It’s just the way luck works. Sometimes little, and seemingly irrelevant
things, can have a big impact. Take
geography. South Carolina and North Carolina,
for example, although adjacent states, evolved into two totally different
places culturally because of an accident of geography. I never thought about this before I read it
in the excellent guidebook “Managing the Waterway”we’re using. South Carolina got all the good harbors, North Carolina got three dangerous
Capes – Hatteras, Lookout, and Fear -- and shifting shoals. It was so dangerous that the coastline of North
Carolina is nicknamed the “Graveyard of the Atlantic.” (We’re glad that
nowadays, with the building of the ICW, we have a safer inland alternative
instead of going around these!)
Here’s how the book explains it: “It’s not just that South Carolina
is warmer than North Carolina; the culture is different. South Carolina is the
Deep South: palm trees, southern cooking, and plantation architecture. South Carolina’s harbors, much more
hospitable than North Carolina’s, led to the development of a wealthy
plantation society with booming aristocratic cities like Charleston, Beaufort,
and Georgetown. This economic head
start and cosmopolitan culture still influence South Carolina’s coast.” [p
SC-67] By contrast, “With its dangerous
inlets, shoals, and capes, North Carolina developed very differently than its
neighboring coastal states. Virginia and
South Carolina, with their large protected harbors and easy ocean access,
dominated maritime commerce. … Bustling
ports, merchant wealth, and cosmopolitan cities developed on South Carolina and
Virginia’s harbors. But North Carolina largely
missed out on the boom. You won’t find
large commercial and naval ports like Norfolk, nor cosmopolitan cities like
Charleston. In North Carolina, the towns
along the ICW are smaller maritime communities…” [p. NC-39] Oh, yeah, one other thing North Carolina got
instead of deep harbors good for commerce?
Pirates. Those treacherous
shifting North Carolina shoals were great opportunities for high seas raiders
to plunder and then get away where it was too shallow for naval vessels to
follow them. The wreck of the famous
pirate Blackbeard’s ship was recently found near Beaufort, North Carolina; we
saw an exhibit of the first artifacts recovered from the wreck at the North Carolina maritime museum while we were in town.
We mused about how “geographic luck” colored our experiences
over the winter in St Augustine as well.
Had we picked any other marina than the municipal downtown location
we did, we would have been in a more suburban strip-mall setting instead of
walking distance to the old downtown.
Those spontaneous evening strolls are what stand out in my memory and
make us want to return someday. I
probably wouldn’t have been so charmed by the town and its rich history if we
hadn’t been right in the midst of the action.
And speaking of luck in a more prosaic sense, look what the
mechanic found on our boat yesterday! Can’t
say enough good things about the expertise, or the hospitality, here at Deaton’sYacht Service. Why does the discovery of a broken rudder stop cable have us doing a happy
dance? Well, because it was found at the
dock, instead of failing catastrophically at sea.
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