there for church services. We managed to catch the currents right and made it all the way to Charleston.
We stayed at the Charleston City Marina on their Megadock! It deserves its name, that place is HUGE! It is almost half a mile walk to get to the dock office, and that is walking on the docks! We were on the dock with the 100+ foot yachts. We felt VERY small next to most of the boats there. We arrived in Charleston in time to take a shower and then have dinner with Steve and Jenny at Fleet Landing. Monday we had a lazy morning and then walked over to Caviar and Bananas, where Jenny works. We
had lunch there and then borrowed her car to run errands. We picked her up at 3 when she got off work and went home with her. We spent a fun evening with Steve and Jenny playing Wii. Wii is a computer game where the computer can follow your movements. We played sports games and tried the Fitness program. I laughed so hard I cried while watching Wayne trying to do the hula hoop! Wayne is great at sports and was really good with the Wii sports games too. I was ok with bowling and yoga but was
not willing to try the hula hoop after watching Wayne. We spent the night with them and got back to the boat around 9:00 on Tuesday morning. We fueled up and were on our way. We just missed the 10:00 opening of the Wappoo Creek Bridge, so we put down an anchor to wait for the 10:30 opening. The current there is terrible.
It was a very COLD day. The wind was gusting to 30 and blowing at a constant 20 knots or more. With the high temperature of only 50, it made for a chilly day. We anchored in the South Edisto River for the night. The weatherman had freeze warnings and said there was a possibility of breaking the record low temperature. He also said the wind would continue until sometime on Wednesday. Luckily he was mistaken about the wind, it calmed down around dark. I made enchiladas for dinner to use the oven
and left it on a little extra for the heat. By the time we went to bed about 9:00 it was 52 in the boat. We have lots of comforters on the bed, so we actually slept well and were warm. When we got up, the temperature in the boat was a chilly 42 degrees. Making coffee on the stove brought it up to 50 before we got underway again. The high today was predicted to be 50 but without the wind it is not bad at all. We had our easiest and best crossing ever of the Coosaw River this morning. The current
was in our favor and there was very little chop. We saw a few of the Blue Angels and also Fat Albert, which is their supply plane, doing touch and goes at the base in Beaufort, SC. Just as we were approaching the Lady Island Bridge in Beaufort, a crow decided to come along for a ride. He sat on various parts of the bow rail for almost 10 minutes. We have also seen a turtle and dolphins. It is supposed to be in the 30's again tonight but then the temperatures should be warming up. We are trying
to travel as many miles as possible during the day to get south as quickly as possible. This means we are trying anchorages we have never been to before and we are happy to finding some nice new places to stay.
When we passed Beaufort, a cruiser from our home marina at Northwest Creek, Chanceaux, hailed us on the radio. They were waiting until 1:00 to "go outside" in the ocean to go overnight to Fernandina Beach, Florida. We said we would meet them there in a few days. The more we thought about the slow trip through Georgia and our timing of the tides, the more we thought they had a good idea. Georgia had not had the money to dredge their portion of the waterway. The current is so strong that shoaling
is bad. Tides are over 9 feet, often you are only able to travel through certain places during high tide. Our timing on the tides was not good and we would probably have to wait until noon to travel for the tide to be right. It takes about two and a half days to get through GA when the tides are in your favor. Wayne listened to the weather and we decided to go for it. We went out into the ocean at Calibogue Sound, just south of Beaufort, SC around 3:30PM. The ocean was calm. We have been in the
Neuse River when it was rougher. At 9:00 PM it was no longer calm, the wind, water and tide were fighting each other. We had a very bumpy night, the boat rolled from side to side with winds on our nose. But we made reasonable time and expected to be in Fernandina, Florida early in the morning. At 6:20, Wayne woke me when the starboard engine quit. He figured out that the raw water pump was not working and discovered the impeller had gone bad. He had the engine up and running again by 7:30.
We arrived at Fernandina at 8:45 AM. As we entered Fernandina we heard boats we knew talking on the VHF, Jockslodge, Grateful Attitudes and Margarita were all heading south from Fernandina. Chanceaux had made it safely to Fernandina just ahead of us. They too, said it was a rough night. We are still debating whether missing all the hassle in Georgia was worth the rough night. Wayne and I had both slept at least 5 hours during the night so we decided to continue down the waterway. We quickly started
removing the extra layers of clothes we had been wearing to stay warm. By midday it was 71 in the salon of the boat. That is the warmest it has been in over a week even when the oven was running! Tonight we are anchored at Pine Island, which is one of our favorite Florida anchorages.
Our theme song this week is "Boat Drinks" by Jimmy Buffet. For those of you who are not familiar with the song, it talks about being tired of the cold and snow and a line that is in the chorus and also the last line of the song is "I want to go where it's WARM". Every mile we go further south we are making that happen.
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