We arrived in Hilton Head at 4:35 PM on Thursday after a lovely 81 mile cruise on flat water from St Simons. Our cruising partners, Darrell and Sue, had departed St. Simons the day before (Wednesday) to cruise north to Hilton Head via the ICW. We connected with them on Friday.
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| Present Moment as she pulls in Harbor Towne Marina, Hilton Head |
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| Present Moment pulling in next to Guided Discovery |
Later in the day we were joined for dinner by our friends from Chicago; David, Colleen, Sophocles and Elena. We enjoyed cocktails on the aft deck, until we were attacked by no-seeums, and then adjourned to Alexanders for a lovely dinner.
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| David, Colleen, Elena, Sophocles and Darrell |
David and Sophocles are very special people for us. I worked for Sophocles for 7 years as his Vice President of Training and Quality Assurance and later for David as Senior Vice President Worldwide Performance Improvement. I got both of these guys into large boats. David has a 55 Sea Ray Sundancer. Sophocles has a 510 Sundancer. We cruised extensively with Sophocles last summer.
The next day (Saturday) we left for Charleston.
Now to the cruise. There are two ways to get from Hilton Head to Charleston, the ICW or open water along the shoreline. And there are two way to get to the open water; backtrack southeast along the Calibogie Sound to Tybee Roads (the main channel to Savannah) or go north on the ICW to Port Royal Sound and then out to the ocean. It turned out that going backwards was 6 miles shorter than heading north on the ICW. At trawler speeds of 8.4 knots eliminating 6 nautical miles saves almost 45 minutes.
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| Fort Sumpter |
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| Charleston Battery Park |
We departed at 6:59 AM, joined Tybee Roads at 7:36 and turned north onto the ocean at 8:15. The winds were out of the south at less than 10 knots and the seas were flat. We had a pleasant cruise, most of which was done from the pilothouse as it was just a bit chilly on the flybridge. We arrived in Charleston at 5:12 PM and docked at the Charleston City Marina. Our average speed for the 86.4 NM trip was 8.3 knots (or 9.5 MPH). Fuel burn at 1,400 RPM was 66.9 gallons or 1.3 NMPG. 1,400 RPM is turning out to be
Guided Discovery's optimum cruising speed.
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| 1964 Whiticar 63 Motoryacht |
A bit of nostalgia:
The name of the boat in the above photo is Elegante. She is a 63 foot flush deck motoryacht built in 1964. She brings back memories. Check out the video for a look at luxury in the 60s.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgADJzvaFEM
In the summer of 1961 I worked on a 65 foot Wheeler that looked amazingly close in appearance to the Whiticar. She was as I remember a 1959 model. The yacht was owned by Bobby Cohen, President of the Randolph Manufacturing Company. His Brockton Massachusetts based company manufactured the Randy Boatshoe, which at the time competed with the Sperry Topsider. The yacht, which was named The Randy Boatshoe, was captained by Lester Glawson. I was the first mate (at age 18). She was berthed at the Boston Harbor Marina and spent most of her time in Hull Massachusetts (where I spent my summers). Most of our cruising involved entertaining shoe buyers.
As the summer came to a close they offered me a full time job as first mate and the opportunity to take the boat south to Florida for the winter. Very tempting to an 18 year old who was not at that moment bound for college. I had a heart to heart with my dad who counseled me to go back to school. They say missing a bus can change your life. Well, that "bus" sailed for Florida without me and I venture that that single decision could have changed the trajectory of my life or, said another way, I would not be heading from Florida back to Massachusetts in a 2014 63 Outer reef if I had taken the "berth."
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| Photo by Billy Black |
Written by Les
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