Ahoy from Charleston, SC!
I know, I know...I lied. We're not in Jacksonville like I said that we would be. I promise (1) not to do it again! Really!
Sunday morning was absolutely beautiful with glassy water and lots of birds in the air. We pulled out of our anchorage at about 7 AM and timed getting to the Bridge of the Lions perfectly. We had two boats following us that were also anchored there at our suggestion. They're pretty much on the same route back, but are going further N (NY, NY) and have time constraints. They were asking us if we were going to go outside, and my answer was that we'd stick our nose out, see what the weather was like, and then either head to the next inlet or head to Charleston. I guess that they liked that plan as they followed us out the inlet.
The conditions were fine to continue to Charleston, so we kept on going as did the other boats. We had very light winds out of the SE and 2-3' swells out of the E, which rolled us quite a bit. Later the winds picked up a bit, so we raised the sails and motor-sailed. It's about 200 miles from St. Augustine to Charleston and we motor-sailed about 2/3rds of the way and we sailed the rest of the way. At about the mid-point we picked up the edge of Gulf Stream and we had a current going with us that built up to a knot. We had the current all of the all of the way to Charleston and that certainly made the trip enjoyable!
I had forgotten that the channel into Charleston and to the marinas is about 12-14 miles! The current can really rips through there (up to 2.5 kts), and we had it against us, so the final leg of the trip was quite slow. We pulled into the Charleston City Marina and were placed at the end of the 1500' face dock. Believe me, you get exercise just getting to the end of it and the 150-250' mega-yachts are parked in between. You definitely feel like a pauper when you see these huge mega-yachts.
Today we're going to tour Charleston and tomorrow we'll rent a car and tour Savannah. It's going to be HOT as the temps are in the low 90s with heat indexes in the upper 90s. Yuck!
-- Geoff & Sue
(1) Promise is not a legally binding term. Promise valid through 6/20/2007. Promise only applies to land-lock states.
For the cruiser:
The Charleston City Marina dockage rate is $2/ft and power is $6/30A. The marina is very well maintained and even has shuttles to down-town on a regular basis. Note that it's quite rocky due to all of the boat traffic.
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