Charleston SC

Isle of Hope Georgia

This is a very quaint little town with beautiful homes lining the waterfront.

                                                           Some of my favorites.

                                           These homes have such nice details added to them.

This is a driveway, very welcoming.

This is the street along the waterfront.  Isle of Hope Marina in the background.

When we pulled into the marina there were 3 other Tollycrafts there for the night, and several loopers.

Georgia! UGH! had to call SeaTow April 8th - 9th

What a glorious morning!  Going to be a hot one may see 90 today.

I'm FREEEEE.......Jim enjoying a ride on the bow.  Thats 5 o'clock up ahead.  Wait! Whose at the helm?

 The Captain of SweetPea for the moment anyway.  Getting ready to enter Hells Gate.  On that note I think I will hand over the helm to Jim.  Good thing I did for what was about to happen next was most definitely unpleasant to say the least.  Just as we were about to take a port turn into Hells Gate all hell broke loose.  Jim saw something in the water ahead and slowed the boat, an instant later into the props went something then pop!  He thought it was line in the water and the pop was the cutters on the prop, we were in idle at that time.  We radioed ahead to Pete that we picked up some line in the water but ...........then the starboard engine shut down.  We moved off the ICW channel on 1 engine and Jim went for a dive to investigate.  Yup, the line rapped around the prop shaft tight.  Due to the current and his lack of breath he was unable to get it off and it was on there tight!  SO.....

 SEATOW to the rescue!  Luckily they had a Diver onboard and were right around the corner they were there in about half an hour or so.  The diver went down and was under the boat for about 20 mins he came up with tow line.  50,000 pound test 1 inch braid.  Exactly what you see in the barrel next to the diver.  Hmmmm we joked about that.
Off in the distance you can see 5 o'clock anchored waiting on us.

 This guy was quite the character.

 A face only a mother could love.

I whole process took about 2 hours and we were on our way.  A little lighter in the wallet but Welcome to boating,  Luckily everything was fine and both engines started right up and we were on our way through Hells Gate and onto .......Isle of Hope.....  well that sounds promising!

Leaving Jacksonville northbound April 6-8th

 It was a beautiful morning to start traveling again low 70's goodbye Jax

 Now this is a mooring ball!

 We hooked up with 5 o'clock (Pete and Jerri) and will be traveling with them to Charleston where we will spend a week.

 This shrimp boat went past us while at anchor just enough room for him to get through with his booms out.

 nice quiet anchorage.

 5 o'clock at anchor another beautiful sunset. Darrien River

Sunrise on the Darrien River Ga.

SweetPea (facelift)

 There she is all wrapped in new canvas. Now the cleaning begins.

 New Black Bottom.

 Going back in the Water.

It is much brighter on the upper helm, as well as drier.  

Southbound?

Saturday morning we hop in our rent a car and head on back south to the boat.1200 miles, we should be there sometime Sunday. 
Certainly can't do that by boat!  But then why would you! 
We enjoyed our 2 weeks home, got ALOT done but we are now ready to return to Jacksonville.  We thought it would be spring here but our 2 weeks here it snowed 3 times.  YUK.... We are excited to get back and see the work that has been done to the boat in our absence.  We will have some pics on the next post.
On another note... when we left Massachusetts in Oct on our first marina stop (CT)  we met up with Denise and Bob Gomes on Liberty also AGLCA members,  we had been e-mailing back and forth as they were leaving RI around the same time.  We traveled south together but on somewhat different schedules.  Well Liberty made it back to RI this week,  congratulations Bob, Denise and Brady too, on your winter trip, it was a longtime goal for them to travel to the Keys and they did it!  However we will miss playing tag with you as we continue on.  Starting our journey together will be a memory I know we will always treasure.  Keep in touch!

Sure doesn't feel like Spring! Brrrrrrr

We had originally planned to leave Ma. on Sunday but we still have things to do and since the boat will not be ready to splash for a few more days we decided to stay an extra day or 2. 
BTW it may be spring according to the calendar by its still COLD here in New England.  We have been here for10 days it has snowed twice!  That sure makes yard clean up more difficult, at least it melts by noon.
Today, we took a trip to Newport RI (20 min ride) as they have the largest West Marine in the country.  At least it was when it opened last year.  Big Sale and since West Marine bucks came in the mail why not, we were looking for a courtesy flag for Canada and a Quarantine Flag, to my amazement they had Cuba, Panama, Honduras and some others but NO Canada very odd.  We had lunch, walked around town window shopping, Jim bought some cigars and we headed out.  We were really surprised at the amount of people there, as it was a windy cold day.  But a trip to Newport is always fun.