The Floating Yoyo Twins

Underway In Mulligan? Maybe we've misnamed this blog...

Last week was exhilarating. We finished working out the itinerary for the first leg of our cruise (south from Thunderbolt to Ossabaw Island to St. Catherine's Island to Jekyll Island and neighboring Sea Island, St. Simon's and Cumberland). We rented a car in Chattanooga, leaving our trusty Element in the driveway. Once back in Savannah, we stocked Mulligan's pantry cupboards, fridge and freezer with provisions for two weeks of meals. (And it all fit!) We turned in the rental car and, for a couple of days, experimented with our "cruising wheels" (two nifty little folding bikes that live in one of our guest cabins).

At dinner, we sat across the table from each other and talked about the amazing fact that the time had come to actually leave. Finally. We were a little superstitious -- given all that's happened -- but excited and ready.

Sunset from the cockpit: Herb River

Herb River: 1st anchorage in almost a year!

Our first stop was nearby on the Herb River, where we enjoyed a wonderful night at anchor. No concrete seawall. No dredges or drills or sanders. Pretty sunset. Just us, the river, the marshes and a pod of trolling, leaping porpoises. We fixed a great dinner in our efficient little galley: fresh shrimp sauted with onions and bell peppers, accompanied by bread and potato salad. Mulligan does make a nice home. 

Dinner in the making

Sourdough bread thaws in the cockpit
(Those are Kay's sailing shoes in the background. Gross!)

Lazing in the cockpit, we remember that we anchored in what was probably this exact, same spot almost a year ago, the night before we left Mulligan at Thunderbolt for her infamous bottom-painting. 

(This is Kay speaking: We had been on the water all day, bringing Mulligan from Port Royal up near Beaufort, SC to Thunderbolt. It had been broiling hot. We had run aground between the Savannah River and the Wilmington River, and had to sit in the sun to wait for the tide to start coming in. Once we got anchored, I had jumped in the water to cool off, completely forgetting the inbound tide and its swift current. I was 100 yards away before I knew it, and Steve had to come rescue me in our dinghy. Never jump into tidal waters without a line to hold onto! Hard way to learn that lesson. I must admit that it scared the heck out of me.)

Isle of Hope from the Skidaway River

Revisiting Isle of Hope

Friday morning we hauled up our anchor before 7 AM and headed south on the Inland Waterway due to the lack of wind on the "outside" Atlantic passage. We enjoyed seeing the charming village of Isle of Hope, three nests of ospreys, and a bunch more porpoises along the way. We got to the Skidaway Narrows bascule bridge almost an hour before its first AM opening, but that just gave us another opportunity to exercise our rather rusty anchoring skills.

Isle of Hope was wonderful except for one thing:
This is the "needle" we had to thread with our 20 foot-wide
catamaran every time we took her out.
With wind and current, it was often hair-raising.

Isle of Hope was Mulligan's first home after we purchased her in 2008. With Isle of Hope Marina as our base, we learned our boat and as much of the Low Country as we could, before moving north to Hilton Head and, then, Beaufort. We think we'll always have a soft spot in our hearts for Isle of Hope. It's the quintessential Low Country neighborhood, its gracious old homes framed in azalea and Spanish moss. 

It's also located on one of the narrowest sections of the Inland Waterway, on a hairpin turn to boot. Small boats love it there. Fat boats like Mulligan can find the marina a bit hard to negotiate.

Our friend, Nick, took this picture during his morning bike ride on Ossabaw's Main Road.
We were sorry we didn't get to meet this island VIP.

Bound for Ossabaw

For more about this fascinating barrier island,
take a look at www. ossabawisland.org

Our destination for the next couple of days was Bradley Creek on the north end of Ossabaw Island, near its Atlantic beaches. A friend, Dr. Nick Honerkamp, is conducting an archeological field school on Ossabaw this month and next. Since we were to be in the area, we had made arrangements to connect and see the dig.

We were entering the headwaters of Ossabaw Sound when we noticed the first glitch in the engines. They were not charging Mulligan's "house" batteries, the ones that provide us with electricity when we are away from shore power connections. The engines started running roughly. One died completely, then restarted. We decided that the best thing to do was to return to Thunderbolt, where the staff was familiar with our lightning strike and its aftermath.

Is Steve pouting? Well, yeah, a little bit. (Wouldn't you?)

Back at the dock...again

By early Friday afternoon, we were limping back into the Thunderbolt basin with our engine alarms blaring. Our project manager, Phillip, and his engine guy troubleshot for the rest of the day, finally concluding that our insurance claim needed to be reopened and outside experts brought in. 

Since it was Friday, we knew that meant nothing would happen until at least Monday, of course.  Access to engine and electrical systems means dismantling Mulligan's master cabin, aft guest cabin and galley cabinet storage. Things were topsy turvy, and will remain so until the problem gets found and fixed. The Parishes (otherwise known as The Yoyo Twins) opted to rent another car and ride out this round of repairs back in Chattanooga. Ouch. Seems like we just did this, but going the other way.

We were sorely disappointed at first, but have regained a philosophical attitude already. As our sister-in-law, Maureen Svoboda, pointed out: "Years ago, I heard the definition of 'adventure' was 'an inconvenience rightly considered.'"

And as Phillip, our Thunderbolt project manager, pointed out when we whined once too often about why weird things keep cropping up, "Welcome to the world of lightning."

Turns out that, if the lightning had chosen to exit via one or both of our hulls, Mulligan might well have sunk. Instead, the lightning stayed on the boat, wandering through everything and leaving calling cards that are sometimes not readily apparent until you've been away from the dock for an extended time, running the engines, using the systems, etc.

We're due to get an update sometime this week on how long these new repairs might take. Meanwhile we are landlubbers once more, with plans to re-start our cruise with the same itinerary as soon as we can.

Little Fish in the Basin

View of the boatyard
(By the way, that's us way over on the far right side of the photo.
Yeah, we're pretty much the "little fish" in this pond!)

One thing that's been fun about being at Thunderbolt is observing our interesting neighbors. We've seen quite a few come and go during our many months of lightning repairs. We think our project manager sort of regards us as his boatyard mascots now. He tells us stories of the other boats in the yards, and has even given us a behind-the-scenes tour of a complete interior refit his company is doing on a 1989 Cape Hatteras. (We are in awe of its spacious galley, which is bigger than our kitchen in Chattanooga, THREE walk-around bunks, and Jack & Jill master head with jacuzzi tub and shower.) 

But back to the neighbors we've seen come and go. They include other relatively small catamarans and sailboats and motor boats plucked out of the water to be washed down, repainted and relaunched. A fragile 1920s New York wooden launch coddled up onto the hard for a specialty paint job. Several of Savannah's historic ferries and working pilot boats. And a fair number of super-yachts getting their annual beauty treatments. These last have been a fascinating insight into what Steve calls how the "other half" lives and what I insist is how the "other 1%" lives.  

Stars & Stripes

Historic Stars & Stripes, winner of the 1987 America's Cup

Dennis Conner's famous 12 meter, Stars & Stripes, is one of our smaller neighbors. She was on the hard last summer when we first sailed into Thunderbolt aboard Mulligan. Stars & Stripes is, however, a piece of history. She recovered the America's Cup from the Australians in 1987. When she retired from racing, she went to live at Hilton Head, where she takes tourists day sailing on South Carolina's Calibogue Sound. At the end of April 2011, about the same time Mulligan's last repairs were being completed, hers were being completed, too. She had been in the yard even longer than us for repairs to her once state-of-the-art metal hull, which had sustained heavy damage from stray electrical current in the water where she was docked at Hilton Head. Next time you're in Hilton Head, look her up! She'll be back any day now, according to our project manager at Thunderbolt, who is also her project manager.

Chantal, Fighting Irish & Grenadier

Will the most magnificent yacht please raise her hand?

"Well, this is a view you don't get every day," we decided one morning as we peered out the porthole of our cabin aboard Mulligan. Arrayed across the boat basin from us were three gorgeous motor yachts, each one bigger then the next.

Grenadier (front) is a lovely classic looking 90-foot lady. She's been around for a while. We think she may just be resting between passages, because we haven't seen much going on with her. She does lend an elegant air to the boat basin. 

Fighting Irish (middle) sailed in one night just recently and executed a nimble pirouette in the basin to slide in stern-to beside Grenadier. Pure white and classy-looking, she seems to be carrying a bunch of young deckhands who can be found washing windows and scrubbing decks during the day. In the evenings, they spend their time skimming around the yard on bikes (gold and blue, of course) and skateboards, dissipating youthful energy while we cook dinner or settle in for an after-dinner DVD. 

Chantal (back) is the only other boat who's been at Thunderbolt as long as we have. Or longer. Most of the time we've been there, she's been lodged securely in a huge boat shed so we couldn't see much of her. Word in the boatyard was that she was getting an entire refit and having a 14-foot aft deck added to her 168-foot length. Now she is out, sporting a lovely deep blue hull and a magnificent teak aft deck complete with a bubbling jacuzzi. Clearly, her crew won't be roughing it, wherever they head.

View upward from our cockpit these days

Domani

Domani is Italian. You can kind of tell just by looking at her lines, can't you? We have heard that she is the epitome of Italian design inside as well, but we haven't been invited inside. (Darn.) 165 feet long, Domani is getting prettied up for a new owner. She's for sale. If you have $30 million in disposable income, plus the $2-$3 million it takes to crew and operate her each year, she could be the deal you've been looking for!

Huntress, taking up several parking spaces

Huntress

Huntress dominates the Thunderbolt basin. At 190 feet with classic lines and a 20-foot runabout tucked into her side deck, she's a goddess. Her 14-member crew is young and multi-cultural. Our project manager says she is the third Huntress for her owner, and that he is on the lookout for a new, larger version of Huntress. In case you're wondering whether anything bigger than 190 feet can fit in at Thunderbolt, we are told that they can accommodate yachts up to 250 feet. Anything larger has to be hauled at the Port of Savannah, where container ships from around the world load and unload their cargoes.

Louisa

The lovely lady, Louisa

Louisa's photo doesn't do her justice. She is one of our most beautiful neighbors, a sleek 72-foot wooden sailboat, built in Italy in 1969. We met her captain, Scott, in the laundry room at Thunderbolt and have talked to him a couple of times. When we first met him, he was starting to refinish Louisa's teak decks and rails and cabintop. (He says it is an unending job. It's months later now, and he seems to still be at it.)

We love listening to Scott talk about his experiences sailing Louisa and are particularly impressed with what he tells us about docking her. While she was briefly on the hard, we could easily see her full keel and lack of any form of bow or stern thruster. (Louisa's owner doesn't want to disturb her classic lines below the water.) We can imagine that she must be the dickens to maneuver in tight spaces, with wind and current added in, since we know from experience how difficult maneuvering can sometimes be even on our relatively nimble "little" 40-foot Mulligan. 

Kay's new Target bag (Sorry, Mr. Dooney!)

We find ourselves wondering what kind of a guy would own a beauty like Louisa, as well as a motor yacht as least as large if not bigger than she is. Scott tells us that his boss is the Mr. Dooney of Dooney & Bourke, Inc. (you know, the handbag people). "And, no, I can't get you a discount on a bag," he adds. 

That's OK. Turns out Kay had picked up a new purse earlier just that day during a quick run to Target. It cost $9.99, and it works just fine.