Charleston

We arrived in Charleston Wednesday around 5 pm after spending last night in Port Royal Landing Marina near Beaufort SC.  The Marina was great with excellent help and local knowledge.  Fabulous hamberger and fries!  Met the folks in the Kia Orana, a PDQ 36, that is traveling on roughly our same schedule.  Will definitely stay there if we are this way again.   They have made several trips and had a lot of good insight to share.  Staying in the St John's Yacht Harbor tonight.  Nice facility with a beautiful swimming pool.  No restaurant nearby was the biggest drawback.  But good price for Boat US members.

First day (in several) without any threat of grounding.  Beautiful weather today.  Sunny, winds 5-10.   Our brand new electronic chart dropped it's magenta line as we entered the Edisto River, so Ken is trying to reload the old chart for the remainder of our trip.  It was interesting to navigate using depth chart and compass headings and referring to paper charts.  We made good use of "Otto" (auto pilto) today because there were long stretches between markers.

Some games you can play on this part of the trip:
1.  Breezes or Bugs?  (would you rather have nice breezes in the cockpit or insects (they have been with us every since Kilkenny--our insect screens really saved us there)). 

2.  Bird or crabpot?  Is that item floating in the channel along the magenta line a crab pot marker or a bird?

It is interesting to read the complaints of how little money lower South Carolina and Georgia get for dredging.  It has become a self fullfilling prophecy.  They have crappy bridge schedules and do nothing to keep obstructions (including dozens of crab pots) out of the ICW.  They let markers fall down and/or get dragged out of place.  So, traffic goes outside.  So they get no moeny for dredging.  If they want commercial traffic, they need to keep the waterways clear of crab pots, not close their bridges for 3 hours at a time and keep markers where they belong.  Providing good tide/current information would be helpful as well (these areas have been having up to 10 feet tidal swings).

Some stats:  Since leaving North Palm Beach, we have covered 540 statute miles, with approximately 300 more to go.  Since leaving St. Augustine, we have averaged 61 statute miles per day.