Blog Post #4 April 26 to May 5

This one is short and sweet on words since I have used all my brain power thinking about a series of provocative questions my great niece Lauren posed to me. Lauren is a high school junior in Charlotte SC, and she was given an oral history assignment. She decided she was interested in the social protest movement of the 60’s, which lead her to me. My first reaction was, this means I am really old, and my second reaction was, how nice, and what a great opportunity for reflection.  So that’s another story.

While in Georgetown we took a cab to Brookgreen Gardens which is one of the loveliest public gardens I have been to. A New York philanthropist bought the Brookgreen plantation and three other adjoining plantations for a song in the thirties and immediately began building gardens and collecting sculpture and opening it to the public.

My garden sprite

 


                                                  

 

 Joel exchanges contacts and tips with Bernard Baruch, confidante & economic advisor to six presidents. Who also said "there's only one thing wrong with the younger generation, some of us don't belong to it anymore."

The gardens also have a "zoo" of wild and domestic animals, and a butterfly house

Joel "the fishing is always great, its the catching that varies "Davis, in Bull Creek.

Our anchorage in Bull Creek was especially lovely and serene, a great place for a birthday evening, #66!

Sweet Grass basket from Gullah community, birthday present

You can just see Figure Eight Bridge in the back.The kindly bridge operator directed us to this lovely anchorage after we failed to find the entrance to the one we were looking for

Least favorite overnight was Little River, a secure spot, but surrounded by wall to wall condominiums and one highly over rated restaurant. We biked around a very large golf course housing development for some exercise, but were happy to leave early. No pictures.

Southport was lovely. The highlight was a weather talk at the marina by a retired navy meteorologist who gave us the up to to date on weather and on shoaling reports ahead of us. The ICW is pretty treacherous with new shoaling cropping  up all the time. The feds only dredge where there is commercial traffic, and states are responsible for the rest, and state budgets being what they are, not much gets done.

Southport Marina NC

Survived thunderstorms while underway, it wasn’t fun, but we gained confidence in how the boat handles in those conditions, and it wasn’t too bad.

We have spent the last few days in Beaufort NC, bottom end of the Great Banks. Our marina is right in the middle of town, and yet we look across at the Rachel Carson Reserve where we can watch the feral horses grazing. We dinged across a couple of times to explore, great birding. The estuaries feel more like New England now.

We arrived just in time for the Wooden Boat show, which includes a boat building competition, build the boat in three hours, and then row it. This has been one of our favorite stops so far, and the competition has been stiff.

This is the no power tools team

Note Wooden Boat logo on apron. This is for the boat building contest.

You  can just see the row boats racing. Taken from atop our boat, Beaufort NC.

Random wedding picture taken on Snow Goose at Joel's invitation

Feral horse on Rachel Carson Preserve. They keep the population in check by delivering birth control  via darts.

Signing off, best to all
Sarah & Joel