“Jim” Lucas Theatre, Savannah
Well, the photo says it all. While walking around the historic downtown, we stumbled on this beautiful, restored old theatre called the Lucas.
Here’s the story of the restoration and a few photos: In 1986 the owners obtained a demolition permit and made arrangements to turn the once thriving Lucas Theatre into a parking garage. The news motivated a group of Savannah citizens who founded The Lucas Theatre for the Arts. The group pooled their resources, purchased the building and began what would be a $12 million restoration.
With a starting budget of $3 million and a looming workload ahead, the nonprofit Lucas Theatre for the Arts planned to restore the building in just a few years’ time. Several feet of water stood in the seating area, boxes were torn off the wall, all the seats were removed, the roof was leaking and the building had been stripped of its fixtures, all making the original estimated budget overly optimistic.
Supported by donations from Savannahians and celebrities such as Kevin Spacey, Clint Eastwood and the cast and crew of the film “Forrest Gump,” the complete restoration spanned nearly 13 years.
Savannah
We’ve passed Savannah on all previous trips, electing to stay on our course up, or down, the ICW. After spending a day there, I’m sorry we haven’t stopped previously. It is a short cab ride from our marina in Thunderbolt. About 7 miles ($15). It is, as they say, a walking city if the weather is right, and our weather was great. I won’t go on about the history, but here are some of our photos of the beautiful squares in the very organized historic downtown.
St. Augustine – Savannah
Cruising solo now. North Florida into southern Georgia. The weather is just perfect. Cool at night, warm days. Very little boat traffic on the ICW. I’ve only encountered 3 boats in 4 days. Endless marsh and winding rivers/creeks.
Anchored out two nights and arrived Savannah on the third day. You can see the huge boat repair building of Thunderbolt for miles as you approach from the South. This is a great marina. Nice docks. Helpful staff. Tubby’s is right down the road. Try the Moon River on draft. I had several.
Hare Raising Voyage
The fall weather couldn’t have been more beautiful for Audrey Hopburn’s first voyage aboard Seadee. Lucky for us she drove most of the way and navigated the rest. Now all we have to do is teach her how to handle lines and talk on the radio. ”What’s up Dock?”
Admiral Audrey concentrating on piloting our vessel into port.
Audrey stayed on top of the navigation.
Audrey surveys her cabin and dreams of bigger beds at home.
Megayachts to Tiny Bunnies
If you've cruised the ICW in the past 4 years you've seen Newcastle building a megayacht in their building off of the ditch in Palm Coast. Well, it was taking up 180 feet of the fuel dock in St. Augustine when Seadee docked at the City Marina. Apparently the Harbour Island is undergoing sea trials on its way to the Fort Lauderdale Boat Show. It's priced reasonably at $54.9M if you're in the market.
Have you ever seen a Cruising Bunny? Miss Audrey Hopburn joined the crew of Seadee for the first 2 days of the ROCKtoberbest Cruise. Keep watching the blog for more photos of Audrey's contributions.
This Baby Dolphin swam with us for miles, and it took Annie dozens of attempts to get a good picture of him performing his tiny dolphin jumps.
This is what happens if you don't wash your trawler when you get to the dock at night...
This guy wanted to eat our Cruising Bunny for breakfast! Luckily he was asleep and only woke up as we were pulling out of the marina.
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ROCKtober Cruise Set
Finishing preparations for our ROCKtober Southern Cruise. Annie and I will take the boat from Merritt Island (our home port) to Savannah Ga. Annie can only stay on for the first two days, in that she is now a working girl again. I’ll finish the trip north and, old boating companion, Jim Lucas will jump on in Savannah. Yes, this would be the recently married Jim Lucas. No, he doesn’t live in Savannah, he’ll be flying in from, waterlogged, courtesy of Irene, Connecticut. Should be fun. We’ll bring the boat back south, stopping in some of the spots we’ve missed on previous trips through this area.
We’ll be testing a new NAV system on this trip. Seadee’s main ship computer is getting a little long in the tooth, so I started investigating other options. We installed a Garmin 5212 on the fly bridge several years ago, and that system works great. We also installed a NEMA 2000 back bone, an Airmar PB200 device (heading, GPS, and Weather) and a Garmin 441 GPS in the main stateroom. The main ship’s computer has been a Shuttle running Windows XP and Nobeltec Admiral. I’ve never really been happy with a PC based NAV system as the main ship’s system. Too many port conflicts, resets, system freezes, all at the wrong time. The Garmin stuff just works. Easy to update, NEMA 200 ready, Plug and Play. If I was to do it all over again, that’s the way I would go. In the mean time, something has to be done. So, being a Mac guy, I pulled the Shuttle out and installed a Mac Mini running Boot Camp (allowing me to run Windows programs) and Coastal Explorer 2011. Coastal Explorer immediately found all of the ports with NEMA 2000 and NEMA 0183 data. The Nobeltec Radar uses the ethernet port to communicate and Coastal Explorer found and presented a setup screen to set up the radar. We have tried the new system out locally and everything seems to work fine. I don’t think I’ll be entirely happy until I can afford to put in a nice Garmin 7215 at the helm. However, to make the switch, the radar would have to be replaced, and why not a new AIS 600 transmitter/receiver, and the Garmin XM Weather reviver to update all of the ship’s systems to NEMA 2000? Total price tag to make the Garmin Network switch: Over $7000! Just another day in boating. You can follow our progress by clicking on our SPOT page.
Merritt Island Weather
