Day 113 to (the very southern edge of) Savannah, GA

First - An addendum to last night's post:
We met a fellow looper (Mike) at the Kilkenny Marina last night. He has been at this spot for 67 days due to boat repairs and other issues (wife had knee surgery). It was a fun visit as they also are now too late to do the northern portion of the Great Loop (Great Lakes) this year. No problem! They are going to go back south and spend the winter in the Bahamas... Sounds like fun!

Second - You may not care, BUT about 7:00 pm, we received a FaceTime call from grandson Will (age 3 1/2) asking where are our latest post was... I guess that I have been put in my place.


We left Kilkenny Marina at 8:00am for a 26+ mile trip to the Isle of Hope Marina, which is on the VERY southern edge of Savannah, Georgia. About midway on the trip there is a short (man made artificial channel) cut between two rivers just before they join and enter the Atlantic. There are shoaling issues in this cut, and we wanted to be through this cut at no lower than mid-tide. By leaving at 8:00 am, we passed through the cut at mid-tide and even then had no more than 2 feet of water below the keel at several places. With a tidal range of 8 to 9 feet in this area, it looks like we (i.e. the Admiral) made a very good decision.     We started the trip with temperatures in the low 70's and (very) scattered clouds.

The trip turned out to be very good for bird watching. The first photo is of Wood Storks in a (very dead) tree. The second photo is of an osprey in flight carrying a fish. Yesterday, on a much longer trip we saw no (?) ospreys, but today we saw 5+ and several empty nests on channel markers. I guess that it is probably just statistics of small numbers...

We arrived at the Isle of Hope Marina at 11:15 am and were given docking instructions over the radio.

In retrospect, I remember them saying that "we" will meet you at the dock.... The picture is taken from the fly bridge of Lucky Us looking back at the "entrance" to our dock. Looks narrow doesn't it? Fortunately, the Admiral puts out fenders (and docks lines) on both sides of the boat in case there is a last minute change in the docking arrangements. Lucky Us has a 15 foot beam plus about 2 feet of extra width with the fenders. I have no idea, but I think that the opening was just over 20 feet. One of the dock hands was standing on the bow of the 65+ foot (nearly new, multi-million dollar) yacht on the left to fend us off for obvious reasons. He said that he never had to push us off but that one of our fenders did "touch". Once through the opening, we then had to move sideways to the dock directly in front of the big yacht. At check-in at the office, we decided to stay 4 days (4th night free) instead of our original plan of 2 nights, and they promised that by then boats would be moved around so that it would be "easier" to depart. I sure hope that "check is in the mail".