Savannah, Fire Trucks and Police Cars

There are lots of ways to get to Savannah. You can drive, take a bus, Uber, maybe a train, hitchhike, bike. Hey, get a horse. Just don't go in by boat!!!

After a lovely short trip from Beaufort, we came into the Savannah River, a narrow river filled with huge commercial vessels and virtually no small craft or pleasure boats. I tried calling ahead to the city dock and there was no response. We arrived to the downtown and saw a few ferries and tour boats and numerous small, working tugs. Bill finally reached the dock on a weekend phone number and we pulled up to the dock between 2 large tour boats. The river current was ripping and we  used every line we have on our boat to tie up.

After getting settled on the dock, we walked up the ramp to a riverfront park that was set up with souvenir vendor tents and a stage with a heavily amped DJ playing rap music. We were told that this would only go on until 1 or 2 am! Yikes.

We then walked up into beautiful Savannah. We took another tour, this one was terrific. The city was planned and laid out in rectangles in 1733 by James Oglethorpe. There were originally 24 block sized parks spread through the city and 22 of those parks remain.

Oglethorpe was ahead of his time.  Frederic Law Olmsted is considered the father of landscape design, and he worked 100 years later, designing many of the famous city parks in the US and Canada, including Central Park, the Boston parks and the Golden Gate park in San Francisco. Beautiful public space makes a big city livable.

The huge Savannah houses had seen better days until the 1970s, when the Savannah School of Art and Design (SCAD) began to do restoration projects. There are 80 buildings in town that have been fixed by this great art school. Many movies have been filmed in Savannah, including Forest Gump, The Longest Yard, Something to Talk About, and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which we watched last night on our boat after going by the mansion earlier in the day where the true story took place.


Late afternoon we went to the Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum, which featured a number of ship models done by a man from New Hampshire.  One model of the last slave ship showed how slaves were shackled during the voyage.   Others included every large vessel ever named Savannah.

We then had an early supper at the Gryphon, run by SCAD students.  The museum had been a mansion and the restaurant an old apothecary. Thinking we had had adventure enough with our arrival into Savannah, we headed back to the boat.

Fire trucks and police cars lined the Savannah waterfront, and our dock access was blocked off with police tape.  Fire fighters and police officers were everywhere.  As it turned out, two hours earlier the gangway that goes down to the dock collapsed, sending 54 people on a +/- 15 foot fall.  They had been waiting for a ferry to cross the river.  Seven had to be pulled from the water, and some went to the hospital with non-threatening injuries.  Unfortunately, one fire fighter died from a medical complication while assisting in the recovery effort.


There was no safe access to our boat, the only vessel at the city dock.  We spoke with the deputy city manager, a police officer and a fire fighter.  They suggested patience and said they would work something out to get us to our boat.  Finally, a deputy fire chief came up to us with a plan.  The Fire Department boat would pick us up at another dock and drop us off at our boat, provided that we moved it immediately.  It was now dark, and I was very concerned about motoring on this busy river, filled with commercial traffic, large and small, 24-7.   The ships are so large that they fill the whole sky when viewed from our boat.

The plan worked, and the Savannah fire fighters brought us right to our boat. We left with our navigational lights on to find another dock and after a little suspense in the swift current and a little pleading from me (slightly overly dramatic?) went on to the Westin staff  ended up at the hotel dock across the river. 

It was a good thing that we watched the movie because dredging, shipping activity and boat wakes went on until well after midnight.  Everything started again at 6 am Sunday morning although the wind had died down.


This ship has roughly 6,000 containers.  The dredging will
bring the harbor capacity to ships holding 10,000 containers.

We have had a quiet regrouping morning on our boat watching all the shipping and dredging activity. Now we will head for a quiet anchorage in Hilton Head tonight before leaving our boat there tomorrow and then heading to Atlanta for Thanksgiving. We are going "off the air" for a week or so and we hope everyone has a peaceful holiday.