Month: November 2020

We left Charleston after a fun dinner with friends we haven’t seen in over a year and headed down to Hilton Head where we finally, FINALLY, anchored out for the night on Skull Creek. It was peaceful, pretty and soothing for my soul.

Of course after not using the windlass for six months it was a little cantankerous and didn’t want to release. After a few tries we got the anchor to catch on the muddy bottom although it wasn’t a very secure situation. No surprise when at 9PM Gary told me the anchor was dragging and we would have to reset. Grab the flashlight (the really big one), turn on the spotlight and fire up the engines. Within about 15 minutes we had a really good set on the anchor and went to bed. Although Gary kept getting up periodically to check the anchor I slept like a baby.

The next day we cruised into the Marina at Skull Creek and picked up Gary’s sister and brother-in-law who were in the area. We spent a couple days with them playing golf and having an early Thanksgiving dinner. One evening I heard a racket outside the boat and went on the bow to check it out. I surprised a large heron who was sitting on our bowsprit. He had been having a conversation with the pelican sitting on the piling next to us.

We waved family off Thanksgiving morning as they headed back to Alabama and  moved down to the north end of Jekyll Island for another night at anchor. An incredible sunset, beautiful star studded night and even a shooting star!

 

From there we did another overnight cruise off the coast and arrived in Daytona Beach for a couple days to catch up with more friends we haven’t seen in too long.

We’re slowly working our way down to Ft Lauderdale where we need to have a couple things looked at on the boat and find someone to replace one of the flybridge windows but we don’t need to be there for another week or so.

We left Wilmington NC on November 18th heading for Charleston SC to visit friends we hadn’t seen in over a year. We decided to fuel up and then depart about 2pm to take advantage of the current going down the Cape Fear River. Since it would take 18 hours to get to Charleston going offshore that worked out just fine. But we soon realized that with the current behind us on the river as well as the Atlantic we would arrive a little earlier, say, 5am. Since it’s never a great idea to arrive at a new marina in the dark we slowed down our speed. Not a problem as it was a beautiful transit with calm seas. Good news was we didn’t use hardly any fuel.

We caught the Coast Guard doing some buoy work on the Cape Fear. It’s a massive job and you need to give them a wide berth and a slow pass out of courtesy if not safety. It’s always a good idea to stay on the good side of the Coast Guard.

We’re now on the “Mega Dock” at Charleston City Marina. It’s definitely different from Wilmington as the “transients”, that would be us, are bow to stern along one very long dock. There is no protection from the boats transiting along the river so we get some rocking and quite a bit of noise. We have noticed a high percentage of larger trawlers here though so we’ve been checking out the Grand Banks, Flemings and Kady Krogens. Quite different from what we were used to in the Caribbean and Bahamas. An interesting group to be sure but we already miss our dock mates from Wilmington.

We’ve also been here for four days tied up at a dock. I told Gary last night I feel like I got all excited about leaving only to not really go anywhere. Oh well. We leave tomorrow for Hilton Head and we’ll finally get to anchor out at Skull Creek again to enjoy the peace and quiet.

Meanwhile here’s a few pictures from our last couple months in Wilmington.