June 18, 2006 – Visiting Friends and Meeting Alberto

Two weeks without a computer leaves a big gap in the journal and means there is lots to catch up on. Our computer died an orderly death four days after the one-year warrantee expired. At the time we were at a marina in Daytona Beach and had a rental car, so we were able to take the computer to an excellent service depot. After several phone calls to Toshiba, we were successful in getting them to agree to pay for the repair, which was major. We took a day off to drive to the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, where we toured the huge complex, saw a fabulous IMAX movie about the space station currently circling the earth, touched a moon rock and revisited the historic moon landing of 1969, and ran out of time before we saw all we wanted to. We left the computer in Daytona for repair while we continued north, then had it Fed-Exed to Savannah, where we picked it up on Friday. It’s like being reunited with an old friend.

Speaking of old friends, we have had a very sociable couple of weeks. After leaving Daytona, we traveled to Amelia Island/Fernandina Beach, where we left Skylark in a marina and spent the night with Denny and Linda Andrews, former cruisers whom we met in Luperon in 2000. The next day we left Florida and motored to Brunswick, Georgia, where we took a marina slip for three nights so that we could drive across to the Tallahassee area to see friends Steve and Gail Tribble, with whom we had shared many happy hours in Venezuela. We enjoyed seeing their lovely home on the St. Mark’s River and taking a Saturday afternoon cruise on the river with them. We saw manatees, a raccoon, an owl, and many beautiful birds and flowers, but no alligators.

It was a pleasure to attend church with Steve and Gail on Sunday, but we were all getting concerned about the tropical storm Alberto which was heading our way, so we left promptly to drive back to Brunswick, and they set about to secure their home, in a vulnerable spot on the river, and their boat Misty Bleu, which they had left at a marina on the Gulf Coast while they came home to meet us.

Alberto was projected to hit on Tuesday, but on Sunday night when we got back to the boat, a squall was blowing hard from the south, and the boat, on a dock exposed to the south, was bouncing around quite badly. We secured it with extra lines and rode out the squall, but first thing next morning we moved around to the opposite side of the dock. Good thing, too, as when the storm finally arrived Tuesday afternoon, Brunswick was in the centre of its path, and the wind blew from the south at 40+ knots for several hours. The boats still on the outside dock took quite a pounding, but we were fine and even managed to enjoy some cable TV while the storm raged. It was just a storm, not a hurricane, but it was nasty enough to increase our resolve to move north ASAP. A group of our friends (boats Side by Side, Makai, Living Well) who were a few days ahead of us were in Charleston when the remnants of the storm descended on their marina as a tornado!! Some of the boats were damaged, and one man was thrown from his boat into the water, but fortunately there were no injuries.

We were happy to finally start out again after six nights, rather than the intended three at Brunswick Landing Marina, determined to anchor out whenever possible from then on. After a pleasant day winding our way through the twisty ICW and crossing a couple of major sounds, we turned up Kilkenny Creek to find an anchorage. Just as Cliff was dropping the hook, a man called out to us from the dock of his lovely waterfront home and invited us to come and tie up at his dock. “We can’t let you canucks go by without extending some southern hospitality!” he said. He was a very pleasant retired Delta airline captain, and we had a good chat with him on the dock, then walked through the lush, rural countryside to a nearby restaurant for a shrimp dinner.

After a very quiet night, we left in the morning mist for the short trip to Savannah, admiring the gracious southern waterfront homes along the way. In Savannah, friends Frank and Paulette Bomberger, also fellow Venezuelan ex-cruisers, picked us up from Isle of Hope Marina and gave us a tour of their lovely city (including the obligatory stops at West Marine and a supermarket), and showed us Frank’s interesting place of employment (Global Shipbuilders), where he manages the refitting and repairing of megayachts. Then we went to their beautiful new home for dinner and a good time of visiting and reminiscing. While we were there, Pam and Chas phoned from Grenada on video-Skype, and we had a great time laughing and talking together. Pam and Chas are looking for housesitters for a couple of months this summer – is anybody out there interested in having an extended vacation in Grenada??

On Saturday we motored and even sailed a little to Beaufort (Bewfort), South Carolina. After an unsuccessful attempt at anchoring off the town, we went along to Factory Creek, and as we approached the anchorage, we recognized the lovely classic yawl Fairwyn, a boat that left Vancouver Rowing Club in 1999, the same week we did! Stephen and Nancy Carlman headed south in Fairwyn to Mexico, through the Panama, and toured Central America, Colombia, Ecuador and the Western Caribbean, so we never connected down south, but what a surprise to meet up with them in a little creek in South Carolina seven years later! They intend to spend a few years yet on the water, and are planning to take their boat to its birthplace, Halifax, for its fiftieth birthday next year.