A very pretty sunrise, Susan got a great time lapse from the top of the boat. I need some more practice backing off the dock with a current, it was a little messy this morning.

The ride north was nice, lots of pretty places to look at. Lot of dolphins today. One big pod of about 10 was feeding in the middle of a no wake zone. Susan yelled and waved at them, but they had other things on their minds.

It’s also interesting boating with the tides down here. We cross a number of sounds so sometimes you are with the tide doing 10+ knots, others you are against the tide going 6 knots.

We arrived in Savanna before lunch so we had the whole afternoon to walk around.

First stop was the Crystal Beer Palace. This is one of the older places in Savanna. We had a great lunch of fried green tomatoes, crab soup and shrimp salad sandwiches. All the goodness of the south and some beer too.

From there we walked 5 blocks to The Distillery. It’s a giant bar with over 30 beers on tap and some great food. We had the deep fried moon pie, it came with great vanilla ice cream with a caramel sauce with whipped cream on the side.

A few blocks later we went to the Savanna Maritime Museum. It’s small but does a good job of describing maritime activities in Savanna from the 1700′s through the civil war. It then covers all the boats named Savanna across the next 200 years. There were lots of ship models, lots of detail work in them. Down in the basement is a pretty good collection of ships in bottles.

Across the street is the bookstore for the Savanna College of Art and Design. We loved it. There are three floors of great stuff from drawing, sculpture, different papers, pen, ink, paints, and so on. Lots of great art books, electronics. Business plan creation, etc down in the basement. Looks like they do a lot more in Art and Design than I would have expected. They have about 40 different majors from different arts, cartooning, theater, textiles, writing, etc. It really makes me want to go back to school.

We walked through the central market areas. For a Tuesday it was really loaded up with tourists. We cruised through and ended up at Moon River. (Moon River was one of most famous songs to come out of Savanna. ) It was a cool brewpub, we had a single flight of beer to cool down from the walking.

There are a ton of small squares in Savanna, all with benches and statues in them. One of the main streets, Bull St, has 5 of these squares, it must make driving around town very interesting. The grounds are well kept and there are huge trees everywhere. I can see why Savanna is a big tourist town.

We forayed into the restaurant district, Savanna has lots of places that are well known, we were looking for something a little more low key. We had gone into E. Shaver. Bookseller to look around. We asked directions to a place Susan had found, they were closed for dinner M-T-W, they offered up a place called Fire. It’s Asian Street food, so it’s easy to eat. We had the best fresh rolls and dumpling that I’ve had in quite awhile.

Afterward, we collected a taxi and got a ride back to the marina. We got on the boat and fought with the crappy Adobe DRM system coupled with Comcastic login mess to try to watch Mad Men. Final result was to pay $2 to Amazon to watch the latest Mad Men.

It’s nice to have good wifi in these marinas, makes it easy to keep in touch with the world.

Yesterday was a down day for both of us. We had been on the go since the first of April and even when we were not traveling, we were touring around, etc. So it was nice to take a day and do nothing. Yesterday’s blog post was one of the shortest I’ve done.

Today was a long day, 7 hours from St Simon Island to Richmond Hill GA. We went 57.6 miles via the Intercoastal Waterway, it would have been faster to go the outside route. Lots of twists and turns on the way.

Wildlife count was way up. We saw two alligators swimming in the water. One was very close to the boat, I thought it was a log and turned so I wouldn’t hit it.

Lots and lots of dolphins, but none wanted to come play. They were all busy feeding. Based on the sea gulls that follow us, I’m guessing that we stir up the bottom (shrimp maybe?) and they are down their munching away.

Today’s dock is Kilkenny Marina, it’s really a fishing camp set up just off the ICW. It’s older floating docks, but they have blistering fast Wi-Fi!

I think it will make it to the blog as the cover shot, the power pole here is very different. Along with the normal 50 and 30 amp twist locks there is also a 50 amp range / dryer and a regular 115 volt 20 amp receptacles. Power for everyone!

Did some minor work on the picture part of the blog, We are struggling with so many pictures and get them all organized has taken time.

Dinner tonight was porkchops, mashed potatoes and fried cabbage with onions in it. One of my favorite meals.

We are watching the tide come in, it runs about 9 feet per cycle, We’ll have some great pictures about that.

Rain last night. Rain over night. Rain this morning. So the song It’s a Rainy Night in Georgia is true.

It’s a down day, we are on the dock doing restful things. I’m catching up with Beer, Boating and robot blogs, so I’m all good to go.

Lunch was at the on-site place, oysters were good, the other stuff was not, but we had fun.

Boat naps after loading on 130 gallons of fuel. Slept too late almost missed docktails.

But Docktails was a success, lots of new boaters, always nice to meet new people

Here we go to St Simon’s Island. I’m now attuned to tides and currents and figuring out where the inlets are to let the water flow in an out. So as much as the rivers were a mess with rains and “pool levels” the ICW has it’s own challenges with the tides.

We drove at a constant 1,800 RPM, which should be 8.1 knots. Today we went from 12.4 knots !!! to 6.6 knots with an average of 7.7. It makes travel times hard, but I’ve been using 7.8 as my estimate rate for the last few days and it has worked out.

Susan’s on the down side with her dolphin friends. The ones in South Florida come and surf and leap along with us. The ones here skim the water, give her the eye and then go back to fishing. She thinks it’s because the water is cloudy they can’t see her waving at them. Lots of pods, but “meh, another boat” attitude.

Got to Jekyll Creek about noon, and the sky opened up. I wanted to run out and spray Simple Green, but thought I’d drown in the process. It was like a car wash for 15 mins and then blue sky, go figure.

Landed at Morning Star Marina, one of the 5 we will stay at on the way home. (It’s a cash bonus thing) They are super nice here. They have cars for loan, a nice bonus!

And we are in a new state, hello Georgia!

We grabbed 5 boats for Looper Docktails. The real surprise was meeting the crew of “FloatBoat Too”. They are 6 time Loopers, they did it without being part of the Looper group. They are very nice people, and we learned a lot. We also met the Loopers on Plane2Sea, this is their second stop on the Loop. We gave them advice “Do what you want to do”, “Don’t live by a schedule” and “All Looper advice is suspect”

Dinner in the downpour was smoked fish and a movie. Love when we have internet!