Sailing Sailing Over the Ocean Blue. . .

This little blog, in which I used to take great pleasure and care with, will just lay here mostly dormant until I can disengage from this stupid church committee. I'll say no more about it but it is making me lose my religion.

The news here is really Duncan's -- he's thrown himself in with the Coast Guard Auxiliary and is now consumed with classes and meetings and reading navigational charts and -- amazingly enough -- cooking!

They offer, and he attended, an Auxiliary Chef course back in February, and now he is a USCG Auxiliary Food Service Specialist. He went down to Clearwater Florida with another fellow, Joe. and they had a great time together. They are like the grumpy old men, -- Joe is the sunny one and Duncan is the curmudgeon. But now they are cooking buddies and work some weekends in the galley at the Coast Guard station here in Charleston which is down on The Battery -- and a  couple of times they have gone out on working cutters for 3 - 4 day stints. Duncan can actually take up to 45 days a year as "military leave" from his job to do this. He is a happy boy.

Joe is a Public Affairs guy and travels with camera -- so all of these pics are thanks to him.

Here they go, off on a 4-day assignment.

Here's how their days started.

Getting Busy

This is what they came for.

Mission Accomplished

Here are some of the boat's crew. Duncan and Joe were cooking for about 15 all together. All these young guys called Duncan and Joe the FOFs -- Funny Old Farts -- so I take it everyone had a pretty good time.

A February Hike in the Woods

Duncan's February day-trip was a day of hiking and generally "messing around" in Francis Marion National Forest -- only about 30 minutes from where we live. This was a day to let Duncan's inner Park Ranger out to play and we enjoyed a couple of pretty easy hikes in the bare winter woods.  It was pretty quite and we only saw a few other people -- We agreed it was a good way to spend a Saturday.

You know you're in the Lowcountry when the bare winter woods have green fan palms sprouting up all over.

We started out on this trail through an area that used to be a rice plantation.

Our trail was clearly the old rice dike along this river that was flooded and drained for the rice crop.

Interesting the way these trees have grown and twisted. Some things you can only see when the leaves are gone.

Duncan tried his luck fishing when we took a break for lunch. He didn't catch anything and really didn't care.

After lunch we hiked a second trail that went through the woods and ended at this boardwalk on the marsh.

The boardwalk allows you to see, but still protects, an ancient shell ring  -- see that small mound at the base of the trees? It's basically a big pile of oyster shells believed to have been left by Prehistoric Indians 4,000 years ago. This is the northern-most ring in a chain of shell rings found along the coastline between Florida and South Carolina. They are thought to have been places where tribes gathered for ceremonies and annual feasts. Prehistoric oyster roasts.

We are liking our once a month get-aways. We have one more planned in March. We may have to keep it going.

55 and Still Kicking

This is the birthday gift that greeted me when I came down the stairs yesterday morning. Nice presentation, Duncan! After a year that has pretty much kicked my ass, it's nice to have my husband give me something to kick back with next year!

And here is another special birthday gift, from Mom. I have admired and coveted and begged for this ring for oh, about 25 years now. Mom and Dad bought the stone when they went to Brazil in 1979 and Mom had a jeweler design and make the ring using the gold from her mother's and grandmother's wedding bands.

I  think because I loved it from the minute I first saw it, Mom always meant to give it to me "at some point."  This year has reminded us to ask "What are you waiting for??" and  I love that she has made it a gift to me now.

On Sunday, Bert preached about "temples of memory" where you "harvest meaning from the seeds of experience." He said Christmas -- or a birthday or any anniversary -- is a temple of memory. Mary, when she learned she was pregnant, remembered her grandmother Hannah -- and The Magnificat -- the "My soul doth magnify the Lord" part are similar to words of Hannah. Anyway, if bread and wine can be Christ, I don't see why this ring can't connect me to the spirit of my mother and grandmothers in a sustaining way.

I wonder what my grandmothers would make of red cowboy boots?. Probably in their lives, they would shake their heads -- or scratch their heads!. But hopefully, from the vantage point they now have -- they are cheering me on..

Living Off the Land

September is "shrimp baiting" season -- when regular people, as opposed to just the commercial fisherman, try to fill their freezers with enough shrimp to last through the winter. The bait is a ground up fish meal mixed with clay -- pretty disgusting, but the shrimp like it and I choose not to think about it too much.






Duncan has had pretty good luck with his cast net in our tidal creek -- though you can never have enough shrimp in the freezer. One night this week, he brought the net in and found a nice flounder. Life is pretty good when you can have crab stuffed flounder with shrimp on the side and not even have to go to the grocery store.

Weekend in Savannah

As a late birthday experience for Duncan, we did a quick trip to Savannah over the weekend. We've lived here all this time and have never made it down there.

To my mind, it's a lot like Charleston -- historic neighborhoods, live oaks, Spanish Moss, pralines, shrimp and oysters. We did a couple of tours and felt Charleston tour guides needed to give theirs some lessons in customer service and general pizzazz. Have we already become lowcountry snobs? My favorite thing was just walking and wandering through old neighborhoods on Sunday morning.

Very pretty tree-canopied streets.


Gardens tucked away down alleys behind gates.


And of course, the famous "squares" -- this one; "To the heroic memory of Sergeant William Jasper who though mortally wounded, rescued the colors of his regiment in the assault on the British line about this city, Oct. 1779. Time has not dimmed the glory of the Irish American soldier whose last tribute to civil liberty was his noble life."

Wow, bet he wouldn't have called George Washington a liar during a speech to a joint session of Congress.

We drove a little further to the beach at Tybee Island and liked that a lot. We thought if we were to go back, we would want to go stay at the beach for a few days and make a day trip into Savannah instead of the other way around.

Tybee has an old fashioned feel to it, which I suppose means that there are houses on the beach instead of hotels and condos -- and some of the houses are older and smaller than what, sadly, has become the norm in such a fragile environment.

We were surprised by the incongruity of parking meters at an Arby's. Had not encountered that outside of a major metropolitan area, which I think Tybee Island prides inself in not being.

On the way home, we stopped at the Old Sheldon Prince William Parish Church about half way between Savannah and Charleston just off of 17. Though only a ruin, it was still very impressive.


Built between 1745 - 1755, burned by the British in 1779 and again by "the Federal Army" in 1865. Lots of civil war era graves surrounding the church and several with birth dates in the 1600s. It was a beautiful, quiet place, deep in the trees.

All in all, a fun, interesting little get away. We should do it more often.

Duncan's Birthday

Yesterday was Duncan's birthday so we gave him his due. Here he is with all his presents and cards. And evil brownies in lieu of a cake. We went down to Folly Beach for dinner. The plan was to eat too much and go for a long walk on the beach, but Hurricane Faye blew rain in steadily all day so it was too stormy for much beach walking. We drove through Folly though, and it looked nice there -- fewer people since school has started, things sort of buttoned down. We saw some surfers heading for the ocean, but they seemed to be about the only ones.



Here is Duncan's favorite card that came from his Aunt Mary. On the inside it says:

Another year closer to driving a gigantic car real slow with your little gray head peering over the dashboard!



He's not sure why she sent it to him though ;-)