Heading to Charleston

4-13-2013

Happy Birthday to my niece, Sarah! She's 22 today!

It’s cold! The temperature outside was 58 degrees and it was 64 inside the boat. We think we are going to have to rethink this heading north thing. We need to turn around a stay where it’s warm. But it wouldn’t take long for it to be too hot there.

Shay’s mumbling about global warming. He said Al Gore was right all along and we should elect him president. He thinks this is crazy weather for almost June. This is the coldest weather we’ve had since we went back to NC for Christmas and that was almost 6 months ago, and you expect cold weather then.

See what's outside our door?

That's an ICW cruise ship. We have seen them several times during our travels.

This cruise ship was docked near the marina and left so the other one could come in.

 

The view from our boat.

This area is pretty.

Beautiful sunrise.

Looking toward the marina.



See the story behind this picture below.

Shay said he once worked with a famous electrician named Doug Davis. Doug had a “truism” that Shay likes to quote. “Dirt grows”. Shay said the guy on the barge probably started out with a wheel-barrow full of dirt. If he doesn’t hurry and get to where he’s going, he won’t make it. The dirt will grow and get too big and sink the barge!

You can see how much the water goes up and down by the marking on the wood.

We have beautiful colors in the USA too.

Feeding seagulls.



We're not in the Bahamas anymore!

We had a little current running with us when we started this morning. But now it’s against us, as usual.

We got to our anchorage about 2:00 pm. The temperature is 71 degrees now. That feels lots better!

This anchorage looks good. The anchorage book told us to anchor near the octagonal building. We went to the building and decided to come back out toward the entrance, where the water is a little shallower.

There were several small fishing boats coming in and out here.

We anchored in the green area. The yellow indicated shallow water. Be careful!

We had a very good night. This was a great place to stop. We had no wind and the current wasn’t bad. We will stay here again.

We did calculations to see when it would be slack current at Elliot’s Cut. This is an area that can have a 4.5 kts current at times. It is very short but narrow cut. If you were there at the wrong time you could have major problems with the current. So we planned the time we wanted to be there and calculated the distance and time, so we know when we need to leave in the morning.

We were up and taking up the anchor at 6; 00 am. At first we were running against a little current but soon we were getting a push. That's great! A free push thru the ICW!

Sunrise as we were leaving.

As we went by Church Creek, we talked about our first trip north and our anchorage there. It was bad. We had our first bad storm there with the wind coming directly into the creek. We would have been so much better at Steamboat Creek, where we stayed last night. Well, it was our first trip and we were so ignorant! And in some ways we still are. We are definitely learning as we go! 

This doesn't look too bad, does it? But it can get bad if the current is against you.

We got to Elliot’s Cut earlier than we expected so we had about 2 kts of current against us. How did we miscalculate? Maybe we’ll do better next time. It didn’t really cause any problems. Thank goodness it’s a short cut.

 



We had an easy trip thru the Charleston harbor. It is a beautiful place with lots of boats, beautiful houses, and of course Fort Macon.

Big boats.

Looking toward Ashley River.

 

Coast Guard Station at Charleston

So many pretty houses line the waterfront.

 

I love the greenery on this house!



Fort Macon

 

Charleston Harbor Lighthouse



We did find some "very skinny" water north of Charleston. There is about a mile long area of the ICW near Isle of Palms that we can not go thru at low tide! We had marked our chartbook last year and paid close attention to the area today and noted that we'd better be careful here! We have gone thru other places that were close, but we can not do this area at low tide. 

The yellow highlighted area is "very skinny" water!

This is a panorama of the ICW. I was playing around with the camera.

We got to our anchorage about 1:30 pm. We checked out another area of this anchorage and decided to drop anchor there. The depths seemed to be more consistent.

This is our anchorage in Dewees Creek.

Shay kept hearing a different noise and discovered the pressure valve on the hot water heater is leaking. Not out into the engine but into an area that is pumped overboard. So we won’t sink! He’s online now trying to find a replacement valve. We are luck that he is able to steal Wi-Fi here. 

Looking back toward Charleston

That's a shark near the shore very close to our boat.

This boat is sinking. So sad.

We had grilled dolphin for dinner. This is some of the fish he caught during the crossing. It was great!

 

Our depth alarm keeps going off. We must be on a high spot in the anchorage. We circled around and thought we had enough room, but we get "skinny" as we move around.