Christmas Season in Brunswick

Hello to all.

On Friday night, Mandy and I attended the much advertised lighting of the town Christmas Tree. The mayor was to recite the "Night Before Christmas", the tree would burst alive in a rainbow of color, carolers would sing, a band would play Christmas carols, the shops would all be open for business. We arrived five minutes late and found the tree illuminated but deserted. Can anyone recite "The Night Before Christmas", sing and play carols that fast?

Anyway, the photos are of the tree, the town, and two guys playing Christmas songs on their brass instruments. They were delightfully off-key just like in the opening to "A Christmas Story" as Ralphie and his friends studied the window display at Higbees Department store. Also is a photo of Santa when he wandered into a local restaurant/bar and sang with the guitarist.

Obviously, we were also in that bar Friday night to have captured that image. We had wandered through the shops and decided to have a drink since we had exhausted our entertainment options. Mandy and I have a magic trick that we often perform. We walk down a street then tun into a bar. It's a great trick.

Saturday, we created a Christmas Tree of our own. Mandy had purchased a string of 100 lights, a few decorations, and some scented sticks that smell like pine. We wrapped the lights around the post on which the salon table is mounted and decorated them. A photo of our "Christmas Tree" is one of the photos above. We were watching Tim Allen's "The Santa Clause" on our computer and you can see him on the screen in the photo.

Our dock neighbors left for the Bahamas this morning which makes us eager to get going too but in order to save money we will stay planted here for a while since we have bought a month of dockage. (Pay for 5 days and get the next 25 free)

Our other neighbor will be heading out to sea in a week to cross the Atlantic to their home in Scotland. It's hard to see our new friends leave while we remain in port. I sometimes stand at the end of the pier and look down the river to the bridge that we will pass under again when we continue our journey South.

Thanksgiving in Brunswick

We're still in Brunswick, Georgia on this sunny but cool Black Friday. We discovered that after we paid for five nights of dockage while waiting for our packages to arrive, we could stay another 25 nights for another $35 total. The marina had converted us from a daily dockage rate of $70 per night--$350 so far--to a monthly rate of $11 per foot (35 ft min) of $385. We paid the $35 extra and are now staying here for free. We don't plan to stay the entire 30 days but we will take advantage of the savings by splurging on a few things.

We plan to rent a car for a couple days next week and spend a night shore side in a motel. We will do some shopping and travel to some of the adjoining islands such as St Simon where beaches and restaurants abound. Nearby Cumberland Island has wild horses roaming by the beach.

We also have a few chores to do on the boat and this marina is the perfect place to get them all done.

We spent Thanksgiving here at the marina. About 70 people live aboard their boats here and each couple brought a covered dish to the party house. The marina provided turkey, ham, and prime rib for a $5 cover. What a feast!! We sampled four different types of stuffing, three different preparations of potatoes, and four different types of dressing. We had about 30 different side dishes and desserts to chose from. It was worthy of the prayer that we all bowed our heads to say.

We met quit a few fellow cruisers who gave us more advice about where to cruise and how to best get there. We ate dinner with Dick and Mary who sailed from San Francisco to the Panama Canal where they transited to the Western Caribbean. We are thankful to have their advice.

We also met Joshua who is a vet of Desert Storm. I welcomed him home as I always do when I meet a veteran of foreign war. I don't care how long he has been home. He deserves a handshake no matter how long he's been home. We are thankful to have Americans like Josh in our company.

We also met a cab driver who drove us home from the grocery store. He fell from a dump truck a few years ago and had to have a hip replacement. Since then another accident caused him to have a knee replacement. He could take the disability paycheck but he wants to keep working despite the pain he suffers. He wants to earn his own way for as long as he can. We commended him for doing the right thing for all of us rather than taking the free ride. We're thankful for Americans like him too.

The Christmas Tree lightning ceremony begins at 5:30 today in one of the many parks in the Historic District. I'm sure we will see many of the friends that we have made here in Brunswick. Later, a local restaurant/bar/deli will have live music. Thank God for the friends we make along the way. They brighten our lives. We hope to have the stamina to go and listen for a while and see them.

Last Friday, we went to the same place to hear four old (my age) rockers play two sets of blues and rock music (sorry Sharon Crane. No stompin' country music). Mandy got chummy with the wives and girlfriends of the band and danced the night away with them. Thank God for good music.

Miss you all.

Using All of the Senses

I last blogged at Turner Creek south of Savannah, GA. I failed to mention the fragrance of our anchorage at Turner Creek. We were anchored next to thousands of acres of marsh grass which glistened in the afternoon sun as the tide fell leaving the wheat colored grass wet. The next morning the wind had shifted over the marshlands bringing the flavors of the grasses to our boat. I was surprised to catch a hint of fennel in the air. I don't know if fennel or anise grows wild in salt marshes but the fragrance was definitely in the air.

After we left Turner Creek we ran to Kilkenny Marina on Kilkenny Creek. It's a rickety old marina with wobbly piers but pleasant locals and a friendly old dog who barked at you if you walked by but failed to pet him. The nearest town was Richmond Hill which was a couple miles away so we decided to cook on board. Mandy had started preparing a stove-top casserole when I commented that the locals must be having some kind of fishing tournament. I decided to check it out and after asking a few of the contestants if they had a fish or two for sale, a fellow held his bucket of 12 inch speckled tout out to me. "Take a couple," he offered. I pulled two slimy fish from the bucket and tried to pay him but, as usual in the South, he would accept nothing.

As I filleted the fish, biting gnats attacked me. Thousands of tiny needles pierced my skin from my face to my feet. I had never filleted a fish so fast. We rolled the fillets in crushed potato chips and fried them over the stove. What a treat!

For the past two days, we have been tied to a pier in the Brunswick Landing Marina adjacent to the town of Brunswick, GA. We are awaiting the arrival of our mail and a shipment of medication which should arrive today. We are also enjoying the local restaurants and the friendly smiles and the Y'alls. Last night we shared fried oysters over jalapeno grits with collards; a remarkable dish.

Yesterday we did two loads of laundry then hiked two miles to the nearest Winn-Dixie grocery store. Along the way we walked through the old historic district where the Christmas decorations are already out. Once out of the downtown area we passed over MLK Drive. I suspect most southern towns of any size have a tribute to Reverend King. Even though that part of the town is somewhat rundown we detected traces of jasmine and other wild plants growing in the yards of abandoned property. We stopped into a fortressed convenience store where the strong smell of patchouli slapped us in the nose.

When travelling by water, where the marinas are not conveniently located near a town, we find ourselves walking through fields, lawns, and wooded paths to reach a destination. Later yesterday afternoon, when running an errand to the hardware store, I found myself walking on a railroad track. I haven't walked on tracks since I was a kid when my short stride perfectly matched the spaces between the ties. As a grownup I had to do a silly dance where I bounced every second or third step off of the rail to make my gate match the spacing of the ties.

If our last package arrives today we will head to an anchorage a few miles south then we plan to be in Fernandia Beach on Saturday to find a bar where we can watch the Bucks hand the Overgrown Rats (that's what a wolverine really is!!) an embarrassingly disappointing afternoon.

A Little Retroscective about our Trip South

The photos are taken along the ICW as we passed through South Carolina. We are anchored in Turner Creek just south of Savannah on this Saturday afternoon. We arrived in time to listen to Ohio State play and beat--albeit barely--Iowa. Go Bucks!!!

We are in dolphin country here. We have been seeing dolphin since nearing Beaufort NC but here they are plentiful and playful. As we approached Beaufort SC the other day, two dolphin surrounded our boat and frolicked along beside us.

We are also in the presence of billions of stars. We can all see stars on clear nights but parts of the intra-coastal waterway are so far from towns, cars, homes, and any form of artificial light that the sky of stars that we see at night is unlike any sky that anyone can see from land unless they are somewhere in Montana.

And we are in the South. We have fallen in love with southern dishes all over again. Ever since, Jim and Vicki from Biloxi, MS, who rein as the king and queen of southern hospitality and who are our friends, fed us real southern grits (with cheese) we have yearned for more southern dishes. In Charleston, we chanced upon a restaurant that served grits and shrimp covered with a layer of cheese and topped with a sweet hot sauce. We've been trying to reproduce the dish ever since with marginal success.

And we are now in the presence of more southern hospitality. We were treated well in Deltaville VA but we must comment that a southern gentleman who was cleaning his boat near where we anchored took time from his day to row over to our boat and knock on the hull. When we popped our heads through the companionway he greeted us with, "Welcome to Savannah." We exchanged a pleasant conversation. He even offered to run errands for us if we needed groceries or whatever.

We will continue to run south for the next few days because we are expecting mail to be forwarded to Brunswick GA and wish to arrive there as soon as possible. We are also being stalked by a cold north wind that makes even a day like today--sunny with a high in the mid 70s--a cold day out on the waterway. We can't seem to shake the Yankee curse of cold weather.

I have been remiss in mentioning the enthusiasm here about military culture. Charleston hosted a huge Veterans Day parade with high school marching bands, high school ROTC marchers, dozens of jeeps with soldiers in full regalia, and a long line of bikers--veterans of Korea and Viet Nam wars. One old fellow who watched the parade with Mandy and me remarked that these parades used to feature pretty drum majorettes but now days we have old fat bikers instead.

Near Halloween, Mandy attended a children's parade of costumes in Elizabeth City. Having been the first year of the past ten that she was not trick-or-treating with the grandchildren, the scene brought tears to her.

A Belated Halloween

Mandy and I missed Halloween because of the bee sting. A few days later we found ourselves anchored in the spookiest creek in the world. Trees with bare limbs hung over the water. Spanish moss hung from every branch, their lower ends touching the water. A nearly full moon of a demonic nature beamed down from over head on that night when we found our way into that reptilian jungle. Turtles and snakes bobbled and slithered about. "I don't see much wildlife," I told Mandy. "But they see us," she replied.

Mandy loves my stories. So, after dark, I told her about Gladys the Witch who lives among the bare trees on the swampy island across the river from the small nearby town of Enterprise South Carolina.

Gladys was the daughter of two eccentrics who lived on the swampy island, fishing and trapping anything that might get snared in their lines. After her folks passed on, Gladys lived alone trapping and fishing along the banks of the river. The people of the town of Enterprise could see the dried fish, snakes, and animal pelts that Gladys hung out to dry over the tree branches that extend over the river. She seemed to hang everything on those branches. They saw fishing line, trap lines, ropes, and unmentionables draped over those branches along with the Spanish moss, pelts and snake skins.

Occasionally, Gladys would swim across the river to the town of Enterprise to shop for basic items. She was known to be an excellent swimmer and unafraid of the snakes that patrolled the river. The local children would scatter in all directions as she climbed, dripping out of the water. They called her the witch of Waccamaw Island. And indeed she looked like a witch. Her cheeks had chubbed out to the extent that her tiny nose seemed to disappear between them. Her eyes suffered exopthalmia, a bulging that results from hypothyroidism. Her whole face had a reddish appearance, possibly the result of the home-made sour mash that she created from swampy fruit trees.

The local shopkeepers gave her what she wanted. Their superstition kept their business minds at a distance. If they offered a bill for her purchases, she would cross a few items from the bill and argue about the prices of the remaining few. Then she would simply sign the bill as if her signature would suffice as payment. The shopkeepers were too afraid to protest.

The folks of Enterprise, Southern Baptist Brethren of proper Christian persuasion, accepted Gladys as an eccentric child of God's Kingdom who was perhaps 'affected'. They prayed for her salvation every Sunday in church.

But their opinions of Gladys changed when a single-handed elderly sailor tried to anchor his boat near the very spot where Foxglove was anchored that very night. To the horror of the people of Enterprise, who enjoyed sitting on lawn chairs watching the annual migration of boaters moving south, the elderly man fell, or perhaps dove into the frigid fall water of the Waccamaw. All of the onlookers knew that the water was too cold for anyone to swim out to save him without succumbing to hypothermia themselves so they had no choice except to watch the poor man die.

But suddenly they saw 'Gladys the Witch' dive in the river and swim to save the drowning man. She heroically pulled him from the deep and flopped him like a large fish over the gunnel of his boat. She followed him into the boat and settled him in his cockpit where he could rest. She soon dove back into the water to return home.

The people of Enterprise were overwhelmed with emotion. "Gladys is no witch," they cheered. "She is a humanitarian, a child of God, a hero." They planned a celebration for her. the church collected clothes for her, the hardware store created a trophy for her, the school children planned a parade for her.

The next day, the mayor and his cronies rowed out to tell the elderly sailor about the festivities but found the boat abandoned. They rowed further then saw that the old man had committed suicide by hanging himself from his harness on a tree branch that overhung the river. Then they rowed to tell Gladys about how the town was about to honor her for her bravery.

Gladys was flattered by the town's admiration and boarded the mayor's boat to be transported back to Enterprise for the festivities. But the mayor felt compelled to tell Gladys the truth about the man that she had saved.

"It seems that he was trying to drown himself when you saved him, Gladys, I'm sorry to say. But your act of heroism is none-the-less greatly appreciated by all."

"Oh he didn't hang himself," Gladys said with a cheeky smile. "I swam back out to check on him later that night and I seen that he was still all wet so I swam him back to my island and hung him out to dry."

And in the fading light Mandy could see a shadow of some sort of object hanging under the trees that reach over Waccamaw Creek. Maybe, just maybe, he still hangs there; but only at night.

Doin' the Charleston

We left Myrtle Beach last Thursday and motor-sailed to an anchorage just off the main ICW. This anchorage is a short creek that connects to the open Atlantic Ocean. Beyond the creek, the water was only a few inches deep so the ocean waves tumbled flat before they reached our boat. Fishermen in fast, shallow-draft boat are able to zip out to the ocean at high tide. But we had a spectacular view of the sea without being exposed to it. Friday morning gave us the most beautiful sunrise that we had seen yet. The sun rose in brilliant streaks of orange between the saltmarshes that bordered the outlet of creek to the ocean.

Friday night found us tied to the Charleston City Marina. This marina has the most elegant and expensive yachts in the world. The owner of Land's End brand of stores had his 400 foot, four story megayacht moored here. The Freedom from Newport Rhode Island was here. Freedom's decktop cabins are constructed almost entirely of mahogany. I have never seen finer yacht joinery and brightwork (varnish). Our 32 foot sailboat, in comparison, looked like a pimple on the ass of an elephant in the company of these megayacht.

Despite the luxury bestowed on it's patrons, the marina's much vaunted WiFi didn't work which is why I am only now writing a blog. The rich all have wireless Internet and don't complain about the WiFi. But let the ship's store run out of Perrier and there's hell to pay.

The Freedom yacht hosted a party on the pier Saturday night. The gentlemen attendees wore blue blazers over khaki shorts and wing-tip boat shoes over bare feet. The women wore, or kicked off, their sandals beneath flowing summer dresses. Mandy and I wore our best cutoffs and stained T-shirts. None of the party attendants offered us champagne. So we didn't offer them a Bud Light. Stuck-up creeps!!

We roamed the sunny city over the weekend, trying various restaurant specialties. Our favorite was 'Shrimp in Grits covered with Cheese and Hot Sauce'.

On Monday at noon, we cast off our lines and backed out of our slip into the raging tides of South Carolina. The current often runs half our top speed and the tidal range (from low to high) can be eight feet.

Last night we anchored in a channel that paralleled a bridge. We set out three anchors and hoped that the reversing tide wouldn't break them out. This morning we expected trouble weighing all three but with Mandy at the helm we had no trouble. Her helmsmanship is improving greatly as is her skill at lassoing pilings when docking.

Tonight we are docked in Beaufort, South Carolina. Rainy weather is expected for the next day or two and we will hide here until the sun comes back out to play.

Blogged Down in South Carolina

We're tied to a pier in Myrtle beach, South Carolina. We arrived in the area yesterday after a chilly motor-sail from Southport, just west of Cape Fear.

Southport was a fun little town with funky restaurants named Fishy Fishy and The Provision Company. The homes are cottage types and locals told us that the village is a popular summer destination.

In getting to the Myrtle Beach area, we had to request the opening of a most unusual bridge. It's a pontoon bridge that the tender opens by operating a winch that pulls the floating chunk of highway aside. Another winch floats the pontoon back into place.

I'm using the WiFi provided by the hotel that adjoins the marina. We have discontinued our Verizon wireless service due to the extreme expense--$200 per month for 10Gb--and our inability to find our actual useage. The modem might tell us that we have used 5116 Mb one day then tell us that we have exceeded out 10Gb limit two days later even though we haven't used the computer. My blogging might get a little blogged down for a while because of this.

We have no plans for tomorrow other than to slow down our southbound pace. The weather for these next few days will be sunny with highs in the upper sixties. We're no longer in a hurry to find warmer weather.

The weather is here, wish you were beautiful.

Halloween Boo-bees in my Face

Surf City had no available slips so we made a reservation in Wrightsville Beach--in the Wilmington NC area-- at the Dockside Marina and Restaurant. The trip from Beaufort to Wrightsville was a long 50 mile run with opposing wind and tide so we didn't even get a chance to shut the motor down and sail.

Yesterday was Halloween and we looked forward for some Halloween fun at the restaurant bar. But just before we passed through the last bascule bridge I decided to have a beer. Charlie had left part of a 12-pack of Yingling the other night and one of those beers was calling my name.

I don't usually drink when underway. The rigors of navigating in unfamiliar waters and the concentration required to dock our boat stern-in while fighting the conflicting passions of wind and tide requires a clear mind. But the trip was almost over and I had looked at the marina on-line and would most likely tie up along side a long outer pier. Beginner stuff. So I slowly drank the beer, savoring every drop. I must have drank the beer too slowly because when the beer had warmed to ambient temperature a bee wanted to share my pleasure. Bees don't like cold beer. But they love warm beer.

Just before reaching the bridge I took one last pull on the beer can. This annoyed Mr. Bee who was down inside of the can helping me with my last drop of liquid bread (that's how I think of beer). He retaliated by stinging me inside of my upper lip. For a brief moment I didn't understand why I was experiencing such pain but I reactively spit the mouth full of beer out and Mr. Bee came out along with it. Boo bee!! I must have crunched down on Mr. Bee because he lay on the cockpit seat gasping for life. His tiny wings could barely move. "We're all God's children and we all, man and insect alike, share in his love," I told him. Then in an act of selfless benevolence, I put him out of his misery by slowly pulling his tiny wings off one at a time. I pinched his head between my fingers until his eyes and stinger simultaneously popped out of his body. Then I fed him to the fish that I had been watching pass under the boat on my new chartplotter/fishfinder.

My upper lip began to swell. By the time we docked the boat and headed up to the bar, my Halloween costume was complete. I was going as Homer Simpson. Mandy gave me some drugs which reduced the swelling but also had a soporific effect. By 8:00 pm, I had changed from Homer Simpson to 'dead man walking'. By 8:15, I was asleep. No Halloween partying for Captain Run Aground.

I have stopped posting photos for a while because my computer is so low on disc space that I can't load them from the camera. As soon as I can get some CDs to move pictures out of photo files, I'll post photos again.