Rainy Day in Georgetown

We had been pretty lucky with the weather this trip...sunny skies, reasonable winds little rain (once we passed Solomon's on the Chesapeake), which enabled all those great sunset views....until today...
It is cold, rainy, windy, more cold (44 degrees this afternoon)...not fun at all.

Walked around town (well bundled in foul weather gear) and toured the rice museum, where I learned about an industry and way of life built on the cheap labor of slaves. It worked great for the plantation owners till those damn northerners butted in in 1865 and ruined the business. I then toured the Georgetown Maritime museum, where I learned about an industry built on the availability of enormous amounts of trees (like the ones I showed in the pictures taken along the Waccamaw river). Initially the trees were cut and shipped to boat builders in Maine, but then some enterprising folk decided to build the boats closer to the source of the wood. It worked fine and some impressive 3 and 4 masted schooners were built, but then the Maine boatbuilders threatened to start buying their wood elsewhere and the entrepreneurs quickly folded, recognizing the profit in cutting and selling wood was greater than that in building boats. Some of them turned to making paper, and some paper mills exist in Georgetown to this day (you can smell them when the wind is right).

After touring the rest of the town (didn't take long...its a small town) I returned to the boat, attended to some minor tasks, including doing the laundry, and then spent the day reading and relaxing.

The flotilla crew went to dinner at the Old Fish restaurant (formerly Big Tuna) and had a fine meal. I had a whole flounder that is prepared in an unusual way...the fish is scored in a grid pattern, then fried and served whole. The scored lines go to the bone and serve to cut the meat into bite sized portions...awesome!

The flounder, with one square removed for tasting...great!

We are still a little up in the air about what to do tomorrow. The winds are predicted to be high in the morning, moderating later in the day. We may just stay here another day and leave on Monday...we'll decide in the morning.

There are no sunset pictures today...sunset was cancelled due to the rain.