After fueling up at Brunswick (we are basically taking every opportunity, when the price is right, to fill up), we headed out towards Teakettle Creek to anchor for the night. Another Looper boat pulled in after us and anchored a little further down the creek. Around happy hour time, we loaded up into the dingy with some wine in sippy cups and the drone and headed over to meet them. We had a lovely chat while yelling from our dingy as they stood on their back deck - respectably more than 6 ft apart :). They were a very nice couple from Finland who had shipped their boat to Jacksonville and headed south for a couple of months and were now heading northwards hoping to complete the rest of the loop. After saying goodbye we drove a little further up the creek and David launched the drone. It turned out to be windier than expected up above sea level and we had a very exciting and extremely well executed grab-from-the-air landing before heading back to Highwind for the night.
The next morning, we pulled anchor and headed to Sunbury Seafood Co., a small restaurant that had its own marina. This was 8nm off the ICW, but was a recommended spot in our guide book, and they had assured us they were now offering take out, so we decided to give it a go. It turned out to be a great plan as we had an amazing feast of grilled fish, fresh crab, and a load of Southern sides. Southern hospitality is definitely a thing, since we've met nothing but lovely folks in our limited interactions thus far in Georgia (mostly marina and restaurant staff).
After Sunbury we headed toward Savannah. I had decided to make reservations at the Isle of Hope marina, which is about 8 miles south of downtown Savannah, since we knew that we wouldn't really be able to do much in the town anyway, and the guidebook recommended the marina. As David described on Facebook, this was our first experience of a no-touch marina landing. Essentially, they caught our lines, then placed a welcome packet and sterilized key card on our boat, then instructed us to call the marina office where we could pay by card over the phone. I wonder how many more marinas will start implementing this, and/or keep this practice once things start to return to normal...
We stayed mostly to ourselves again that night; I've even stopped looking for other Great Loop flags on boats in marinas where we stay as we can't really do that much socializing safely these days. We'd had some packages shipped to ourselves, which included a new water pump and new cell extender paddles for our cell antenna.
The water pump that David had previously installed unfortunately never worked correctly, and when on anchor we needed to turn off the pump every time we finished running the water since it wouldn't stop on its own. It turns out that Jabsco revised the design a few years ago and it's a known problem that they're working on redoing. Luckily, despite it being a spare that we'd had sitting in our storage for a couple years, it was still within warranty and Jabsco provided some excellent customer service to help get us a new fixed-pressure pump and accumulator solution that works for our boat/situation.
David has been looking at upgrading our cell antenna paddles for a couple of months, and after continued connection issues, decided to go ahead and order. The folks at WireEng allowed us just to pay the difference for these paddles over our existing setup, so it was a pretty good deal.
The next day we pulled the bikes off the boat and went for a bike ride to Savannah. It was a lovely ride, though extremely hot, but when we reached the central park in the city, it was full of people, which made us a little nervous, so we headed back to the boat, via a liquor store to top up on some essentials. There were lots of cute places that we passed along the way, so someday we'll have to come back to Savannah and visit for real! It is interesting how quickly the present situation has made us leery of being anywhere in proximity to people.
Savannah will be our last stop in Georgia as tomorrow we cross the border into South Carolina. I'll sign off this post with a *wave* from afar to Atlanta where some of my former colleagues live since we decided to cancel our plans to meet up while we were passing through.