Georgia

Sunday 17 Jun: One last look at the town and departure. Farewell Savannah and Georgia.
Leisure morning today, as we certainly didn’t plan to wake up in a hurry after our antics last night. This is our last day in Savannah, we will be leaving for Charleston in the evening.
Today’s agenda starts with a drone flight over the town. So we venture in and find a multistory car park with no cars parked on the upper level, which makes the perfect ground to fly from. The view is not exactly great from high up, the town looks much prettier at street level, but we do a short footage anyway. Then Glen feels challenged to fly the drone under the canopy oak trees on Jones Str. Quite a few obstacles to fend here: parked cars, incoming traffic, tree branches. Take off was good and the flight promising, but then all of the sudden the drone starts spinning and almost crashes. One of the propellers got tangled on a Spanish beard which was dangling low from the tree. Luckily, no damage done, and on this not so positive note we close the flights schedule for the day.
To cheer ourselves up, we stop for a “break”, at the Gallery Espresso, to try more of their coffees and cakes. While we were sipping our coffees, three Australians join us at the table and we start chatting about travels, both theirs and ours. They had a flight to catch, and distracted by our stories lost track of time, realizing they only had less than 2h left before their flight. We hope they made it on time.
Our second “break” of the morning is Leopold’s Ice-cream, a 99 years old venue (founded in 1919 by three brothers from Greece), and is rated as one of the top 10 icecream parlors in the world. We definitely need to see for ourselves what the fuss is about. The queue is huge, so we take our tub of ice cream to go.
Back at Cloudy Bay for a bit of admin. Glen notices generator silencer is leaking again. That $@#ing $800 fix (botch!) in Antigua didn’t last long. He also goes under the aft berth to check out the steering gear. The wheel is out of center alignment. Funny how one breakage often leads to another. Because the prop was not folding we went hard in reverse at one point. The wheel had been locked central but at speed the force on the rudder span it and wheel hard onto one lock. It was quite a violent action at the wheel. Anyway, since then, the wheel no long steers the boat straight when it is central. So an inspection to see what we bent or stressed was needed. The steering gear is seriously big equipment on this boat and there is no sign of damage. Maybe inside one of the 2 gear boxes? We decide to live with it for now. Our list of, “live-with-it-for-now” items seems to be ever growing. It will soon be time for some yard time. Such is maintenance-life with the odd bit of cruising life inbetween. Or so it seems sometimes!
For lunch we would like to sample more southern cuisine. Vic’s by the River was Jonathan’s recommendation, but the kitchen was closed when we got there. Second recommendation, by a group of young ladies we met last night in Alley Cat, was BD Burgers. Here we were in luck, and so many menu items to choose from. Indeed, they lived up to their reputation, burgers were delicious. The verdict for Oana’s American burger experience: ticked, and to be repeated.
Savannah is a lovely town, we are very happy that we stopped here (thanks Jon for the recommendation). The southern hospitality and friendliness were impressive. So far, the American experience is way above expectations.
The mooring right on the town quay was a very convenient spot, and as we learned from the dock master it is quite unique along this coast. The only downsides are the wash from all the passing ships, which creates quite a bit of noise on the stern, and the very muddy water. Cloudy Bay’s hull has a brown waterline which we can’t wait to wash off while sailing. And so much natural debris in the water. At one point we had what resembled a beaver’s dam stuck between the boat and the dock!
By 5.30pm we are ready to leave. The tide should be with us for another couple of hours, enough for us to be almost out of the river. As we motor through, there is a lot of debris, and we are happy to go back at sea and clean water. We also see few dolphins swimming upriver. How on earth do they see where they are going in this water?
As expected, at 7.30pm the tide turns, and it’s almost instantaneous. We see the swirls in the water and within seconds the switch reflects in our SOG, from 1kt with us to 1/2kt against us. Finally, we cover the 20 miles out of the river, the dredged channel and back out in open water. The wind is a pathetic 5-6 kts on our aft quarter but we take the peaceful sail at only 4kts as the sunset and dusk set in.
An hour later the wind dies completely and reluctantly we start the engine, hoping we won’t have to motor all night. At some point we see 11kts, sails out, but it lasted only 20 minutes. So ends our day, motoring into the dark night.