A map of the ICW. At the top of the map is Annapolis. We're about 1/2 way down the map in Charleston, SC. Jacksonville is just south of the Georgia/Florida stateline. |
He Said: Hello from Charleston :
We have now spent about 10 days here in Charleston
and we are enjoying it very much. After
1 week we decided to spend a second one here. The winds were going to start
kicking up for about 5 days in a row and we felt that it is safer buckled into
a dock as opposed to traveling. Also the
marina here has the 2nd week at a nice discount so we signed up. When we stay in a place for 2 weeks like we
are doing our lives are very normal, kind of like being back in Phoenix but having water
all around us.
Daily we have barges passing the entrance to our marina. |
There's always activity at our marina. We saw this rescue mission - fortunately, it was only practice. |
The weather here has been a little
crazy although this past Monday we nearly set a record high at 83 degrees. So for the first time in 6 months we made our
way to the Charleston Municipal Golf Course. Simple stuff at home like golfing is a lot
more challenging here. We walked our clubs to the city bus station, then jumped
a bus to the course. About a 15 minute
walk then about a 30 minute bus ride. Now for the rest of the golf story. As we were sitting at a light a motorhome
decided to take our driver’s side mirror with him. Not the end of the world, other than our
driver had to wait for his supervisor since it was kind of an accident. He said it would be at least an hour before
the bus could leave again. We had a tee
time in a little over an hour so we decided to walk with our clubs to the
course. The toughest part was crossing a
long uphill bridge while carrying our sticks. When we finally arrived we were singing the
blues to the guy in the pro shop. I made
him feel guilty enough that he gave us the “locals” price for our round which
saved us about 35% - very nice of him. We
played the back 9 twice because the front 9 was being worked on. All in all, we both played pretty good
especially since it had been 6 months since we last played. I think since my heart deal Pat has played
twice and I’ve played 3 times. That’s
not much golf in a year, and I realized how much I miss not playing. Hopefully this winter in Florida we will have a few chances to play. The bad news is it is like playing in the
winter in Phoenix . If you golf you know what the prices are like
in winter months in both AZ and Florida .
We will see what happens.
Everything with the boat has been
going great. When you are tied up to the
dock for 2 weeks not too much happens to the boat. Having said that, last
Tuesday we had 40 MPH winds all nite long.
You talk about a rocking boat, we had it. We were on an end dock with a 44 ft catamaran sitting
in front of us. You should have seen the
wind and waves work his boat. We had 5
of us trying to get his boat from slamming so hard into the dock. This went on until about mid-nite. He only weighs about 15,000 lbs. and we are
closer to 30,000 lbs. This is pretty
much the reason for his boat nearly drowning and ours not so bad. It was still a long, long rocky nite. This was enough excitement for a good while. The good news is that everyone survived it
just fine.
If you look really hard you can see the fin of a dolphin swimming in our marina. They were actually jumping out of the water off the stern of the boat. |
Here are 2 dolphins swimming just outside our marina. We see them everyday |
Other than listening to some music
at the local bars, catching happy hours, taking our walks and just hanging out,
our lives are very normal. This is a very cool town with tons of good old
history, a lot from the slave days here in the south. I watched the OSU/Illinois game last Saturday
at a local fun little bar here in town. It
was a Michigan/West Virginia Bar, but they did put on the Buckeyes for us few
OSU Fans. This Sat. we play Indiana back in Columbus , and I will
probably go back to the same bar to catch the game. We need a few more wins and a loss by either Florida St. or Bama
to have any shot at the BCS Championship Game.
Time will tell.
Our plan is to leave here this
coming Sunday or Monday and travel to Beauford for Thanksgiving. We will anchor
a nite or 2 and spend some time in a slip -
this will depend on weather and winds.
Our good friend Tim, from Seattle ,
will be in the area during Thanksgiving, and we will meet up with him on the
Friday after the holiday. He will stay
on the boat with us for 4 nites then catch a flight back to Seattle .
We will be staying in Hilton Head SC at that time. We’re still planning on crossing the
Ga./Florida border by about the 5th of next month.
Tired hands, hope all is well!
Take Care, Jack
She Said: The weathermen were right. The weather was as awful as they predicted –
right up there with the Nor’ Eastern in Deltaville. Because of the high winds and our location,
we had our worse night ever on the boat.
I will never forget that night and hopefully we will never experience
anything like it ever again. The wind
was coming out of the northeast at a consistent 25-30 MPH (gusting to 45 MPH)
and pushing us against the dock. We had
all nine of our fenders out protecting the starboard side of the boat against
the pounding. The pounding was so hard
and so prolonged that one fender broke (I didn’t even know they could
break). After hitting the dock we would
bounce away from it until the lines would catch us and jerk us back to the
dock. It sounded and felt like MTB would
break. I don’t know how we got any sleep
that night. We actually thought about
getting a hotel room. It was BAD. The gusting stopped, but the winds still kept
howling. Temps dipped to 29 degrees. It was a long, long 36 hours. We had to get off the boat the next day; we
were still rocking while standing on land.
This is a 2.5 mile bridge that spans the Cooper River connecting Charleston and Mount Pleasant. We see it from the marina. I liked the way it looked in the fog. |
Fortunately, Charleston is just as fun and interesting as
we remembered. Our marina is really
convenient to historic Charleston ,
along with grocery, hardware and drug stores.
We met up with our friends, John and Debbie, and had a fun day taking in
the city’s sights. A couple of nights
later we met them for dinner and live music (Kevin Church). We enjoyed Kevin so much that we’ve seen him
several times since then. I had great
barbeque one night at Queology (an award winning recipe) and dessert at my
favorite night spot, Kaminskey’s. Charleston is a great
city to walk around and we’ve walked it almost everyday we’ve been here. One of the interesting things we visited was
the Old Slave Mart where enslaved people were sold at auction. We’ve enjoyed Charleston so much that we decided to stay
for a second week. We enjoy getting to
know the cities we travel through and living like locals.
This is typical Charleston architecture - you see it all over Charleston. The porch is on the side of the house. This was originally done to reduce property taxes. |
We knew that weather would be an
issue on this trip, but it’s been more than we anticipated. Living in Phoenix weather is just not something you think
about – it’s almost always clear and sunny.
Conversely, the weather we’ve experienced on the ICW changes almost
daily. As an example, while in Charleston we’ve seen
temps go from 29 to 85 degrees over a couple day period. In Phoenix ,
the weather rarely had an impact on what we would do. While on the water, the weather (especially
the wind) determines if we’re going to travel, how comfortable we’ll be while
docked/anchored and the overall enjoyment of a town. We have been averaging about one nice day for
every three not-so-nice days – today is gorgeous. It’s been a real challenge. It looks like we won’t be able to count on consistent
nice weather until about central Florida . There’s a lot to see between here and there,
so we’ve accepted that cool, windy weather will be part of our life for the
next four to six weeks. I guess I need
to buy some cold weather clothes.
Wishing y’all a very Happy
Thanksgiving.
Glad you extended in Charleston--great place. Phoenix right now---not so great. Can you imagine about 40 hours straight of rain/wind and accumulation of around 3 inches? Snow north of here--so weather ain't the normal 'AZ great' right now. They cancelled the high school football playoffs and moved them to the first of next week--fields were all under water. We've experience some of those 'wild windy' nights on a rockin' boat and know what you mean about still rocking when you are on land. But---you made it through it and 'onward for more adventures'. Stay safe and keep having fun on the adventure of a lifetime.
ReplyDeleteYou say your "lives are pretty normal".......Give......me......a........BREAK!!! Stay safe!!
ReplyDeleteRuss and Jen!!
PS..........it would be nice to mention some of your responders in your blog, only to let us all know you are getting these :)
Hey Guys: We really appreciate your interest and the comedy you put into your messages. We thought that we responded about 3 times but maybe you are not receiving our messages, please let us know. If you guys are hanging tonite with Gary and Kathy or Rich and Maggie please ring us up, we would love to say hello to some old friends. If the gang is not hanging at Jerseys ring us up whenever you get a minute, love to hear from you. Any of those 4 have our phone number.
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