Hickory Dickery Dock... The Boat Just Sank Like a Rock!

I am on at Atlanta for the NASCAR race and my phone rings. It's Dr. Donohue Waters, who lives next door to the community dock.  He says "Hey! I'm looking at my dock cam and there's a boat sunk at the community dock!" 

I reply, "please tell me it's not mine!" 

"Nope, it's not yours!"  

I feel a flood of relief.

I have an idea of which boat it is, but I'm not sure, so I call the dock club president. He already knows about it. And so does the owner. Towboat US is on the way for a salvage recovery. In short order, they raise her with an airbag or two, tow her away, and tally up a major bill that will have to be paid by insurance or out of the owner's pocket. 

Having your boat sink sucks, and is to be avoided if at all possible. 

For a boater, there are few sights more forlorn and sad than that of a sunken boat. Whether she's down on her luck, down by the head,  or completely upside down, a boat isn't supposed to be sunk. 

The first thing that comes to mind is that someone has made a mistake--and whether it's an error of action or inaction, it's bad. You've probably heard that a stitch in time saves nine. Well, when it comes to a boat, a few dollars and a few minutes of work spent now may save a boatload of money later. And later may come sooner than you think.

In the case of this vessel, I observed her laying significantly lower in the water a few weeks ago after days of heavy rain. I alerted the owner who came and got the water out of her. What he failed to do however was to take that near-miss to heart and make sure his stuff was tight and right. And while I was enjoying a NASCAR race last weekend, Savannah had a whole bunch of rain come down. 

Having a good bilge pump in working order, an automatic switch that will turn it on in the event of flooding, and a strong battery to power it are the keys to this not happening to you. The salvage bill for this event will be in the thousands of dollars. The electronics are ruined. The engine may be ruined. When it comes to a boat, out of sight must NOT be out of mind. In the event you are in the middle of getting your boat in good order when storms come, you may need to get your butt off the couch and go check on your boat. And take a good bailer. 

Folks often underestimate how little water it takes inside your boat hull to sink her. If you have a cutout transom, a few inches of water inside her, and your stern pointed in the wrong direction, that slight reduction of freeboard is what allows wind-driven waves to finish the job. It takes less than you might think. 

Sidebar: If your dock has a prevailing wind or wave direction, put the pointy end of your boat that way. 

We had to moor this little skiff with her bow toward the open water in Islamorada.
At night, the waves got big. If we had put her stern to them, she'd have sunk.

Even with a good battery and bilge pump (or two or more of each) you have to keep up with what's happening down below. In the case of a float switch, any piece of debris sloshing around might become lodged in the float and keep the pump running until the batteries run out of power. On the other hand, a piece of gear, like a throw-cushion (a type-4 PFD) or a loose fender might find itself interfering with the float operation. Then the pump, she no come on...

You have to attend to this stuff. Don't procrastinate.  Putting it off can end badly. Whether the bill is big or little, it's bad and it's sad and it doesn't need to happen. 

Talk about a crying shame...

Anticipation

 In the 90s, I  wrote an article for the Nightstalker's in-house newsletter (IP Inbound) entitled "Demo Fever."  and after it was published a fellow 3rd Herder said to me "I can't believe you wrote that about yourself!" 

I told on myself because I realized that if I was thinking and doing these things others might be as well, and perhaps my shared experience might help someone avoid making my mistake. The theme of that article, discussing what happens to your heart, head, and hands when you are doing a flight demonstration, came up again when I revised Demo Fever for Vertical 911 Magazine. That was a story about one of my first flights as a Chinook Pilot-in-Command at Fort Bragg. I almost made history. 

All of us understand that we need to learn how to operate a machine, but more of us should understand that we need to learn how to operate people too--most especially ourselves.

The need for honest self-assessment and personal performance-review never leaves us. I am a boat captain now, and the same hard truths that thumped me over the head as a pilot continue to thump me over the head today. Just yesterday I was doing a mid-winter run on my 6-pack boat to charge batteries, circulate fluids, and wash off the bottom. It was windy and cold and I went about a mile from our dock and said to myself, "screw this." I turned around. I was idling under the Highway 80 bridge when the boat thumped under my feet. It sounded like I was running aground over hard stuff. 

My brain said to me, "you are in deep water, you can't be running aground!" WTH and WTF?

Being startled, I failed to perform a basic common-sense immediate-action step. PUT ENGINE(S) IN NEUTRAL and PRESS THE UP-TRIM SWITCH! The thumping feeling and sound moved toward the stern and then the idling engine jerked and jumped. A 6 foot-long 2 by 6-inch board rolled out from under the motor and rolled over in my wake. The nails that had once fastened it to someone's dock were sticking out of the ends. My next thought was, "thank God I didn't hit that at speed!"

I stopped the engine and trimmed it all the way up out of the water to check the prop for damage. All good.

So, after-action-review. Yesterday was the aftermath of a very high tide with high winds. Those conditions put more debris in the water, and the "wrack," (floating piles of marsh-grass debris) was everywhere. A tide that flushes out the wrack will flush out other debris too, so take care and expect this. Note to self: If your boat is hitting something underwater as you make way through it,  take immediate action to try and prevent damage to the lower unit and propeller. 

To train for this: Next time you are standing at your helm at the dock, pretend that you are driving the boat and say to yourself, "we are hitting something!" Practice putting your hand on the throttle and your thumb on the trim switch. Do this a few times to develop muscle memory and set the pattern in your brain. 

There are lots of things hanging out just beneath the surface, 
like manatees...

The opposite of being startled is anticipation. I vote that we anticipate trouble and hope that it never finds us.

What You Don't See Can Hurt You!

This is a typical low-country creek at low tide, viewed from the causeway onto Callawassie Island
Those mounds of "pluff mud" are covered with oysters, and their shells are sharp! If you 
hit one at speed and get ejected, there will be blood.

Our tidal creeks are beautiful and full of hazards. The swirling currents of our 6 to 9-foot tides create deep holes down to 50 feet or more--here--and oyster reefs just under the surface there. With no rhyme or reason beyond fluid dynamics, these hazards are everywhere. When a rising tide covers them with a few inches of water, they are hidden.

Mike Neal owns Bull River Cruises and gave me my start in the tour business.  He is involved with movie production and took me up Groves Creek near Priest Landing last year. He was showing me where boat scenes from Gemini Man were filmed.  We were there on a flooding tide and at idle speed. 

Mike passed on a good strategy for exploring uncharted creeks. "If you want to go exploring a creek, go in shortly after a low tide, with more water becoming available shortly to float you off if you get stuck. You can better see the layout of the bottom then. Go slow!"

I would recommend a neap-low versus a spring-low so that you have some water available shortly after the low tide, but can still see the bars, mounds, and oyster-reefs or rakes.

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Having someone along to draw a picture of the creek (with the hazards noted) and the route to follow, or just to take pictures, will help you on future trips. You will want your motor trimmed up part-way, but with more up-trim available should you need to stop and back off of a rising bottom. Go as slowly as you can while maintaining control. A lookout posted in the bow can help you spot hazards before you hit them--and be mindful that oysters will destroy your fiberglass finish if you run across them. Water leaving a creek near low tide will form a deeper channel. It may be in the middle, or it may hug one bank or the other. It probably won't follow a straight line but will wind back and forth across the width of the flood area. The outside of a curve is usually deeper, but not always. 

At high tide, the creek pictured above has enough water to go where you want, but clearly, the hazards become a problem as the tide falls. You don't want to get stuck in any creek on a falling tide unless you have hours to spare. 

Since you can't see where the hazards lie at high tide, that's not really the best time to go in somewhere new. And there might be a bar or rake high enough to stop you even on a high tide. Plotting a safe course (if one exists) on a rising tide is your best bet. 

Take care, and enjoy the scenery!

The Saga of Sea Island Cotton in Savannah...

It's downright fascinating how the threads of history get woven together This is never more true than when studying Savannah's history. The twists, turns, and intersections never disappoint the curious mind or the wandering eye.

My son Corey Foulds came to visit us over Christmas, and of course, we had to go riding on boats every day he was here. During one of these rides, Corey mentioned that he had flown over Mallorca (or "Majorca") an island in the Mediterranian Sea, and wanted to go there.

His comment triggered some memories I have of reading about Majorca and it's smaller island-neighbor, Minorca. Minorca figures in our family history as one of my sisters married a Minorcan man whom she met near St. Augustine, Florida during my childhood. I had heard bits and pieces of the story of how people from Minorca came to be in Florida, and today the picture became much clearer. And of course, there's a connection to Savannah's islands and her rivers.

While reading my research books (Once Upon An Island, Elizabeth Carpenter Piechocinski / A Georgia Tidewater Companion, Buddy Sullivan / Tidecraft, Rusty Fleetwood) I have come across remarks about "a letter" several times. The letter was written to the newspaper by a local plantation owner, Nicholas Turnbull, protesting published claims made by, or on behalf of, another plantation owner, Francis Levett, Jr, to have been the first person to grow black seed "Sea Island" cotton on the Georgia Coast.

I didn't know why the question of who was first was important, as in good time all of the planters became wealthy (thanks mainly to the efforts of the slaves they all owned.) Bragging rights? Prestige? Money?

I decided to read more about the history of Minorcans, and the area that they were initially brought to, which was named "New Smyrna," in Florida. Here's a link

This project was the brainchild of Nicholas Turnbull's father Andrew, a Scottish physician and consul to Smyrna, part of what was then the Ottoman Empire on the coast of the Mediterranian. The name "New Smyrna" was in honor of Andrew Turnbull's wife, who was from that area. Turnbull set out to recruit immigrants from many locales around the Mediterranian, ending up with over 1400 souls, most of whom were from Minorca. The proposed colony failed in fairly short order, and many of the Minorcan's relocated to the area around St. Augustine. This makes sense as St. Augustine was founded by Spaniards, and Minorca is near Spain. After the demise of the project, Andrew Turnbull relocated to Georgia.

While reading the story about Andrew Turnbull, the name of one of his partners in the New Smyrna venture caught my attention; that of Francis Levett. I had seen that name somewhere else. Indeed!

"I conceive Mr. Levett is not entitled to any merit, as previous to that time the quantity was made in this state and shipped to (England) by the Savannah merchants, and the character firmly established; I do not suppose the trouble was great to Mr. Levett, or cost him anything, and which any anyone could have done as well as himself...The state is not the least indebted to Mr. Levett...( Nicholas Turnbull letter to Georgia Gazette, (Savannah), November 28, 1799, via "A Georgia Tidewater Companion.)

Now when you read that passage, it sounds like a story from today. Anger, jealousy, bitterness? All there.

And I'd bet it had everything to do with the economic relationship between the two fathers that was begun in 1769 with the work at New Smyrna thirty years prior. A relationship that went south just before the two men came north to Georgia.

If you are wondering what all this had to do with our creeks, rivers, and islands, well here's what an anonymous contributor wrote in the Columbia Museum and Savannah Advertiser in the fall of 1799--this is an excerpt of the letter that sparked Nicholas Turnbull's angry response a few weeks later...

"(Growers of) Sea Island Cotton (from the Caribbean Islands) gave the early planters ... a supply of that article from their own country, and completely foiled the making of indigo in the United States; but thanks to our climate, though the planters were compelled to turn their attention to something else, they recollected that cotton could be cultivated on lands that produced indigo, and included their thoughts to that article, and to this most were encouraged by a crop of black seed cotton from seed procured for Major Barnard on Wilmington Island which was raised on the island of Skidaway, 10,000 lbs. of which crop was shipped to England in the spring of 1791 by Messrs. Johnston and Robertson on account of Francis Levett, Esq. which established the character of Georgia sea island cotton; being the first shipment of any consequence; and to him (Levett) the state is indebted... (Companion, pg 98)

From a further reading of both full letters on the Jstor site (where you can enjoy the first-ever Georgia Historical Quarterly,) I can see that Josiah Tattnall (of Bonaventure Plantation) gave Nicholas Turnbull (of Deptford Hill Plantation) one-quart container of cotton seed that he had obtained in Carolina. That seed was planted on Whitemarsh Island. It was taken there by Turner's Creek or Richardson's Creek. The rest is, as they say, history.

Thanks to JStor for making these letters available...

Now, About That Scrap Iron...

If you visit Daufuskie Island, you will surely come across the "Scrap Iron" drink made and sold at Freeport Marina's Old Daufuskie Crab Company. 

It's a delicious and seemingly harmless concoction. But if you have two or more, you may find that your gyros have come uncaged when you stand up from the bar. 

The Scrap Iron legend is one of the great Stories from the Creek. It goes like this; the government stopped the oyster industry on Daufuskie, due to pollution from the Savannah River spreading to the Daufuskie oyster grounds. This put the Daufuskie islanders out of work, so they improvised and made 'shine in stills hidden in the Daufuskie woods. They moved this product by bateau to Savannah's clubs and bars, hidden under piles of scrap iron--cut up cars, trucks, and tractors abandoned in Daufuskie's woods--that they were purportedly selling here. Great "cover" story, aye?

We came across another reference to "Scrap Iron" while reading "Once Upon An Island." by Elizabeth Carpenter Piechocinski. This reference, quoted from Walter "Cork" Shaaf, connects the dots between moonshine made in illicit stills by black men on Daufuskie and a little joint here on Whitemarsh Island where black men went to socialize and enjoy a cold drink. These black men would have been the sons and grandsons of slaves freed when Sherman came to town. After the civil war and into the early 1900s, they made up a large part of the island's population, having been given these lands by Special Field Order #15, and then having had it taken away from them again after President Lincoln's assassination. 

From the book..."(Cork )Shaaf went on to say that there was a man named Johnny Gray who lived near the marshes, near the bridge to Oatland Island. Close by, the blacks had a nightclub they called 'Dad's Place,' and it was there they would go to drink the Scrap Iron." (emphasis added). 

Now there is a Gray's Creek and Gray's subdivision on Whitemarsh, and I'd bet there's a connection there.

Here's another connection. If you remember the film "The Legend Of Bagger Vance" that was made here about twenty years ago, you know that it was a story about a Savannah area Golf Course and Club that fell on hard times with the stock-market crash of 1929. That story parallels the history of the old General Oglethorpe Hotel and Resort which fell on hard times in real life during that time. 

In the film, Bagger Vance, played by Will Smith, came to help a World-War-One combat-vet plagued with PTSD. This veteran was played by Matt Damon, and he struggled with his golf game and his drinking. There's a scene in the film in which Damon is drinking with some black men in an establishment...

Okay, this would have been during Prohibition, which lasted from January 17th, 1920 until December 5th, 1933. So any liquor joint would have been illegal and "undercover." (But they were everywhere!)

And the story is clearly about the General Oglethorpe's golf course. And there was a nightclub on Whitemarsh called Dad's Place where black men went to drink!

Are you feeling me?

Last night, I told all of this to Robin McMahon, co-owner of the Flying Fish here on Wilmington Island. She loved the connections and told me that she is going to concoct a Flying Fish version of the Scrap Iron and sell it to customers coming off our tour boat. 

Let's drink to that!

Oatland Island's Storied Past is a Story Worth Telling...

Image courtesy Oatland Island

 Who knew? 

Oatland Island, which can be viewed from Richardson Creek on an Island Shuttle Boat Tour, has a long and fascinating history. In the 1700s and 1800s, it was a plantation, undoubtedly worked by slaves. In 1927, it was the location of a home for retired Railroad Conductors. (In "Once Upon an Island" by Elizabeth Carpenter Piechocinski,  Walter "Cork" Shaaf recounts those old conductors fixing nets and fishing rigs for him and the other children living on the island.) In 1941, it became a home and research facility for women and children with syphilis and other STDs. In 1945, penicillin eliminated the need for that function, and the old building became a component of what we now call the CDC. 

And it was there that the No Pest Strip (marketed by Shell if memory serves) and the flea collar for pets was invented! After the CDC consolidated facilities in Atlanta, the property was deemed excess and was given to the local school system. School children have enjoyed learning about the natural world there since the early 1970s, and I have picked up groups at their dock on Richardson Creek with Michael Neal and Bull River Cruises in conjunction with Kelly Tours. 

As I wind through these backwater creeks, I learn more and more that every place you see has a story. Chasing those stories down, and sharing them, is great fun!

Click here to learn more...

Shrimping Life...

Continuing a proud tradition! (image by the author)

During the middle decades of the 1900s, an entire fishing industry grew up in our region. Hundreds of shrimping trawlers were built and put into service--many of them from the DESCO boat company in St. Augustine Florida--and thousands of men were provided employment as they brought food to the nation's table. Our favorite Captain, Clyde Carrell "Buddy" Lee spent about twenty years of his working life aboard these vessels and tells of legendary characters who plied the waters and lived the life. Here's another account of that life, from another "Buddy,"

"In summers, I had the opportunity to accompany Hugh Burrows out on the Pinta for all-day shrimping in the offshore Atlantic waters. These excursions were always memorable, but we worked hard. Bobo was not into providing pleasure cruises, if you went fishing with him, you earned it.

We helped with the nets, headed shrimp, hosed down the deck between catches, and cleaned the galley. During the drags, we took cat naps on the bow in the warm sunshine. The long extended double outriggers towed the nets, and the vessel's powerful Caterpillar Diesel engine towed the accumulating bags and catch along the seafloor.

Image courtesy U.S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries
The "Try Net" in the middle is pulled in mid-drag to see if there are shrimp present.

These trips were always made enjoyable by the food. The local shrimpers definitely knew how to eat. Usually, the striker prepared breakfast just as dawn broke and the sun rose over the horizon. With the first drag of the morning begun and a two-hour lull before hauling in the nets, there would be strong steaming coffee served up in thick crockery mugs with sugar and canned milk, hot grits with butter, and scrambled eggs with ham or bacon.

Lunch came in the early afternoon. It was often shrimp creole, prepared with shrimp that had been in the ocean an hour earlier, simmered in a thick-and-spicy, made-from-scratch, perfectly-seasoned tomato sauce, with onion, bell pepper, and a dash or two of oregano. This blend was served over real white rice, with sweet iced tea to wash it down. It was a grand, almost romantic life..."(from "A Georgia Tidewater Companion" by Buddy Sullivan)

Today; over-fishing, high fuel-prices, and pond-scum-shrimp imported from China have pretty much ruined this once proud and prolific industry. I could gross you out telling you what those pond-owners feed those shrimp they are raising, but let's just say that you can't make chicken salad out of what they eat.

Image courtesy Josephine Johnson: music and photography!

Video courtesy of The Shrimp Alliance. Click here to visit their site

The boat-haul rails and winching-machinery at the old Sasser docks on Wilmington Island are now rusty relics. There are no boats to haul out. The shrimp-boats are going away. Many of them are abandoned, burnt, or sunk.

Image courtesy Diesel Engine Sales Company (DESCO)

You can still see a few shrimpers at work, and Nelson's Shrimp Company in Thunderbolt still sells Wild Georgia Shrimp caught right here (and the best shrimp to have for a Low Country Boil). For an easy and fun way to enjoy the taste of our place, go sit at the Flying Fish Bar and Grill. Tell Heather we sent you!

Situated on Highway 80 just east of the Bull River Bridge, The Flying Fish has great seafood and a great atmosphere to match. The newly covered deck and big outdoor bar, complete with 85 inches of big-screen sports action, make for a memorable visit.
Please tell them you were sent by SavannahBoater.com!

Georgia's shrimping industry is not what it used to be, but don't despair. Life has taught me that the tides of fortune go out, and then they come in again. Sooner or later our shrimping industry will recover fully as people learn the truth about imported shrimp.

Image via My Georgia Coast

The sun will rise again for Georgia shrimping. You can do your part by refusing to purchase imported shrimp. When you go to a restaurant, ask your server if the shrimp has been harvested locally. Every dollar we put into our community passes through the hands of several of our friends and neighbors. Let's support them, and ourselves!