st. john's yacht harbor, johns island, SC (charleston).

we reluctantly left mcclellanville at o'dark thirty (notice a pattern here?) to get through a trouble spot immediately south of the town at high water.

pre-sunrise at the leland oil dock

underway as soon as we could see

the problem was that the early departure and bypass of that trouble spot made us get to the next trouble spot at isle of palms too early for the high water there even though we really slowed it down.   the three boats with us decided to go into the isle of palms marina for lunch and wait there- 0.50 cents per foot per hour (plus lunch!)  - way too rich for our blood so we just kept going and found a tug and barge aground at the trouble spot, waiting for the water to come in.   we just dropped the anchor and then the dinghy and tom went off to explore as our dinghy has a fishfinder/depth sounder on it, and to chat with the tug captain.   skinny channel and skinny water and then the wind blew the barge sideways into the skinny water, effectively blocking the channel.  as time passed, the others who were behind (not the ones who went to lunch) started catching up and there was a pileup behind us with tom communicating with the tug captain and passing the word along.  we waited at least a couple of hours.  then the tug moved the barge enough to open up the channel for us to pass through - we touched bottom a couple of times and then it got deeper, but to our horror, the wind took the barge again and closed off the channel once more, separating us from everyone.  oh well...  so on we went.  the sad thing is that, as sailboats, they had to wait for two bridge openings, the last one of which they weren't going to make because of the delay.  TADHANA easily went under both bridges with her 18.5-foot air draft.  as we came out into charleston harbor, a seatow boat passed us and tom spoke to him, too.  we later heard that the tug and barge kept trying to move but was not making much progress and kept blocking the channel but when the seatow arrived, the tug finally moved all the way to one bank and the seatow did the sounding for the waiting boats and they all followed it through the trouble spot after which they had to wait at the ben sawyer bridge and wound up either getting a slip at the charleston city marina or anchoring across from it.  we were the only ones from the delayed group who made it all the way to the st. john's yacht harbor  that evening as scheduled.  LONG day.

the barge blocking the channel - there was NO water on the left side.  ben sawyer bridge beyond.

passing fort sumter

waving as we passed charleston

the ravenel bridge - engineering art

the notorious elliot cut

we were, of course, thrilled to be going through charleston waters.  we have wonderful memories (well, i do anyway haha) of living in summerville, SC from 2007 to 2008 and every weekend, we would be out on one zodiac RIB or another as tom was doing a lot of endurance testing with those boats, i.e. he was instructed to break the boat!  we are pretty familiar with the charleston waters and marinas, but, unfortunately, we were not scheduled to stay there.  of note is that back when we lived in south carolina, we actually had a reservation at the charleston city marina for TADHANA whenever she finally got delivered, however, we left south carolina long before then.  so we waved at the ravenel bridge and the city of charleston and fort sumter as we went by, into the ashley river and then into elliot cut and out into the stono river to the st. john's yacht harbor marina.  the current was running fierce at the time and the dockhands suggested that we go bow in so that is what we did.  always (or never?) follow the local knowledge.  the problem was that the finger pier was too short so we couldn't get off through the swim platform.  our power cords plug into the transom so we had to plug one cord into another to make it reach the power pedestal and we didn't even bother with the water hose.  going out through the side door to a floating finger pier is quite a jump.  consuelo was not happy about being heaved about and there was a huge cleat in the way to boot.  oh well, what can i say?  we are used to backing into the slip.  the next morning, though, we solved that problem by moving the boat forward a little more so that the side door was at least beyond the toe-stubbing cleat and we could get off and on through the cockpit after rolling up the isenglass on the starboard side.  that worked out a lot better.  things just felt so WRONG the other way.

fancy little walkway at SJYH

salt marsh

the stono river bridge

5 to 7 foot tide shifts - low, low tide!

beautiful salt marshes

that evening, we had a date with an old high school classmate of mine who works at a boutique hotel downtown, the restoration on king, just the loveliest little hotel right in the heart of the city - very la-di-da!  agnes was supposed to pick us up at the marina but someone told her about the horrendous traffic leaving the city on a friday evening so she sent a limo instead!  agnes obviously does NOT mess around!  anyway, when we got to the little hotel which has only 16 suites, we each got a glass of wine and then she showed us around.  just a wonderful little spot and very charming decor with exposed brick and floors from the original buildings.  i'm almost ashamed to say that we did not avail of any of charleston's various fine dining restaurants and instead planned on eating chicken wings at sticky fingers.  this reminds me of when my dad used to take the family out to chinatown in manila and then i would order sweet and sour pork and my dad would say, "peasants, i live with peasants!"   well, maybe so, but it had been a while since we've had the best chicken wings ever and that is what tom and i wanted to eat.  agnes and i had a really good time getting caught up and tom was extremely happy with his hickory smoked chicken wings at dinner so much so that he ordered more for takeout for the next day's lunch!  agnes drove us back to the marina and stayed for the grand two-penny tour of TADHANA before heading off on her 1.5-hour commute home - gak!  it was short but sweet.

the other thing that happened was the weather.  tom, mark and wally had an emergency meeting to deal with planning for the coming bad weather as it pertained to the fleet and a decision was made to leave very early the next morning for beaufort instead of staying one more day as per the original plan.  needless to say, it was disappointing to have spent so little time at charleston but in the boating/cruising world, weather dictates all.

i thought i'd include a few photos of some odd little boats that were present at the marina.

what is it?? 

pepto bismol pink! 

custom made cabin on a tiny little runabout

oh, one more thing.  i took over the helm for a little bit while tom ran off to the bathroom and got hailed by the trawler behind.  i normally NEVER talk on the radio (stage fright haha) but i answered the hail and had a whole conversation with this guy - a first!  when tom came back, i told him about it and he was shocked!  i write, i do not talk :)