Dulcinea

We seem to be getting stuck in one place more and more often recently.  It seems that when we pull into a marina we tend to stay longer.  When we are anchoring overnight its easy to pull the anchor in the morning and get going.  Also when we are in the marinas life seems to be a lot more hectic - there is always things to do like shopping, schooling, laundry etc.  Its like we are back in the real world for a spell.  At anchor we are still in the cruising mode.  Also the cost of staying ion the marinas is substantially more.  When we were in Maine we went for a period of about 6 weeks without going into a marina but now we can't get away from them.

We are still in Charleston and the lovely weather we had on our arrival has deserted us.  It lasted about two days - just long enough for us to think we had cracked it - and then vanished.  So we need to continue to push on South.  We had always anticipated staying for 4 or 5 days but it will be 7 or 8 by the time we leave.  Still its been pretty good fun.

The downtown area of Charleston is beautiful.  Its very clean and the old buildings are very well preserved.  The main walking street, King Street, is lined with palm trees and is full of small boutique stores and restaurants and lots of art galleries and studios.  The place has a really great feel to it when you walk around.  We liked it so much that we bought our first painting for the boat here which shows a Charleston street scene.  Its now hanging in the guest cabin.  We spent an afternoon and evening wandering the streets on the day that the weather broke.

The next day we took a trip out to one of the old plantation homes called Boone Hall.  Its been a plantation for around 400 years and was started when Charles II was giving out land grants to “deserving” english gentry.  Obviously it used to use slaves to work the fields back in the 1700’s and all the slave cottages are still standing.  It was a really interesting tour and I think it was great for the kids to see, especially Sam who as part of his school work is reading a book on the deep south during the time of segregation and the civil rights movement.  We listened to a couple of different talks and had a tour around the plantation fields.  The plantation house itself was not as grand as we thought it would be although the interior was furnished with period furniture from the US, France and the UK and looked beautiful.  The centrepiece to Boone Hall is the driveway which is what you imagine a plantation house driveway to be.  Its must be close to 300m long and lined with  live oak trees which were planted close to 200 years ago.  The branches have all met at the top and are festooned with Spanish Moss (which, by the way as we learned is not Spanish and not a moss).  The effect is very stunning as you can see from the photo.

Driveway to Boone Hall

Boone Hall Plantation Home

The next stop was Savannah.  We hired a car and drove south into Georgia the next day.  The original intention was to sail there but there is a long river passage to get to Savannah from the Atlantic coast and limited berthing once there so taking on advice from others we decided an overland excursion was called for.  Savannah is stunning.  The city is laid out around a whole bunch of squares with statues or fountains as a centrepeice.  The historic district houses are gorgeous and full of history from the first settlers, the indians, the revolution and the civil war.  In addition its been used as a film set for numerous famous films one of which was Forrest Gump.  So its a really interesting place to just wander around.  We stayed overnight in Savannah and Nic and Scott even got to go out to dinner on their own - again - I think thats twice now since we started.

Even the downpipes in Savannah are interesting

Not sure if this is THE Forrest Gump bench but its the right square

We wish we had more time here because its such an interesting area and the people are super friendly.  Would recommend anyone holidaying in the US to visit.

We are back in Charleston now contemplating the weather and the next sail.  A friend of ours Gayle who Scott met while at Harvard is going to sail with us to just south of Jacksonville to a place called St Augustine.  Gayle lives in Jacksonville and so is driving up today to join us onboard.  She has a wee boy called Cameron and Calley is so excited at the prospect of having someone along to play with.  Unfortunately the weather is still a bit lousy - rain and wind 20 to 25kts - due to a stalled weather system.  We will be sailing overnight and may delay departure until Tuesday to hopefully get a more comfortable ride. Then Gayle has been kind enough to invite us to spend Thanksgiving with her and her family on Thursday which will be great.  We plan to stay around St Augustine for a few more days to look around and to catch an Eddie Vedder concert which we managed to snag some tickets for.

Looks like we have also nailed down our plans for X-mas primarily due to the efforts of our sister in law Diana.  We will be meeting up with Scotts family in the Bimini Islands in the Bahamas.  Diana managed to find a house with a dock outside it which is big enough to take Dulcinea.  So we now have a date and destination to aim for and look forward to.

PS  Just got Calley’s test results back and she aced it.

PPS.  Just reorganised the tools onboard the ship so they now stow on the back of the engine room door.  Just have to show you all, the results.  Graeme - take a look as you may want to incorporate something similar on your tug.