Georgetown to Charleston, SC, December 13, 2021

 

     Our final leg is from Georgetown,SC to Charleston, SC. We had been watching the weather closely and we had a pretty good idea it would be either one day or the next for about 6 days. Unfortunately, we didn’t communicate our desires so well and the marina gave up our slip the day before we preferred to leave.

The distance between the two cities was just a bit awkward and the daylight hours too few, so we were going to need to arise before dawn and make our way out of the harbor in the darkness anyhow. We talked to some locals and figured out that there was a very nice anchorage just at the mouth of Winyah Bay, so in a way the marina did us a favor. We headed out in the afternoon and made our way to just inside the bay, where we’d be able to reach the ocean in just 30 minutes instead of 2 hours. We had an uneventful journey to the anchorage. However, when Lisa went forward to drop the anchor, she reported that the windlass was unresponsive and she couldn’t get the anchor to lower. You can drop the anchor without power, but raising it is an ordeal, so we decided to do some diagnostics before committing ourselves. We could return to the other marina in town in a pinch. Lisa tried all her tricks and couldn’t make it work, so we swapped places and I tried probably all the same things she did and I also couldn’t make it work. I had tried the helm switch, so I was pretty sure it wasn’t the buttons. I searched for some kind of circuit breaker at the front, but found nothing.

     Lisa was maneuvering the boat, keeping us off the shore and I started digging through the cabin looking for circuit breakers and fuses. I’ve spent many hours tracing every circuit, but in the excitement I didn’t really remember every location. I knew there were some fuses under one of the seats in the salon, so I tossed all the cushions willy-nilly around the cabin and found the fuse. It was not blown. I thought I remembered an emergency shut off switch down by the batteries and when I went down there, I found that it was switched off. I had a vague memory of talking to the folks in the yard about turning it off, so that a worker didn’t accidentally drop an anchor on someone’s head while we were on the hard. I switched it on, and was very happy to discover when I went up top that everything worked just fine now.

Lisa and I swapped placed and she controlled the anchor as we dropped it. The anchor set extremely well and we felt quite certain that we were deeply dug in and safe. Technically, we were a bit closer to shore than we would ideally be, but we knew that neither the wind nor the current would push us that way, so we decided to leave well enough alone and settle in for the night.

     There was a massive fishing boat anchored nearby that I watched all night, but we had no real drama. We made a nice dinner, watched some nerdy YouTube videos on the AppleTV in the salon and slept reasonably well. I only woke up 7 or 8 times to check my phone and make sure our anchor was holding well.

     We set alarms for the predawn, had some coffee and raised anchor and headed on our way like we were good at it. Everything went just as it should and we were headed out to the ocean. It was a bit rough heading out against the incoming tide, but once we turned south towards Charleston, we had a very smooth ride.

Maybe I'll get tired of watching the sun rise at sea, but it hasn't happened yet!

 

     Charleston turns out to be a very easy harbor to navigate. The only drama was that there were were a number of barges, tugs and dredges. We had no real problem dodging them and made our way to the marina that was our destination. First we had to pass under a bridge. I had checked the height of the bridge like 20 times and I was quite confident that we fit with many feet to spare, but it still felt a bit close and I held my breath for a minute or two. We made it under and the marina was responsive to the radio (this is by no means certain!) and we were soon safely tied up.

 

This barge sort of wandered all over the channel ahead of us, but we just went nice and slow.

 

     Having learned from my previous eviction, I decided to ask for an extra week beyond what we thought we’d need. It was a most unusual negotiation. I was on the hook for 4 weeks, which was going to cost me $1,500. I asked the guy how much it would cost if I extended it to 5 weeks. He punched a series of buttons on his computer and eventually said “$1,000.” I was a bit surprised, and asked why one week extra was $1,000 when 4 cost $1,500. He said, “No, not $1,000 more, the total will be $1,000.” “So if I stay an extra week, it will cost me $500 LESS?” “Yes, then you get the monthly rate.” It would have been nice if they told me that in advance, but I was happy to get the rebate.

 

    For any sailors who might come across this, it is the Cooper River Marina.  Its not situated very well at all, unlike the marinas where you tie up in downtown Charleston, but its really cheap.  We left the boat there for a few days shy of a month while we went home to try to catch COVID with the fam at Christmas.  It would have been ironic if we did catch it after spending all this time in the land of no masks, but even though my college-age nephew did come down with it the day after the big family gathering, somehow we all made it through without catching it!  Anyhow, Cooper River is very inexpensive, costing me $1,000 for the month, when the next best offer in town was $1,800!  Next year, I might try to make it to Charleston in like October, so I'm not freezing my butt off.