We arrived in Charleston at about two o’clock. There were only two tricky aspects to the trip. The first was a swing bridge with restricted openings. This being a weekend the bridge would open on the hour. That doesn’t sound too bad but the bridge was about 28 statute miles from our starting point. Because we were midway between Georgetown and Charleston with lots of creeks and rivers feeding into the ICW, we were totally uncertain about the likely status of the current. Thus, it was hard to know what our speed might be, making it hard to predict when we should leave to arrive at the bridge very shortly before the hour. We just set out. With a lift from the current we soon realized that we were going too fast to get to the bridge by 1pm but not nearly fast enough to arrive by noon. Believe it or not—we slowed down, intentionally! We arrived at the bridge about 15 minutes before 1pm and spent the extra time motoring in circles. Once through the bridge it was about 7 miles to Charleston harbor.
The second challenge was the anchoring. The anchorage was pretty crowded. The current here is strong and two anchors are recommended. We motored around a bit scoping out a likely spot. Mike picked a good location and we dropped the hook. It seemed to catch on the first try. We noticed that the other boats near us were only using one anchor so we didn’t set a second. Lunch and some web research on the closest West Marine took us to about 4pm. We got the engine on the dinghy, got our stuff together and headed to the dinghy dock. The Charleston City Marina is massive. We tied up our dinghy and spotted a sign telling us that we had to register and pay. The marina office must be nearly half a mile away. Having paid ($5 per day), got a map and started to walk toward town, we began to worry about the boat. We were unsure what would happen when the current switched to ebb. Would we wind up too close to the next boat? What if not all vessels turned the same way or at the same speed? We came back to the boat dejectedly. Things are looking up now as dinner is being served....
Gloria
32 46 29.5 N, 79 57 10.5 W
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