Blackbeard's Creek & Savannah

Since arriving in Georgia, and first night stopping at St Simon's Island, we have made good progress through the state, crossing seven major river entrances from the Atlantic.. 

There is a lot of nothing on the Georgia Coast, so that even finding a place to stop is a challenge.  

Fortunately, at St Simon's Island we met a very nice couple, Jan and Lee, on another Grand Banks. They planned to anchor the next night as well, so we exchanged plans.  The first possible anchorage we tried for an hour, but although the anchor held well, the wind was really blowing, and there wasn't a lot of swing room and I knew I wouldn't sleep well that night, so we moved on.  I had read about another anchorage on the south side of Sapelo Sound, and we decided to try that.  Blackbeard's creek on Blackbeard's Island.  Yes, THAT Blackbeard.  Can totally see why he chose this place.  Good access from the ocean, good anchorage for a larger vessel and access to a creek and island that provided fresh water.  Legend has it that he buried some treasure on the island, but of course, it has never been discovered..  

Although a narrow, shallow entrance, the anchorage opened up enough to provide swing room for two boats in ~20 feet of water, which is now needed as the tide effect is increasing as we progress north. We bedded down for a quiet nights sleep as the wind dropped off, but at about 3 am I awoke suddenly to a heavy breath noise, and disturbed water.  Turns out we had a small pod of dolphins circling the boat, so we went on deck to enjoy it.  As we talked to them, they moved closer to the boat so that they were within feet at some point. It was a magical experience.  Due to the shallow entrance and the tide timing, we were up before twilight to get the boat ready to get underway, and had a beautiful departure with the rising sun. 

The next days run to Savannah took us through St Catherine's Sound and Ossabaw sound, for a largely uneventful run with views of endless grass marsh.  Due to the twists and turns of the channel, sometimes it looked as though boats were sailing through the grass.

Our visit to Savannah was very fortunately timed. We had intended our visit to  coincide with the azalea bloom, for which the city is noted, and that worked out well. 

However, Savannah has a large Irish descendant population and hosts one of the largest St Patrick's day parades and celebrations (ie street party and beer consumption).   The parade was over 4 hours long,  with 10's of thousands of people watching, and more enjoying River front and not paying any attention to the parade.  We cant claim to see all of, but did combine a walk around the historic district as well, which the parade partly goes through, so certainly saw a lot of it.  

From Savannah, we continued north to Beaufort, SC, (pronounced Bew-fert) to distinguish between Beaufort (Bow-fort), NC.  A quaint town with large marine bases nearby, and wonderful old homes.  We made use of the marina courtesy car to tour the town, before the obligatory Publix provisioning run.  The evening was topped off with a glorious sunset.

Tomorrow, on to Charleston SC, for a couple of nights stop.