Try browsing to the '..\Documents\Larian Studios' folder and renaming the 'Divinity Original Sin' subfolder.
This folder contains the saved games, configuration files and a level cache folder. Deleting or renaming it will get the game to recreate it on startup; playing the game from a different Windows user account would effectively do the same thing.
If there was a problem creating those folders in the first place, perhaps recreating them will help.
Still no luck. I deleted the saves (yay..) and made new characters just to try saving on the beach a few times and sure enough on the third time it hanged.
