Beaufort, NC to Charleston

Exciting start to our overnight transit to Charleston, 20 knot winds, 5 foot waves and two warships in the Beaufort channel. Wind Dancer earned her name as she danced from wavetop to wavetop. Six hours later, the wind dropped and dropped and dropped. By morning we were motoring on glassy seas, our wake the only disturbance on the watery surface. Not much value to a sailor, but the beauty of the sunrise, the chance to see the Atlantic as she is rarely seen, was priceless.

We stayed in Charleston for 3 days and experienced winds that were to plague us the rest of our journey to Key West. A stationary tropical storm continued to spin out waves of Northeast winds. During the Charleston stay, where we anchored in the Ashley River, across from the City Marina, in 18 feet of water, two unoccupied boats broke loose from their moorings and marched backwards through the anchorage, narrowly missing the catamaran behind us. One, a two masted ferro cement ketch, was resecured by the Coast Guard near the Ashley River Bridge. At sunset we saw a man silohetted against the skyline, and presumed the owner had come to check on his boat.  The morning revealed an alternate purpose as we observed the two masts of the sunken ketch angling from the water. Another boat, a derelict with the mast lashed to the deck, swung into a previously sunken boat, causing its  mast to splash into the river, and float to a spot just beside our boat, where it sank.

Our Charleston Anchorage

We did solve the mystery of the leaking shaft seal here after a consultation with Jean Michael, who works for the Benetau dealer in Charleston, confirmed Rick's suspicion that there are two rings to the seal and he needed to insert the applicator deeper into the second ring. Happily that solved the problem.

Charleston is also the home of an assortment of wonderful restaurants, museums, and stores and good friends Charlie and Jennifer  Black, two talented artists, who were with us on our tour to Madrid.We met them for lunch at one of those wonderful restaurants, and afterwards toured an interesting antebellum estate.

The house was particulary interesting for the slave quarters visable in the picture. The quarters were small one and two room "apartments" which opened out into a common hallway on the second floor of the building which housed the kitchen and laundry.