Canadian Friends from the Waterway with Ken

November 27 to December 2
Thankful, but no Turkey this year!
Nov. 27
We realized when we looked at the charts that we weren’t having turkey today. There’s nowhere to stop except McClellanville, where we are now (we tried motoring into the harbor there but it was low tide and we almost hit bottom) and we don’t have an oven (we do, but have never used it, due to some problems with the controls). So we headed off along the canals/rivers of South Carolina, another cold and sunny day. We are still seeing dolphins every once and a while. We anchored at the end of the day in another marshy creek, Whiteside Cr. Two boats we are familiar with were behind us and also anchored there. We all got together for drinks. One couple is from England and one from Canada.
We ARE thankful for the opportunity to take the time to see the East Coast in this way, up-close-and-personal, and to meet such interesting new people. We are fortunate to have the time to do this. Some days it seems like a Disney ride, and a free one at that! (This does not count the cold, windy, rainy days…….)The following day proved to be much warmer -- yay! No long johns today! -- and we are quite close to Charleston. We end up finishing the ICW north of Charleston Harbor with a parade of boats going through a swing bridge that opens when you request it. In the parade was a sailboat being towed and the 3 boats from Whiteside Cr. and a power boat. We anchored near the City Marina (they call it the Megadock, and it is big). We used their dinghy dock and went ashore to explore. Rain was expected, but mostly held off. The side streets leading up to the downtown were peaceful and pretty and then we hit the main shopping streets in the city and they were packed. We had forgotten that it was the “big Christmas shopping day”. Ken ended the afternoon straining his back on the return trip to our boat in the dinghy.
Our first aid kit contained some good pain killers and Ken was feeling better in the morning. We wanted to stay longer in Charleston but the weather was threatening to be windy again, from a difficult direction for anchoring in that harbor, so we left fairly early in the day for the ICW again. We still had warm temperatures but it was cloudy, and rain plus the high winds were expected. Our stop that night was at Bohicket Village Marina, a side trip off the ICW, down the North Edisto River, almost to the inlet to the Atlantic. This was a resort and marina, with several restaurants, a gift shop, etc. We treated ourselves to a great dinner ashore and then did 3 loads of laundry!
Nov. 30
An Island Packet 44 was towed in to the marina the day before we arrived and the single-handed sailor aboard is a woman. We talked with her and Ken looked at her engine, since she wasn’t going to be able to get a mechanic until tomorrow at the earliest. We’re not sure any of the suggestions he made were of any help but chances are good we’ll see her again further down the “road”. The weather was bad this day, windy and rainy. There was a break and I got to bike the short distance to a newly-built “village shopping area” and pick up some groceries. We left the dock in mid-afternoon and made a short windy trip to Steamboat Creek, also off the North Edisto River. There are plantations and ruins of plantations in this area. They grew rice and cotton in their heyday.
We finished our first full month on the boat this week and now have started December, back to cold clear weather. The ICW has a lot of “cuts” in this area (short connections between rivers) and we also crossed a very large body of water, St.Helena Sound. We got almost to Beaufort, SC, but the swing bridge in the river there only opens twice a day. The anchorage just before the bridge, on Factory Creek, proved to be a quiet, safe anchorage. We put out 2 anchors, one extra one from the stern, and this was such a stable arrangement that we remained there for 2 nights. We were able to motor to Beaufort in our dinghy. There we said goodby to people on two boats who were sailing out of the ICW that day, taking the more direct ocean route to Florida. [We can connect with people we have met on other boats by talking with them on the VHF marine radio. If they are within range--20miles--we can contact them and we can also listen-in if they are talking with bridge tenders or additional boats to make plans. That’s how we found out that the two boats we were familiar with were planning an overnight ocean sail.]