Now This Is More Like It

The Windlass Is What Pulls Your Anchor Up (Hopefully)

So this blog I wanted to talk about what we signed up for when we decided to go sailing. Which is, travelling to new places, seeing new things, and meeting new people. We arrived in St. Mary’s yesterday. It was a beautiful afternoon motor up the river of the same name. A little fresh out, maybe 60F / 15C, but sunny, calm water, very little other boat traffic. Really idyllic.

Captain Terri Getting Ready to Dock

We’ve arrived! We cast off from Hayes, VA on Oct 29 and have spent the last 33 days hopping down the coast from one town / anchorage to another. Yesterday we finally arrived here in St. Mary’s GA, which was our planned (interim) destination. We plan to spend the next two weeks here ourselves, and park the boat here for ~ 3 weeks while we return to Colorado for the Holidays.

Not gonna lie, that first month was bumpy. There was a lot of of figuring out how to drive the boat, figuring out how to work the systems on the boat, getting stymied by all the things that were broken / not working on the boat, fixing some of those things, etc etc. At one point, the windlass was broken, the generator was broken, and the toilet started leaking liquid poo. Should I: a) burn this boat to the water line, b) curl up in a ball and cry, c) get out the rubber gloves and power through it. The umbrella-drinks-on-a-beach to stress ratio was not where I wanted it to be.

However, we are fixing things and figuring things out and the adventure to stress ratio is improving. In particular, we got the windlass repaired and have become a lot more comfortable with anchoring. This was a big help because we can now anchor just inside inlets overnight, for free, and don’t have to spend two hours motoring up and down a river each evening and morning to stay at a marina.

St. Mary's Waterfront

St. Mary’s immediately broke my cute meter. We found this place because we wanted a small, relatively inexpensive, place to hole up for Christmas without getting into the craziness and expense of Florida marinas. First of all, the marina is tiny, but in like-new condition.. There are 7 boats here, excluding two county sheriff speedboats. And two of them left in between taking this picture and writing this blog. There’s a park with a lawn bordered by palmettos on all sides, right off the marina. There’s a small waterfront district with restaurants, bars, another park, all within a few hundred yards of us. I can already tell I’m going to love our time here.

St. Mary's Marina - Like, ALL of it

Here are a few vignettes of the various places we stopped on our way here. We had definitely never been to any of these places, nor even heard of them, prior to planning this trip.

Beaufort NC

This was the first town we stopped in after rounding Hatteras and disembarking our captain and crew. The downtown area / town proper had lots of older houses that all had plaques with the original builders names and dates. The houses all had fresh paint, were immaculately landscaped, and several had glorious flower gardens. The bar and restaurant district was an easy 1 mile walk from the marina.

There is an anchorage out front of the bar district which is right on the waterfront, and many of the bars have dinghy docks. So people anchor their boats there and then dinghy into the bars and restaurants. I can just imagine this must be a hilarious scene during high season.

We visited the Civil War era Ft. Macon State Park while we were here. The history around Ft. Macon was interesting, but the best part of this fort side-trip was, it is situated on a bluff overlooking sand dunes and the Beaufort Inlet. I really enjoyed myself just taking a stroll along the tops of the walls and taking in the scenery.

Guns of Ft Macon Overlooking Sand Dunes and Beaufort Inlet

Southport NC

This is the town you get to when you round Cape Fear. Similar to Beaufort in that there were lots of well maintained older houses, bars and restaurants were in easy walking distance.

Notable because the NAPA store there also stocks boat parts and was able to order me a replacement roller for the anchor. You can tell this place must be hopping in the summer due to the number of fun looking businesses that were closed for the season. Ice cream and hot dogs? Yes, please.

Historic House with Beautiful Garden in Southport, NC

Little River SC

This place is just north of Myrtle beach, but is much smaller and quieter. We wanted to stop here because we have some very dear friends who we hadn’t seen in a long time, who live within 20 minutes of this marina. However, the captain we had hired refused to go in this inlet - too dangerous! So we had initially crossed this off our list.

But then, we parted ways with that captain in Beaufort (that’s a whole other story). So Terri and I were like, OH WE’RE GOING IN THAT INLET. There is a 100’ casino boat that goes in and out that inlet twice a day, so we were struggling to understand what the captain was so worried about. We did go in, it was totally fine, and we had a great visit with our friends, who we hadn’t seen in probably 15 years. We promised we would see them again in the spring and stay longer next time.

First Time Entertaining On The Boat

Charleston SC - We actually had been to Charleston previously, to see a boat in August of 2023, so this was our second visit. It was a mixed bag TBH. Huge marina, right downtown, with lots of big powerboats rocking us, sirens, helicopters. It was not restful.

On the positive side, we were able to get our windlass fixed and our anchor roller replaced. So now we could anchor! There was a well stocked Harris Teeter grocery store within walking distance, so we had lots of fresh vegetables that week.

Jackpot at Harris Teeter in Charleston

We did visit Fort Sumter, where, for our Canadian readers, the first shots of the US Civil War were fired. There is a lot published about the history of that fort, which I will not repeat here. I will say, I left that fort with a similar feeling to how I felt after touring Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin. Creeped out and unsettled. It was not a happy place, at least for me. What a terrible, tragic period in the country’s history.

33 Star Flag Flies Over Fort Sumter

Anyways, nevermind that, let’s leave this blog on a happy note. I’m greatly looking forward to hanging around St. Mary’s for the next couple of weeks! Next week, let’s talk about the joys of our now functioning anchor. A working anchor is FREEDOM !

p.s., there are a lot of stately homes and cool architecture in Charleston. I leave you with this.

Garden and Patio Behind a Stately Home in Charleston
(This is behind a wall, but I held my phone over my head to sneak this picture - haha)