Returning home

June 24th we started heading back home. We set the alarm for 5 am to start our journey at dawn. We had only been going for an hour when we came to our first drawbridge. It was just after 6:30 and the drawbridge operator said it wouldn’t open until 9 am. So much for our early start!  Despite not getting to start as early as planned, we still made it to the Beaufort City Marina by 6 pm.

 

 

The days are long and hot. The ICW in Georgia and Savannah is a series of winding rivers and cuts through miles of swampy marshland. The trip reminds me of driving west through Texas on I-10 with miles and miles of never changing scenery and isolation. The difference being we are traveling at 6 knots.  The tedium was occasionally broken by dolphin sightings, and nail biting experiences with shallow water.

Just south of Hilton Head, SC is Daufuskie Island.  The subject of Pat Conroy’s novel, The Water Is Wide, Daufuskie Island is still accessible only by boat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We hit some showers in the late afternoon.

After a long day we arrived at the Delegal Creek Marina. It is tucked away on Skidaway Island just south of Savannah. We could only come and go at high tide, but that worked out perfectly for us.  It is a nice marina, well protected.  There is an observation tower with a telescope to view nearby wildlife.  They left us a golf cart to drive into town to the Publix that was 2 miles away.  We were tired of being on a boat all day for 2 days and decided that sounded like great fun.  We all hopped in the golf cart and took off.  The island is large with many wandering neighborhoods with large shaded areas of land and golf courses interspersed.  We saw many deer wandering the island, they had no fear of us (or Brooke) on the golf cart.  We were nearing the Publix when we noticed that the golf cart was almost out of battery.  Uh-Oh! Fortunately we ran into two Good Samaritans who said we could follow them in their golf cart back to the marina and if we totally ran out of battery and got stranded they would get their truck and pick us up.  We followed them back to the marina, getting out to push the golf cart up the hills.  But when we arrived there it was the wrong marina.  Yep, it seems there are two marinas on this island.  And now the golf cart was totally dead.  We left the golf cart and they went and got their truck and gave us a ride back to our boat.  I left the keys tied to the marina office doorknob using a hairband and left a message on the marina voicemail to let them know that we were very sorry but their golf cart is at the wrong marina on the other side of the island.