Goodbye Beaufort, SC. Hello Savannah, GA!

We spent way too little time in Beaufort - just a long walk to the Piggly Wiggly and back to the boat.  We understand that the historic homes are lovely – something for us to look forward to on our return trip.  We set up an ambitious 48 mile run for Wednesday from Beaufort to Savannah.  The Guides had the usual warnings about shoaling in some of the cuts between rivers – some confirmed by the Army Corps of Engineers.  The area they confirmed at 6 feet on one cut turned out to be no less than 24 feet.  We have another shallow area to traverse when we leave Savannah.  This time we may take the warnings seriously because we are told that stimulus money never found its way to dredging in Georgia.

We were expecting heavy ship traffic on the Savannah river but didn’t see a single vessel underway from the ICW to the City Dock.  The City Dock is in an exceptionally convenient area – right in the downtown historical district.  

After we arrived we saw ships that took our breath away.  They were longer than 2 city blocks and seemed to obscure the sky.  You feel as though you could almost touch them.  We've never seen so many floating behemoths.  The following video was made from our 4th floor restaurant perch - forgive the background conversation - ordering of food - but do watch to see how long it takes for this thing to pass by our window!  Then imagine being at water-level on our little 40 footer watching this thing pass next to and above us.

This is what is across the street from our boat

I called Chad (crusingsabbatial.com) to see if the ship traffic was a big problem at the dock.  I was afraid that the wakes from the big ships would have me rolling hard against the dock.  Ironically, the big 1000 foot plus ships have virtually no bow wave and hardly a ripple behind them.  They come up and down the river as slowly as they can.  It is the smaller craft – usually tugboats that set us rolling from side to side.

Our boat is barely visible through
the trees from Vic's Restaurant.

We had dinner at Vics on the 4^th floor of a historic building overlooking the river.  The food was excellent – the price moderate.  The city side of the restaurant was at street level.  Behind our table was a Civil war era map that was uncovered during renovation of the building.  Down the street obscured by a few trees we could keep watch on Symphony at the dock.

The Westin Resort across the river from us.
Red and green lights on the towers for Christmas.

Symphony's last night on the City Dock