Georgetown

Hi again,
We spent a few days in St Augustine,a beautiful city, and moved on to Fernandina, FL. This is another nice town, especially when the wind isn't blowing from the factory into the anchorage. We Left the next morning for Jekyll Island where we met back up with Elaine and Jim Freeman and toured around the island. Beautiful houses, gardens, and nice beaches. Skipper especially liked the beaches.
We left early and headed north on the ICW for Killkenny Creek about 70 miles, and then on to Thunderbolt near Savannah, Ga. We stayed at Thunderbolt, rented a car and saw Savannah. It is very beautiful with the old houses and a nice square park every other block. Great place to re-provision. We started to go outside from Savannah, but the transmission seemed as though it was slipping as we were going out the Savannah River, so we turned around and went back to Thunderbolt to have it checked. Their transmission man, after 2 days on the dock said it would be a week at least before we could get parts. We elected to order the parts on line and have them shipped ahead.
We headed for Charleston, Sc as we had not spent a lot of time there on the way down. We did stop at a place called Steamboat Creek on the way. It is a nice local landing and a great place to run Skipper. Once in Charleston we rented another car, as the buses do not allow dogs either, and toured the old part of town. We decided to go to the Magnolia Plantation, across the Ashley River from the city. On crossing the bridge by the anchorage Francie noted a boat quite close to ours that seemed in trouble. We turned around, got our dinghy and out we went. Greg, the owner, was single handing and when he anchored did not realize he was too close. In trying to move away the current pushed him sideways and he found himself impaled on our bowsprit and anchor roller. We managed to get the boats separated and him re anchored. Our anchor roller is bent,the sprit cracked, and a snub rubber ruined. His boat suffered 2 damaged stanchions and 3 bent chain plates. An arrangement was worked out for repair and we moved on the next day.
We arrived in Georgetown, on Thursday May 27, after a stop at the So. Santee River for overnight, to await transmission parts. (We had had them shipped to Frank and Susie on MD, Frank sent them to us when we knew where we were going to be.) The parts arrived Sat. We are putting off taking the transmission apart as it has been behaving. Now that we have parts, we can do it later. Hopefully the umbrella theory will hold true.
We plan to leave today at 12 oclock on an ebb tide and go outside to Cape Fear Inlet and Southport, NC., then on to Wrightsville Beach. Looks like a wonderful weather window to do some actual sailing!
Take Care, Have Fun, Peace and Terwilliger, Fair Winds,
Ken, Francie and Skipper



Fair winds Ken, Francie and skipper,