That mellow contented feeling

That mellow contented feeling

Tuesday 24th November 2020

We just arrived in Charleston a day ahead of our reservation at the marina so we have dropped anchor in the Ashley River and are chilling out in the cabin. Gloria has a cup of tea and I have a can of beer. We’re feeling pretty relaxed and happy to be here. Today’s journey along from Awendaw Creek went about as well as you could hope for. We planned it carefully with yellow post-it notes on the paper chart as Gloria mentioned yesterday and a departure time of 11.45 am, an hour and half past low tide. We spent the morning reading and doing not very much, but we both felt a little anxiety at the prospect of the section ahead so it was hard to really relax. In reality our plan worked well, we made fast progress in the easy sections, slowed down where we expected trouble and throughout we never saw less than 10 feet of depth. For much of the journey we had positive current and 10 -15 knots of wind from behind, so a couple of hours into the trip we realized we could make it all the way to the Ben Sawyer swing bridge before 4pm and thus make it to Charleston before dark. (This swing bridge opens on request, but not between 4pm and 6pm.) So we decided to push on rather than anchor an additional night in the marshes and have to wait for favorable tide until the following afternoon. We’ll have plenty of additional opportunities to enjoy more marsh-life once we continue south again.

So now we are looking forward to a quiet evening at anchor, a fine dinner of pork with pineapple and maybe tomorrow we can get into the marina early to start our Thanksgiving break.

Mike

32 46.552 N, 79 57.187 W

There are a few big commercial boat towing companies - "Tow Boat US" and "Sea Tow" being two of them. On entering the ICW near Georgetown there was a huge billboard with the phone number of "Sea Tow" which we wrote down! Hoping not to need them

Pork with pineapple (and red peppers and avocado) - easy to make and delicious! We ate it with rice.