Amazing Dan was back aboard dumping the clean laundry he had already finished washing and drying on the settee when I tumbled out of the bunk this morning! I folded. We headed into Charleston (our marina is across the Cooper River from the city proper) on the water taxi this morning at 11. That got us there in time to get an early lunch and spend the rest of the afternoon adventuring. We stayed as a group through lunch and then went our separate ways to see the sights and do a little shopping. Dan and I visited the market downtown and then went on a search for a hardware store (we're talking Dan now, you understand) as we had already determined that there wasn't a West Marine anywhere nearby. We did find one, but discovered we had almost everything it had to offer! Our next stop was Harris Teeter, which rivals Whole Foods for being an enjoyable grocery experience, and bought much too much to have to carry back, but we managed. We caught the complimentary 4:15 shuttle back to the Charleston Harbor Marina & Resort in order to be back in time for the CCYC southern branch Italian Dinner. Besides the eight of us CCYCers, John and Betty had invited their friends, Dick and Jean Citron. They are living aboard their 79' power cruiser Absolutely and we had met them in River Dunes. They are veterans of this migration stuff and had lots of tips for us. All in all a very enjoyable evening. We are off early tomorrow in the hopes of re-creating our coup of two years ago ----tying up with the shrimp boats at B&B Seafood where we got the best and freshest shrimp we'd ever had.
~~~_/)~~~M&D
The ride over to Charleston on the water taxi was worth the price because the guys running it recommended this great restaurant. We enjoyed great southern and seafood dishes at Fleet Landing, a converted Navy depot turned trendy eatery. I had a Fried Green Tomato BLT, not like anything I'd ever eaten! Amazingly delicious.
Dan was up early and captured some birds. I don't think the two seagulls are overly impressed with the audacious display by the cormorant. Here is an ibis, looking very snooty. The reason the crane has his beak open a bit is he is busy swallowing a silvery minnow which unfortunately didn't show in the picture.
You can't imagine how disappointed I was to find that this was the best example of gum sticking I could find as we walked around Charleston this afternoon. The phone pole I pictured two years ago was CLEAN!!! So I guess some traditions do die.
We've had a friendly running argument with Pete about whether to use knots and nautical miles or MPH and statute miles when discussing and planning our travels. The ICW is measured in statute miles,Pete has always used MPH, etc. but the rest of us have had our knot meters and GPSs set to record knots and nautical miles! Well we had to do some hard calculating for today's trip because we had 60 statute miles to come and we had to make sure that we arrived at the Ben Sawyer bridge (about two miles from the entrance to Charleston Harbor) before it closed at 4 PM. Usually it is closed from 4-6 for rush hour, but the guide books were saying that it would be closed from 4-12 for maintenance! There is no way to accurately predict the currents (once you leave the Georgetown area) as they change constantly with each new creek or inlet you pass, so we pushed hard and used jibs whenever possible and made to the bridge by 2:40pm. A big sigh of relief. It took us another hour to reach our slips as we were fighting an outgoing current of 1.5+ knots all the way up the river! We decided to join forces and all ate together aboard Brunelle. Tomorrow night is Italian night - - in honor of CCYC's Italian night that we will be missing, so John and Betty are hosting us all. Doesn't look like will starve anytime soon....or lose any weight!
~~~_/)~~~M&D
I missed this series of pictures when I unloaded the camera after we arrived in Georgetown. This fishing boat was hovering at the sea buoy at the entrance to Winyah Inlet and I was fascinated to see a guy working out on one of the booms. They set out the nets as we skirted them to enter the inlet and then steamed off to the north.
The 6:45 departure from Georgetown had as witnessing yet another beautiful sunrise. We powered out past Georgetown's paper mill and joined the continual parade heading down the ditch. There are more boats this year than we encountered on our trip two years ago. We also saw several different birds. I neglected to get a picture of several Ibis, but did capture hordes of sandpipers that took over several of the long piers that jut out into the creeks and waterways of SC. I also captured this kingfisher (he was barely visible in the dead tree on the shore) and was pleased that our new camera allowed me to blow it up enough to actually identify him!
Here we all are nestled comfortably at the Charleston Harbor Marina and Resort. We are across the river from Charleston proper, but there is free shuttle service into town for marina guests. As peaceful as it looks, there is quite a current ripping through here, but there are breakwaters all around that keep the wakes and chop from bothering us. This IS a busy harbor.
The USS Yorktown is our neighbor. We hope to get a better look at her tomorrow.
Everyone looked bright and well rested this morning... a good night's sleep does wonders. The day was gorgeous and we took advantage of it to do some washing down of salty decks and Dan worked on troubleshooting John and Betty's running light problem. The solution was they needed to be replaced, luckily under warranty, so new ones are being FedExed to Charleston. Dan opted to change the oil and do a few other engine chores as did Pete and John, so the girls decided to head to town to look around (Glen and Maureen had headed in earlier.) The walk was a pleasant one, past several lovely old homes and took us to Front Street, the main drag. We saw several people lining the streets with expectant looks on their faces and realized it was Veteran's Day and a parade must be in the offing. We chose to walk back along the River Walk and were just leaving the end of it when we heard the announcer start the parade. We walked back toward Front Street and watched several bands, ROTC (high school groups), antique cars, service groups etc. march by. We couldn't stay long because we needed to get back to go out to dinner at Lands End, a good seafood restaurant right next to our marina. Tomorrow is a 6:45 start, so I'm off to bed.
~~~_/)~~~M&D
Kathy Bruzik caught this amazing picture of us as we were watching the sunset and waiting to see the green flash. Both Dan and I are pretty sure there was one that night!
I need to make a correction. Katherine pointed out that she noticed snouts on many of the porpoises pictured in yesterday's blog and questioned whether they were tursiops truncatus (better known as bottle nosed dolphins) our not. Most of what we saw were bottle nosed dolphins (a mammal) not porpoises (also a mammal, but with a much stubbier snout and thicker body. I was wrongly under the impression that the only true dolphins were the fish dolphin and people calling Flipper types dolphins were incorrect. Not so, if you want to learn more, here is the link Katherine sent.
The only boat we saw today was this USCG boat that was in the Veteran's Day Parade in downtown Georgetown!
I was glad we had sent out our nightly SPOT signal to family members (we get a copy too) because I clicked on it to find out where we actually were! We arrived here in Georgetown at 8:20 pm after an overnight passage from River Dunes, and the unlighted approach to this marina (the only one in Georgetown with any dock space left) was not our favorite part of the trip!
The conditions were perfect for our first trip "outside", so we left River Dunes after fueling up and headed for the inlet at Beaufort. We were able to sail down the Neuse, and through a bit of the Adams Creek canal, and enjoyed an easy passage through the crowded harbor area of Beaufort/Moorehead City and were out the inlet around 3 PM. The breeze was perfect, 8-12 out of the NW, and we all rolled out jibs and motor-sailed through the night. It is a great comfort to look back and see three sets of running lights all night long! Well, 2 1/2 sets anyways.... Andiamo found that the breaker would trip every time they tried to turn on their running lights, so they were visible only by their steaming light, but they kept in close to the pack and we didn't encounter anyone until we passed within a mile and a half of a tanker (easily identified by AIS) without incident around dawn this morning.
We rounded Frying Pan Shoals (off Cape Fear) at daybreak and headed further west. It isn't possible to head straight from Beaufort to Georgetown because the Frying Pan Shoals stick WAY out from Cape Fear, so it adds a bit of time and distance to the trip.
Today dawned bright and brisk and breezy. We had quite a ride until early afternoon when the wind, which had come around to the NE, started to quiet a bit. The waves were sometimes a little rough, but we were willing to accept them because they brought pod after pod of porpoises that spent hours, literally hours playing in our wake and jumping to ride our bow wave. Hence the preponderance of porpoise pix. We even had a few that followed us in the inlet in the evening. As has been our luck with the inlet here, we had to fight the current all the way up (11 miles) to Georgetown, but we wanted a quiet dock to tie to for the night. Everyone else has turned in, but I wanted to send this off while I could! Tomorrow we plan to stay and enjoy Georgetown and give Andiamo a chance to work on their running lights. Maybe tomorrow I will figure out how to send the video of playful porpoises to the blog. It (whoever it is) told me the video exceeded the allowed size of megabytes, oh well! ~~~~~~~~~~_/)~~~~~~~~~ (extra water under our keel this leg) M&D
It started at River Dunes, Oriental, NC. We all prepared to head our separate ways. Martha started the day with her last luxurious River Dunes shower-please note the four spray jets that tickled and massaged. Then she and Dan saw Jay, Pegg and Mom off from their cottage. Around 9 AM all four boats headed for the fuel dock before heading out as the next leg would be a long one. Out the canal-like entrance and on down the Neuse to Adams Creek. Then it was out the inlet at Beaufort around 3 pm and offshore we went for our first overnight passage of the trip.
Hopefully you are ready to be bored to death by a plethora of playful porpoise pictures...here they are.
As mentioned earlier, we headed back to PA to pick up Dan's mom and drive her back down to River Dunes to await Jay and Pegg who will drive her the rest of the way to their home in St. Augustine, FL. The trip home was on a dreary and rainy Thursday, but the company of the McElderrys made the trip easier. We arrived at their house in Edgewater, MD to find their son and his girlfriend stocking the refrigerator with dinner and food for the weekend! A very welcome treat. We stayed to have dinner with John and Betty (thank you Paul and Jess) and headed out around 6:30 (hoping to miss some of the rush hour traffic - - - no such luck) The dreary conditions had followed us up the coast and had made a mess of rush hour and it continued until we were around Baltimore and well up into PA. We got home around 8:45 after having left the boat 12 hours before. The rest of the northern sojourn went easily and we got Dan's mom packed, vetted with the doctors, and ready to go early Sunday morning. We took a leisurely trip back south with many stops to keep old joints moving and bladders empty and also included a dinner with Amy Bliss in Washington, NC just before arriving back at River Dunes. We had signed up for a two bedroom cottage on the grounds and I spent the night there with Grandma Peddie. She was very concerned that Dan was suffering on the boat, but we finally convinced her that he had heat (there was a frost advisory for Sunday night) and would be very happy back on the boat!
Today was beautiful, sunny and warm, so we drove to Oriental and enjoyed a lunch on the deck of the Oriental Deli & Grill right along the waterfront and paid a visit to a marine consignment shop that had more junk than our basement! Jay and Pegg arrived around 4 - enough time to get the lay of the land before we all headed to the Club House for our "last supper" at River Dunes. Everyone heads out tomorrow morning - - - headed for Florida (and beyond). Some by boat and some by car. No contest about who will get there first, but WE'LL have more adventures to be sure! ~~~_/)~~~M&D
We return to River Dunes, near Oriental, NC, with better weather than when we left on Thursday!
The ride over to Charleston on the water taxi was worth the price because the guys running it recommended this great restaurant. We enjoyed great southern and seafood dishes at Fleet Landing, a converted Navy depot turned trendy eatery. I had a Fried Green Tomato BLT, not like anything I'd ever eaten! Amazingly delicious.
