Savannah Smilin'

Who ever heard of a French electrician with a German accent named Michelle?  We have and boy are we glad.  He was from the Hinkley Boatyard, and he came aboard Once Around about 9:30 last Wednesday and within a few minutes had figured out the probable cause of our temperamental inverter.  A half hour later, he confirmed his suspicions and within two or three more hours he was finished with the corrective work.  For you technical folks out there, it seems the installing electrician, when we purchased the inverter, did not isolate the neutral wiring of the circuits fed through the inverter, causing the back-feed that created the havoc.

Best news of all, the problem hadn’t harmed the inverter, and he was able to get it working.  So, our long trip to Orlando the day before to retrieve the repaired unit, was a waste of a day, except of course for Captain Stan’s Smokehouse, which made it all worth it!  By 1:30 or so, Michelle had everything working perfectly and his thoroughness makes me pretty confident our inverter problems are behind us.  Of course, it is electronic, so who really knows.

My First Mate and I spent the afternoon doing mundane chores (since we still had the rental car) like getting me a long overdue haircut and running all over Savannah trying to find her favorite contact lens cleaning solution.  Another trip to Piggly Wiggly (the supermarket), and we returned to the boat for a quiet dinner and evening aboard.

Thursday Fred and Julaine accompanied us back into the historical district of Savannah where we took the trolley for a 90 minute tour.  Savannah originally was built with 24 small “squares” built in a pattern throughout the old town.  Twenty two of them still survive, although a few of those have been re-constructed.  Around the squares in most cases are some of the most beautiful homes you have ever seen.  It seems the mayor of Savannah surrendered the city to General Sherman during the Civil War.  This spared the city the torch Sherman had put to Atlanta and everything else in his path during his march to the sea.  Although surrendering was probably controversial at the time, it is a blessing that these homes and other historic buildings in Savannah survived.

 

Pretty much any of these qualify for house of the day

The Owens-Thomas House

The Mercer-Williams House

During our tour of Savannah, we learned about a movie filmed here called, “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil”.  We were told some of the characters were real life “characters” in Savannah.  It was filmed in part in the Mercer-Williams House pictured above.  Of course, we had to buy it.  So, after our sightseeing, we returned to Once Around, made some popcorn and watched the movie we had heard so much about.  It was a murder mystery, but included some hilarious scenes and some very strange characters.  We and the Boreas crew all got a kick out of it.

Friday we waved goodbye to Savannah reluctantly and crossed from Georgia into South Carolina, bound for Hilton Head Island. 

We were cross traffic for the ships coming up the Savannah River to the port

The house of the day on the way to Hilton Head

The RCB Heritage Golf Classic happened to be underway down at one end of the island, so we found a marina up at a place called Shelter Cove.  It, like the rest of Hilton Head, is a beautiful resort area.  The marina is a bit off the ICW, some seven miles up Broad Creek, but worth the trip.  It is surrounded by condos with eight or ten restaurants and a dozen shops on the ground floor.  So far we’ve tried Miguel’s, the Mexican food place for lunch and Scott’s Fish House for a nice dinner in their outdoor patio.  Both were good.

Boreas has guests visiting so we all decided to stay an extra night here, not leaving until Monday for Beaufort, SC.  As I write this, it is Sunday morning.  The Admiral is busy planning our day.  I think it may involve a hike or bike ride.  I’m just awaiting orders.  The weather is a gorgeous 73 degrees with about a 10-15 mph breeze.  Life is good!