A Three Month Stay at our Winter/Pandemic Quarters

During our familial negotiations over what we would and would not do for winter, I established only one non-negotiable: we had to be far enough south so that we did not freeze.  Elena wanted to avoid Florida due to the lassiez faire attitude that Florida seemed to take about this Covid situation.  There was no place in Georgia that was adequate for a long-term visit.  The marinas in the Savannah area were far from Savanah downtown and were expensive. Brunswick, Georgia did not have much of a downtown area although the marina is nice.  Moving a bit further to the south end of South Carolina, there is Beaufort, one of Elena’s favorite spots.  So, Beaufort it was for our winter home.

Beaufort is an old Southern town, with scores of antebellum homes surrounded by ancient oaks draping in Spanish moss. It was the home of Pat Conroy, author of Prince of Tides, The Great Santini, The Water is Wide, and South of Broad.  The location for the background or the backstory of all of these books is either Beaufort County or Charleston.   The Beaufort downtown area, fifty yards from the marina gates and five blocks long, is quaint, lively and interesting.  The city built a beautiful waterfront park next to the marina.  Politically the area seems to be purple with alternating moderate Republican and Democratic congressmen.  While there were a couple of boats at the marina with political flags, for the most part people seemed to just go about their business without a lot of heated passions.  Most folks wore face masks.  Hilton Head Island is nearby by direct measurement but a long, roundabout ride by road.   Traffic jams only occur when the bridge opens and stops traffic as one of those nuisance boaters makes his way along the Beaufort River.

The most intriguing thing for me about Beaufort was the tides which have a range of 8 feet.  The current runs at energetic 3 knots and shifts every few hours giving us two high tides and two low tides every day.  It was a constantly changing environment.  On the boat, it felt like living on a mountain stream as the current flowed between the dock and the boat. As the tide left, it revealed marshes to the east of us and oysters and clams that attached themselves to the dockpilings and the face of the waterfront.  We tried to time our shopping carefully, so if we were at low tide we ended up walking our groceries in a cart at 45 degree down angle.  Our daily difficulties had devolved to figuring out how to get groceries around the tidal schedule.  Can’t complain about that for simplification.

Parris Island Marine Corps Recruit Training Center and Beaufort Marine Corps Air Station are both in the area as well as a Naval Hospital.  The flight path for the air base was just off our port side.  We were provided a periodic air show when groups of the new F-35 fighter jets would make landings, sometimes multiple landings as practice.

We hunkered down for a planned two months that eventually extended to three.  We settled into a routine of renting a car once a week for a grocery run combined with a search for boat parts and maintenance items.  We coordinated that with medical appointments for Elena at the Naval Hospital (nice to have that military health care) or an emergent dental appointment.  We became such repeat customers at Enterprise that they upgraded the rental for Elena three times.  Near the end of our stay I was able to get the first vaccine at the local Walmart, hoping to get the second on our return trip.

We avoided crowds and people as much as possible, having dinner in a restaurant only once.  But we were frequently take-out customers, especially at Old Bull Tavern (braised lamb shank), Luther’s (burgers), Q’s on Bay (ribs), Blackstone’s (breakfast), Breakwater (seafood), and Kilwins (pralines and homemade ice cream).

Laundry, an all-day affair, was done once a week at the marina laundry.  Water tanks required filling every three or four days.  We conducted routine boat maintenance such as changing the oil, waxing top sides and caulking the teak decks.  We discovered that the spreader light which throws lights downward to light the bow had failed.  Elena climbed the mast several times to replace the light.  Naturally, a perfect replacement could not be found, and it took several trips up and down the mast to get it right.

We took two side trips, one to Hilton Head (OK, but not my style) and Savannah which reminded me of a poor copy of Bourbon Street, but maybe I was in bad mood because of the crowds of people.

But mostly we hung out.

We cycled through a number of visitors. We were at the end of the dock with one berth open behind us. Across the dock was a very large yacht, unfortunately, carrying a large objectionable flag which I had to see every morning out of the portholes.  The fellow seemed nice enough but given the election was over, I just kept my distance.

There was a boat whose crew was a couple of older (older than me, anyway) women.  They were from the West Coast and had been cruising for years.  There was a young couple with a big dog on a small boat who were making their way doing odd jobs.  There was a middle aged couple from Pennsylvania who was making their way working construction and other odd jobs.  We met with a couple who had been in our homeport and I recognized the boat name and struck up a conversation with them.

One of the more interesting interactions came from a gent who came by one day admiring the boat.  He asked if was a “Baba”.  I replied that he knew his boats.  He said he owned one 15 years ago.  I asked the name as I new most of the boats in the fleet from the Baba users group.  “Jolly Roger” he said.  “You must be Roger Cando” I replied.  “Jolly Roger” was “Sophia’s” name before I bought her.  He was the proverbial “previous owner”.  (Proverbial in yachting circles, abbreviated to PO and frequently accused of multiple sins and possessing illogical rationale and a total lack of maritime skills, all of which did not hold for Roger).  We talked at length of the work he had done on the boat and he answered a couple of questions that I had, mostly about the guy that owned the boat between Roger and myself.  He had gone on to three other boats since then and was cruising south when he and his wife stopped by Beaufort.  Another small world episode.

We met Dave Toms from “Tom Tom”, a 1973 Naval Academy grad who also wintered over at Beaufort.  And Scott Shipman and his lovely wife Kristen who were in the process of getting a old but classic sailboat,  a Westsail 32.  Scott was a retired Navy submariner and we had many a long conversation about the “old days”.  Scott and Kristen were nice enough to have us over for dinner after Elena finally received her Covid vaccine, our first indoor “social” occasion in a year.

We were also visited by our 2017-2018 cruising buddies, Frank and Carol from the sailing vessel “Hakuna Mata” who dropped by our marina heading north just as we were getting underway for Florida.

All along our way south and during our stay in Beaufort, folks would come by and compliment us on the “lovely boat”.  The comment was frequent and always sincere.  Most of the credit of course goes to the designer and the builder who build beautiful curving lines, a clean bow, lots of topside wood, and a classic canoe stern.  Some goes to Buster Phipps of Phipps Boatworks in our homeport who built the lovely bowsprit which really stands out.  And of course, a lot of credit goes to Elena who did all the topside varnishing and painting that really gives the boat her charm.

After two months pier side in Beaufort, I started to get whiney and began lobbying Elena to set a date to move on.  But, by then it was February, too cold to go offshore comfortably (at least for us) and we were not going inside, via the ICW, through Georgia.  Georgia has notorious tides and a multitude of shallow areas where boats with much less draft than ours routinely run aground.  So, we held for a while.  Finally, as the days became longer (with more sailing time) and warmer, we set a date of departure of March 2^nd.  Wind and weather held us for a few days but we finally managed to cast off lines on the morning flood tide, 11am, Saturday, March 6^th.