Back on Ka'imi - Georgia to Myrtle Beach, SC

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Here's Ka'imi at Thunderbolt Marine in Savannah, GA with a fresh coat of bottom paint ready to be splashed! The picture on the right is right after we were launched, notice all the Mega Yachts in the back. While we were in Hawaii we had some work done on Ka'imi, specifically we had the cutlass bearing replaced, new engine mounts, engined aligned, new raw water pump and the stuffing box repacked. We had the stuffing box repaired and re-stuffed at Tiger Point Marina in Florida in June 2007 - but they failed to do it correctly and the paraffin melted out leaving the stuffing material burnt and stuck. The good news is we contacted Tiger Point and let them know what happened. They sent us a check for the cost of having it repacked at Thunderbolt. We were very excited to see a business stand by their work, we would recommend you give them a visit if you need work done in the Fernandina Beach, FL area.


So here we are smiling and happy to be back on the water in our own boat exploring the world, meeting new people and trying to stay out of trouble. We're fine as long as we stay on the boat, just kidding. We left Thunderbolt Marina June 6, 2008 at 8:45 AM heading out to sea via the Wilmington River. It was a beautiful day with winds 10-12 knots coming out of the southeast and we were coasting along at 7 knots. It felt good to be home! It was very eerie sailing along the Georgia and South Carolina coasts because we were 45 nautical miles off the coast with a depth of only 86 feet and wrecks and obstacles everywhere! We decided to enter the Intercoastal Waterway (ICW) at Winyah Inlet in South Carolina the next day about 2:00 PM. We wanted to take a few days to enjoy our travels before we settled into a marina. We set anchor about a

mile into the inlet for a nights rest. The next day we traveled past Georgetown, SC a very historical city with a paper mill that smelled awful!!! The rest of the days travels took us past tree lined shores with lots of streams and rivers forking off, strangely some of the streams had gates on them. This stretch of the ICW is the Waccamaw River which our guide book says is one of the prettiest sections and we agree. There were very few houses in this area but the ones that are there are big and beautiful. Some were old and some were brand new and we saw signs of future developments

along the way, so it probable won't be so nice in a few years. The Waccamaw River was the site of many plantations before the Civil War. Unfortunately only a few still exist. These plantations were first dependent on the cultivation of indigo, but later they grew rice. Also along this portion of the River we saw advertisements for marinas and restaurants nailed up to a tree. Some of the houses had their very own docks with there very own yachts!



Our favorite anchorage in the ICW was just off the Waccamaw River on Bull Creek. Bull Creek is one of the largest auxiliary streams on the river, but it was very peaceful most of the time. During the day people would come by in their speedboats carrying skiers, wake boarders or tube riders. Small fishing boats also favored the creek. We found that alligators were abundant in this creek and we could not figure out why people were in the water.......we stayed in the boat. Kim had seen all the people in the water skiing, wake boarding and tubing and had vowed to jump in the water the next day for a dip.

However, we woke up early that morning as the morning dew and fog were lifting we saw several alligators cruising back and forth. Needless to say the swim ladder never came out. Kim will swim with sharks, but not alligators :)....The shoreline of this creek is entirely undeveloped with huge cypress trees along the edges. There were several anchorages along the creek and the protection was excellent. At night the shoreline would come alive with the sounds of frogs, birds and who knows what else, along with millions of fire flies or lightning bugs to create a magical mood.



When the tides flow in and out of the rivers and creeks in these parts, lots of things flow in an out along with it. Now if we were in Scotland we might think these pictures were of the Nessie monster...all we need is a little fog or mist.....what do you think?



Now this picture to the left is very hard to see bu if you click on it to make it bigger you can see an alligator in the river. That is one of the alligators we saw in the morning. We enjoyed this anchorage so much that we stayed a couple days. Every morning we saw the alligators and everyday we stayed on the boat. Actually, we did get to the shore with our dinghy. There was one beach that we could land on and we found tree swings that you could swing into the water with at high tide....I don't know, but everything we ever heard says that alligators will eat you? Are we wrong?



After we left Bull Creek it was a straight shot to the Myrtle Beach
Yacht Club where we settled in. We really liked the marina it had a swimming pool, a workout room and 3 miles of walkable docks. We were here about a week and found out about a County tax that taxes your boat like property after being their for 60 days. The tax was 4% of the value of your boat. That was way to expensive for us so we asked around and found ourselves a new marina. The unfortunate thing is that we would have to backtrack south to get there and we had already rented a car to get our car from Georgia. Oh well, here we go again....next destination Bohicket Marina on Johns Island, South Carolina, 25 miles from Charleston, SC. We are traveling again!

We are still loving life and living well on the water. Our next update takes us back down the ICW. Hope everyone is well.

Cheers Kim and Mike on Ka'imi

THANKS CRAIG!!!!!

We recently had engine problems and instead of calling in the mechanics we decided to tackle it ourselves. We enlisted the help of Mike's childhood buddy Craig. He has been giving us advice and we have dubbed him our online assistant mechanic!

Thank you Craig we appreciate all your help and time.

Cheers Mike and Kim

The Big Island of Hawaii

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Check out the bottom of the page for two new videos of Kristopher and Kim jumping off a cliff on the Big Island of Hawaii.

On May 2nd, we flew out of Honolulu and headed for the Big Island to visit Kim's son Kristopher, his girlfriend Amber and their dog Pupu. We had an excellent visit and got to the see the island from a locals point of view, missing all the touristy spots. Kristopher has a four wheel truck which is very handy on an island that is mostly volcanic. Speaking of volcanic, there were a few eruptions right before we got there. We had heard about the eruptions while we were in Honolulu and the vog (volcanic smog) had even reached the island of Oahu. It's looks like a bad day in Los Angeles. (Click here for more information and photo's of the eruption.)

Here's Kim, Kristopher and Amber on the left and Michael on the right at the restaurant The Coffee Shack. It's on Mamalahoa Highway (#11.)

The view from the lanai of the restaurant is incredible and below the restaurant are the Kahauloa Coffee Estate and Kealakekua Bay. The food was the BEST! If you ever make it over to the Kona Coast, you have got to eat their. Kona also has some of the best coffee, Kristopher and Amber had given us some for Christmas and we liked it sooo much, they sent us home with a couple more bags!

We shared our table with some Gold Dust Day Gecko's who happen to love Jelly. Amber took these great shots! These guys were not shy at all, they just hung around looking pitifully at you until you forked over the jelly bowls. We were very happy to oblige.

We have to introduce you to Pupu, Kristopher and Amber's dog. Pupu in Hawaiian means appetizer and unfortunately right before we came some Pit bull took the meaning literally. If you look at the picture on the right, that Pupu so graciously posed for or was she asleep...hmm... you can barely make out the pit bull's teeth marks. Amber and Kris were at the beach one day and Kristopher was in the water surfing. Amber and Pupu were just playing on the beach when this Pit bull came up (not on a leash) and grabbed Pupu by the neck and started swinging her like a rag doll. The owner was right there and he, Amber and a few other people were trying to pull the pit bull dog off. They finally managed to get them apart and poor Pupu was very distraught. They sent someone into the water to get Kristopher and he and Amber took care of Pupu. The owner of the dog had rescued the Pit bull and the wife was a holistic veterinarian, so they took Pupu to his wife to treat the wounds. Pupu needed more medical attention later and the owner's of the pit bull paid for everything without problem. It is very cool that people adopt and rescue any animal, but when you get an animal that may not be social - please remember to keep them on a lease so that they cannot hurt anyone!!!!

Since Pupu was still recovering he couldn't go on any of our adventures! But we took him for a couple of walks close to home while Kris and Amber where working. She missed a really good adventure when we went to the waterfall on a black sand beach. We were lucky to see the waterfall flowing, it had recently been damned up because of a drought. The sand on the beach was black and the hills behind it were green and tropical. This was the beach where they filmed the final scenes in the movie Waterworld when he finally finds land and you see the horses running.

After checking out the waterfall we parked the car and checked out the beach. You have to cross a river bed that empties into the ocean then you get on the long black sand beach. There is a community of people that live in a communal village a little way back into the foliage. The people that live there are very friendly and enjoy company. The have brownies and other goodies that they may

tempt you with!

Next adventure took us to a place where we could snorkel and cave dive. The snorkeling here was really good, but the best part was diving through the lava tubes. You dive through a short cave and come up to the surface, then go through another cave and come up through another hole...and so on and so on. That was a blast! The holes you can't see but are right in the rocks where Kris and Amber are in the pic to your left.

Kristopher and Amber tried very hard to entertain us by killing coconuts and feeding us the juice. They hunted them down, killed them and ripped them apart - they were very tasty!

The picture at the left was something out of the movies. We were driving down a mountain road and all of a sudden Kristopher starts to cross a river but instead of crossing the river he turns and starts to go up the river - I was thinking uh-oh I hope we don't get stuck - then all of a sudden we turn off the river onto another road....it was like a secret road...it was so cool. By the time we got the camera out this is the pic we got. The road went back a ways and there were farmers that lived back there and worked the land, it was really a beautiful place. There were a lot of horses and donkeys along the roads that we were taking, this is just a few of them.

A new day and another place, this place, South Point, was very difficult to get to and if you didn't have a four wheel drive you would have to walk a long way. It also would be very hard to find if you didn't know it was there. Kristopher found it when he first moved to the Island, some local brought him there to surf and camp.

The waves were small that day but Kris brought his board all that way and wasn't about to let that go to waste.

Here's Kristopher killing coconuts again..surfing is thirsty work!

This is another horsey we came across while traveling to the next destination.

After we left this beach we went to another point on South Point for some more cliff jumping. I remember seeing pictures of this place when Kristopher first moved to the island. It showed him jumping off this huge cliff and I was thinking WHATTT .... but it looked very beautiful. Well it wasn't that bad seeing it in person, I would of jumped myself but the temp had dropped, I was cold and tired at the end of the day. There were two ways to get out of the water once you jumped. You could either climb the ladder or swim through a lava tub and crawl out the blow hole. The views here were spectacular but as usual the days aren't long enough and the sun was setting and we had to make our way back to Kris's house.

To the left is a donkey we came upon somewhere on some road in Hawaii. To the right is Kristopher making me my Mother's day Eggs Benedict with tuna, avocado, tomato and fried potatoes. Kristopher is quiet the chef and is well known for his fabulous barbeques. He had a barbeque the night before for his friends, which I haven't seen for awhile, unfortunately we didn't get any pictures of them. There were many other places we visited in Hawaii with Kris and Amber that we didn't take pictures of we have a habit of forgetting to take the pictures when we are having a good time. It's only later that we regret that. Maybe we shouldn't of taken these pictures but after the party was over and all their friends went home we stayed up for a few shots. I gotta tell you, Michael was sick with a cold but what a trooper heh!

Our next update will include our journey north in Ka'imi to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina then back south to Bohicket Marina, Johns Island, South Carolina. Take care and Aloha from Kim and Mike

Pupu would like to ADAMANTLY, yet respectfully, request that any dog not capable of getting along with others be put on a leash!!

Click here to check out Kristopher's visit to Venezuela.