Ed. note: Don and JoAnne Perrine took delivery of their Nordhavn 47 #27 in early 2005.
June 2005
After our five-week shake down cruise to the Dry Tortugas, we returned to Stuart, Florida for scheduled warranty work. While the work took longer than planned, we did leave in early June to head north.
The trip north from Stuart was largely uneventful, except for a stopover at Sebastian, Florida’s “Marina from Hell”, where among other things we damaged two air conditioning units due to faulty shore power.
Our next leg was mostly offshore to St. Augustine where we encountered a storm at sea. Interestingly, the only way one could be sure there were forty knots of wind and horizontal rain was to look outside the pilothouse – it says a lot for a Nordhavn’s seaworthiness.
Our first real stopover was in St. Augustine. The city's site was discovered by Don Juan Ponce de Leon in 1513, which he claimed for Spain along with "La Florida" or the land of flowers. The Spanish attempted six failed settlements before the French succeeded along the St. Johns River near Jacksonville. The Spanish subsequently conquered the French settlement and drove out the French fleet in 1565. Thus St. Augustine became the first European settlement in America, beating Jamestown by 42 years and the pilgrims' arrival by 55 years. Then the English and the pirates came, followed by Spain's secession to the English in 1762. After the civil war the United States bought it from England.
Along the way, the Spanish spent 23 years building Castillo de San Marcos, the fort which still stands at the entrance from the sea to St. Augustine today and is famous for never having fallen to an enemy.
The Henry Flagler era arrived in the late 1800s. Rockefeller's partner in Standard Oil bought the Florida East Coast Railway, then built hotels and extended the railway to Key West. St. Augustine's skyline reflects some of his buildings.
JoAnne and I had dinner at the 95 Cordova restaurant in the Hotel Monica whose architecture reflects the imprint Henry Flagler made on the town. We had dinner another evening with a couple and their friends who had a power catamaran built in Bellingham, Washington. They were bringing the boat back to their home in Virginia. The most interesting aspect of their boat was that it had hydro foils and could reach over 25 knots.
We left St. Augustine and went to Georgia’s St. Simon Island and Brunswick area for a stopover. The town of Brunswick was surprisingly charming, retaining the original character for the benefit of the residents rather than tourists. We had dinner in the best restaurant in town, which also happened to be the only real one in town. The surprise was that it was excellent, run by nice folks, and we barely got in. Reservations – who would have thought?
The next morning we bought fresh stores from the open market in town. The stuff was really from local farms or gardens, and it was good, and the folks were very nice, and….
Leaving the Brunswick City Marina we couldn’t resist taking a photo of what was apparently a homemade boat constructed entirely of wood. Obviously, it served as a floating home, but just think about all of that wood and the effects of salt water and the sun and the rain and the maintenance – oh yeah, and it didn’t have a transom.
From Brunswick we went offshore to Charleston, SC. The seas were calm, so the trip was very smooth. However, some time during the night a non-flying fish flew onto our foredeck. From the stains on the deck, it flip-flopped around while trying to make up its mind if it wanted to go to Charleston or not. We dropped the fish off at the marina in Charleston the next morning.
We entered Charleston’s ship channel around 6:30 AM and discovered that the city was shrouded in dense fog. JoAnne was impressed by the magnified size of large container ships looming out of the fog heading towards the sea. Fortunately with two excellent radars, automatic identification system (AIS) and charting electronics, there was never any danger nor was it especially difficult to navigate in the dense fog. I sometimes have trouble; however, recalling what was so good about the “good old days”, especially since we carry charts and navigation tools as back up.
Our initial stop in Charleston was at the Charleston City Marina. We saw Migration there, a sister vessel belonging to Tim and Bonnie Carter. Unfortunately, the owners weren’t there, but we may hook up with them in late July.
Now Jade Explorer is at the Charleston Harbor Resort and Marina for a month, because we sold our house and have returned to Knoxville to take care of the myriad details.
One of the Charleston Harbor dock managers’ parents are friends of Mike and Carol Gordon, who are also sister vessel owners of Evelyn J. This all sounds like more data points supporting the notion that “there are only 500 people in the world and they all know each other”!
We plan to return to Charleston around the end of July to resume our cruise. We still hope to get to New England before the cruising season ends there. Stay tuned.
