The hospitality of Savannah

This entire voyage is dependent on a successful truck trip from Chattanooga to Savannah. It couldn't have gone better. The Atlanta truck and Island Cove Marina did a great job of pulling Invictus out of the water and lowering her onto a tractor trailer.

We were pulling an empty 36-foot boat trailer to the same boatyard in Savannah for a friend whose boat was being rebuilt there. We left Chattanooga about 11 a.m. and arrived at the Hinkley yard in Savannah two minutes before they closed for the day at 5:30. We dropped the trailer off so that we could go back to town to stay in a beautiful carriage house that belongs to some friends.

Last year at my daughter's wedding, our friends Bobby and Liz said, "please come stay with us in our carriage house when you launch your big voyage!" (Be careful what you say at a wedding where they are serving drinks.)

They showed us that southern hospitality that made this town famous. We enjoyed their historic home in the evenings while we prepped and provisioned Invictus for the trip ahead.

On Tuesday morning, the lift operator at the Hinkley Yard lifted Invictus off the truck with less than a 1/2 inch margin for error. By 9:00 a.m. she was floating in salt water.

We moved her out onto the courtesy docks where she will ride out the 9-foot daily tides until we depart. I put the mast back up from it's lowered transport position, washed all the highway dirt off and started loading all the gear onto the boat. The biggest challenge was the inflatable dinghy and outboard. With Linda's help, we squeezed these into the port lazarette locker. We won't need these until we get into areas where we will be anchoring or staying on a mooring ball. For the first part of the trip we'll be in marinas every night and don't want to deal with the hassle of the dinghy hanging in davits on the stern of the boat.

We came back to town and joined our friends for a stroll to a rooftop bar and restaurant that was a short distance from their house through Forsythe Park. If you haven't visited Savannah, put it high on your list. It has an authentic character and charm that is unrivaled in the Southeast.

We went to bed tired -- but ready to leave the Hinkley Yard at Thunderbolt, Georgia on the rising tide (late morning) on our way to Hilton Head Island via the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway.

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