Three Masted Tall Ship

This Tall Ship is moored at the same marina that we're at.  It sails from Sweden each year with high school students on it and goes to the Bahamas, Charleston, north to New York and back home to Sweden.  That would be quite an adventure for a teen!
~Vicki

 

Leaving tomorrow morning--no more messages until we get to free wi-fi

Charleston has a pop. of 123,000 and about 5 million tourists a year.  Amazingly friendly people considering we tourists are everywhere all the time.
On the bottom of the peninsula are a row of these mansions  The last to be completed was in the 1920's.  One just recently sold for $6.4 million! 

~Vicki

VISITED MAGNOLIA PLANTATION

We visited Magnolia plantation which was begun in 1676.  SC before the Civil War was the top rice producer in North America and the owners of this plantation became fabulously wealthy using slave labor.  In the summer when the malarial mosquitos came out they retreated from their plantations leaving the slaves to deal with that plus alligators and numerous kinds of poisonous snakes.  The lives of slaves is barely mentioned--but wouldn't it have been nice to be the rich plantation owner is the message.

Beautiful natural gardens there today with Spanish moss, magnolias, camillas (sp), etc
~Vicki

This is the Owens Thomas house that we visited in Savannah.  This was one of the grandest houses of the early 1800's.  The family owned several plantations and 300 slaves. 

Gary on the boat as we start our journey

MAIDEN VOYAGE

After a year of refurbishing Blue Moon by King and Gary at Green Cove Marina, Gary and Vicki are the first couple to take it out on the first leg of the Great Loop.  We will be on the boat until May 8th when King and Sharon will take over for the majority of the Loop this year.  We need to get to Elizabeth City, VA, a distance of about 700 miles.  We finally got away on April 17th and fought high winds gusting up to 40 knots to blow in to Jacksonville.  We anchored out until we got to Savannah, GA.

Beautiful city, very historic.  We stayed at the River Street Marketplace dock.  We were right in the channel with all the huge container ships, tugs, ferries, etc and the bouncing around 24 hrs a day was not great.

Yesterday afternoon (Fri. 4/25) we got to Charleston and Gary had to dock in high winds.  It took 5-6 tries to get into the slip, but the dock hands praised him getting in here without hitting anything which of course is the mark of any successful docking.

Crew 1

Gary and Vicki.  We left Green Cove Springs and spent the first rainy night in Jacksonville.

Sharon, Vicki, King and Gary on Blue Heron in Canada in 2011!

Picture from Facebook.

Great Loop

Welcome.  We’re King and Sharon Cole from Austin, Texas and Gary and Vicki Kinzie from Longmont, Colorado. 

The four of us spent our last two vacations boating in Canada and Alaska.   During that trip we first heard about boating on America’s Great Loop or the Great Circle Route.  We said we thought we should learn more about the Loop and such a lifestyle -  and started looking for a ‘Loop’ boat.  As we told friends and co-workers of our retirement and boating plans, we were asked, “WHERE are you going and WHAT are you doing?”

What’s the Great Loop? It’s the name given the route that generally goes from Florida up the U.S. east coast (either in the Intracoastal Waterway or in the Atlantic Ocean), through the Chesapeake Bay, to New York, into the inland waterways (Hudson, Erie, Oswego, etc.), through parts of Canada (Trent-Severn, Georgian Bay, North Channel), into the Great Lakes, the south through various rivers including the Mississippi (and the Illinois, Ohio, Cumberland, Tennessee, Tombigbee, Mobile), into the Gulf of Mexico, and around Florida.

Vicki and Gary start our journey in Jacksonville, Florida and venture up the east coast.  We have plans to walk through national historic sites, parks and churches, research our Revolutionary War ancestors, enjoy regional produce from local markets, stay safe and learn lots!   Welcome aboard.  Come explore with us.  

Gary, Vicki, King and Sharon