The conditions for our journey to Charleston from St. Augustine were as expected, with light winds and flat seas. We were forced to run the motors a bit more than we had hoped - roughly half of the time - but there's not much choice when your SOG (speed over ground) drops to 2 knots.
At 46 hours, the travel time was at the longer end of the model projections, but we had timed our departure appropriately and arrived at the Cooper River Marina in Charleston with plenty of daylight to spare.
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| Sunset Departure from St. Augustine |
We saw very little boat traffic during our two days at sea but had an interesting sighting as we entered the Charleston Harbor....a huge, single-masted sailboat. This was something we'd never seen before so Steve looked up the name of the vessel using the AIS (Automatic Identification System) information on our navigation system. The vessel's name is "M5" and we later learned that M5 is the world's largest single-masted sailing yacht, with a length of 254 feet, beam of 50 ft, and a mast over 290 ft. tall.
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| M5 Leaving Charleston Harbor |
The Cooper River Marina, where we've been docked for the last month, is part of the Cooper River County Park and quite affordable - especially for Charleston! It's also very conveniently located in North Charleston only about 10 minutes by car to Bridgette's apartment. Steve has spent the month of July helping Bridgette with some projects at her apartment before she starts medical school in August, and we wanted to be docked rather than moored so that I could easily get Jake on and off the boat when he was gone. We also wanted to be able to run the air conditioning since we knew from past experience that temperatures in July in Charleston can be brutal.
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| Cooper River Marina |
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Pier at the Cooper River County Park and Marina
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View from the Pier
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To the north of the marina is one of Charleston's port terminals and to the south, a petroleum and chemical marine terminal owned by Kinder Morgan. In addition to the traffic to these terminals, there was a dredging operation underway 24/7 while we were there, so there was plenty of ship traffic around the clock. Surprisingly, there wasn't much noise and on the marina side of the dock we were protected from the wakes.
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South Carolina Port Authority Terminal on the Cooper River
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| Kinder Morgan Petroleum and Chemical Marine Terminal |
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Container Ship in Cooper River
While Steve and Bridgette built shelves and a desk, I continued to battle the green stuff and barnacles that grow very rapidly at our water line. I neglected to take a picture of the growth on the outboard side of our hulls; it was about 4-6 inches long and very difficult to remove, even with a scrub brush. It took several days, a couple of hours each day, to finish the parts of the boat that I could reach from the dinghy. That included scrubbing, removing the brown staining from the tannins in the water, and applying wax.
The good news is I was never lonely since tiny fish love the stuff that I was removing, AND, I got a fabulous upper body and core workout as a bonus! I have to admit that I had to take at least a day off in between each section because the two hours of work wore me completely out. 😢
 | | Feeding the Fish |
 | "Spinach" Algae
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In between boat and apartment projects, Steve and I spent fun-time with Bridgette and her friends. We were fortunate to be in town for Bridgette's going-away Happy Hour with her co-workers from MUSC (Medical University of South Carolina) where she has worked for the past three years, and also co-hosted a Fourth of July Brunch on Starry Night with a group of her volleyball friends.
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View of Fireworks Over Bridge
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We had a particularly nice evening out with Bridgette and Griffin at a local "test kitchen" for one of the high-end restaurants in Charleston. The kitchen seats about twenty guests and presents a five-course meal. The food was fabulous, and the atmosphere laid back and fun.
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| Dinner out with Bridgette and Griffin at R. Kitchen |
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| R. Kitchen in Charleston |
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| Life is Good |
One of the highlights of my stay here in Charleston was a visit from one of my close friends, Callie, and her husband, John, from my days at Pratt and Whitney. While we have stayed in touch over the (25!) years since we left P&W - she and John going to GE in Greenville, SC - we have only seen each other in person a few times over the years. As luck would have it, John was participating in a three-day bike ride across SC which finished in Charleston and so John and Callie spent a day and night with me on Starry Night. Steve, unfortunately, missed their visit since he had traveled out of town to visit his brother in Connecticut that weekend. Callie and I have always had an instant connection, and our time together this weekend was no different. An added bonus, I got to know John better than I had in the past.
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Reconnecting with Friends
(Photo credit: Callie Tourigny)
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Things have been pretty routine since their visit, with Steve spending most of his time at Bridgette's and Jake and I hanging out on the boat doing small projects, reading and relaxing.
One day, I glanced out of the window and saw the beauty below cruising along the river. Surprisingly, the crew docked her here at the transient dock! The marina here is perfectly adequate, but definitely not the type of place that yachts like this one choose to frequent. To be fair, I never saw anyone who looked like they owned the ship, only uniformed crew who kept themselves busy polishing the already gleaming brightwork.
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| A New Neighbor Approaches: Ealu |
Most of the time, Starry Night feels like a pretty big boat to me and it's really quite spacious. Every now and then, though, I'm reminded that everything is relative.
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| It's All Relative |
We're coming to the end of our time in Charleston and are starting to lay out options for the next legs of our journey. We are planning to stop at some new places as we continue to head north, the first of which will be Cape Lookout in North Carolina!
Stay tuned!
ABSOLUTELY!!
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