted. We did not make it back to Vector until past 7:30, toting enough leftovers for a whole second Thanksgiving dinner. Bruce and Dorsey are the consummate hosts and it was very, very generous of them to share their holiday with us.

Thankful for good friends. Photo: Dorsey Beard

We decked the tender as soon as we got home, because as chilly as it was Thursday night, it was even colder yesterday morning. Both the cold and the tide favored an early morning departure, and we weighed anchor after our first cup of coffee and got underway. The early start and the rising tide meant we could get through the troublesome shoals not only at Watts cut but also the Ashepoo-Coosaw cutoff if we just kept going, and that's what we did.

Our view during dinner.

Once we were in the Coosaw it made the most sense to press on to the protection of Brickyard Creek, and we ended our day there shortly before 5pm, dropping the hook in an oxbow, a new spot for us. That had us just an hour from Beaufort, but we could not have made it there in the daylight. Esmeralde had left Charleston just ahead of us and made Beaufort with plenty of daylight to spare. We polished off the Thanksgiving leftovers for dinner; they were just as delicious the second day.

Just as good the second night.

This morning we had another early start owing to tide, and we passed them at the dock. They taunted us with photos of fresh local bagels and said they planned to leave at slack for Hilton Head. By the time they were ready to leave, they were of the mind that they could make a run for it outside tomorrow, and figured to be in Hilton Head just a single night, with an early departure in the morning.

We wanted to try to get together one more time before we recede in their rear view mirror, and so we made a last-minute decision to try to grab a slip at the same marine for tonight, Harbour Town at The Pines Resort. That was a long shot on a holiday weekend, but I think we landed the last available 50' slip. I expect Esmeralde to pass us en route.

Sunset over Brickyard Creek.

Update: We are docked at Harbour Town on Hilton Head (map). The only other time we've been here is a lunch stop we made on our final day of training back when we first started out. The pricing is commensurate with the resort nature of the place, but we decided to splurge. Esmeralde did not overtake us but arrived about a half hour after us, with a half dozen bagels for us. We've already heard the marina turning away boats on the radio. We strolled around the kitschy "village" with its rows of tourist shops and fake lighthouse, and we have a dinner reservation with Bruce and Dorsey for the Quarterdeck restaurant this evening.

Vector at Harbour Town.

I have no idea where we are headed tomorrow, but we'll linger right here until checkout time. One option is to make the side trip to downtown Savannah for a couple of days before we continue south toward Florida and warmer climes.