DAY FOURTEEN -- ISLE OF HOPE TO HILTON HEAD

                            DAY FOURTEEN -- ISLE OF HOPE TO HILTON HEAD

                We got up in time to walk the half mile to St. John's Episcopal Church for their 9am Morning Prayer service. The church is a beautiful 1853 building with lots of lovely stained glass. The Rectory next door is where General Sherman established his HQ after the surrender of Savannah in December 1864.  

(For our Episcopalian readers, the morning prayer service was special because it is rarely done anymore but is how I grew up in the church. Beyond that, St. John's insists on only using the 1928 prayer book for everything that they do, which again is what we used when I was a kid. The language is lovely but very old fashioned and after being away from it for a long time it was rather awkward. St. John's has some sort of special dispensation from the Bishop of Georgia to use only the 1928 prayer book. From looking at the church and its grounds and staffing, I'm guessing that that his has something to do with the size of their endowment.)

            After church we had breakfast next door in a nice old building that SCAD has purchased and restored (one of many in Savannah) that was staffed by work-study students who were trained to tell the history of the place. We took an Uber back to the boat and got back just before noon. Janet did one last load of laundry and then Ashley arrived by Uber just before two. We welcomed her aboard and got underway right away. Our destination was the Windmill Harbor Marina on Hilton Head Island. 

            As we were approaching the Savannah River, we saw a big container ship heading out to sea running just ahead of us. I sped up a bit so we could get a better look. Ashley took this nice action photo (she is quite the blog photographer -- more action oriented than mine):

            The ship was the Cosco Phillipines. She is reported by marinetraffic.com to have a capacity of 8,500 container units, built in 2010, length 1,096 feet, beam 140', draught 35'. As we crossed the Savannah River in her wake, the channel was 57-59 feet deep, and her prop was stirring up bottom muck. A big boat! Savannah, by the way, is the fourth busiest container port in the US.

            We arrived at Windmill Harbor Marina about three hours after getting underway. We had light to heavy rain much of the way, and it was drizzling as we pulled up to the marina's lock. This is a very unusual marina in the way that they deal with the 7 to 9-foot tides. Most places just use floating docks, but here the15-acre marina is a basin inside a lock, which keeps the water level constant. The harbor master opens and closes the lock when you call him on the radio, and it was very easy to use. This photo by Ashley shows us approaching the lock on our way out the next morning:

My photo just shows the lock itself after we transited and were docked. The lock is 70' long and 19' wide and is lined with bumpers, so I just used our bow and stern thrusters to keep us off the walls for the few minutes that it took to transit.

            The rain finally ended about the time we tied up at our dock. Once we were settled, we had cocktails on the back deck, then took an Uber to the strip of restaurants along Skull Creek. They are all first come, first served, and were all very crowded. We put our name in at two places and went to the first one that called. After dinner we took another Uber to take Ashley to her hotel and us back to the marina. The marina was extremely quiet. Very nice. Ashely's photo shows Craunological II just after we got her settled in. (No action here, but very artistically framed.)