Savannah

We want to go to Savannah. But the dock we want to stay at doesn't take reservations. Yes, we could stay on another dock, but they charge twice as much as the City Dock does. And we are still cheap. So we will start traveling and call the dockmaster  and see if there is room on the dock and if so, we will head that way when we get to the Savannah River. We really don't want to make the 8 mile trip up the river without knowing if we have a spot, but sometimes you have to take a gamble.

We leave Beaufort at 6:30. We have to go thru Field's Cut today and we need a high or near high tide to get thru that area. So we know what time we need to get there and plan our speed accordingly.

Sunrise as we are leaving Beaufort

SeaSalt is leaving a little later since they have to watch the bridge height. We'll see you down the waterway. They are going to call the dock at Savannah and see what the situation is when the office opens. Then they'll call again later as we get closer to the river. Keep your fingers crossed!

SeaSalt said the docks are clear at am. So far, so good. We had no problems thru Field's Cut at noon. And the docks are still open at 1 pm, so we're heading up the Savannah River.

We checked our AIS to see if there were any big ships coming in from the ocean. We travel slow, they travel fast, we don't want to get in their way.

Heading toward Savannah I realize again that the waterway leading to Savannah is not very pretty looking, Remember, Savannah is a big working seaport. So the sights leading to downtown are not very pretty.

 

Fort on the way up the river toward Savannah

                                                         Sunk dredge along the waterway

 

This looks like "tug world"

                                                             US Coast Guard Station
We were very aggravated when we got to the docks. There were 3 small boats all spread out
along the dock. But the most upsetting thing was that the ferry had taken up about half of the dock which meant there wasn't enough room for us even if the small boats were gone. And to make it worse, the dockmaster knew the ferry was using that dock, since Matthew had messed up the ferry dock.  So we all started calling other marinas to see if they had space and how much they wanted per foot. Jojo call the Hyatt and they had space but wanted $.3.00 per foot per night. That's almost $150.00 per night for us. No thank you! So Jojo negotiated them down to $1.75.

Richard, the great negotiator, told them he had three boats ready to dock and asked if they had cable, internet, power, water, and satellite tv. They said since Matthew, they only had water. Richards says well, we were really wanted the cable and satellite so if we stayed, we'd have to get a better deal, like $1.50. And he got it! He's great! I told him, if  I every divorced Shay, I wanted him to represent me. I'd get everything!

So we pulled in behind the Hyatt and got settled in. We checked in at the front desk and Richard asked what else we got for our dockage cost. She told him we got a $19.00 voucher for each of us for breakfast each morning. That's $40.00 a day for each boat. Of course, we would not normally buy a $19.00 breakfast, but if it's paid for, we'll take it !

                                                                       Beautiful bridge

 

We decided to give Escape a good bath, since she'd not had once since we left Morehead City and it would be a while before we were at another dock. We worked about 4 hours cleaning her up. The others decided to take a tour of Savannah and had a great time doing that.

As soon as we got here I called Lauren and told her where we were and to come on down. It's about 4.5 hour trip. I know she'd love to spend time here but we talked about it and she decided to not come down. She would get here late Friday night have all day Saturday, then we would leave early Sunday morning. She felt it wasn't worth the drive for one full day. I told her we didn't know we would be staying here until Richard got the good deal. About 2 minutes earlier, Shay had said he was about ready to head back down the river and find an anchorage. It was a very last minute thing. Hope next time we can plan ahead and get her down here. That's the only negative about the time here. Not having her here too.

There is a big Marine celebration going on at the Hyatt this weekend and there are hundreds of Marine in their dress uniforms with girls in fancy dresses all over the place.  Have fun guys.

We all went for a walk around town later that day. We got lots of samples of candy, nuts, and snack mix. Richard takes us to all the great places for free food. We ate dinner at a Cajun restaurant and everybody had a good meal. I had shrimp po'boy, Shay had jambalaya. We had good and great company.

Beautiful garden

Of course the next morning we had a fantastic breakfast at the Hyatt. Omelet bar, waffles, gravy, biscuits, grits, eggs, bacon, sausage, bagels, and lots of gooey pastries, Of course, most of us were stuffed.

We had reservations to eat lunch at "The Lady and Sons" at 3pm. So we walked around town and enjoyed the beautiful parks and buildings.

Our meal was great and we all enjoyed the company.

This picture was before we stuffed ourselves.

This huge piece of Styrofoam was floating along our boat. We got rid of it.

This pile of debris was between Escape and the dock. We cleaned stuff out several times while we were there. There's a lot of debris going up and down the waterway everyday.

 

Southern Star's crew

                                                                         And SeaSalt too.