On Sunday, March 23 I met John in Atlanta, Georgia where we took a seven hour trip by Grey Hound bus to Beaufort, South Carolina. That was different I had never traveled by bus before, and it was not as bad as all the reviews had said, I would do it again.
We spent the next morning, March, 24, provisioning the boat for our trip.
Since the weather looked kind of fluky we thought that it would be best to get on the way that afternoon as soon as we could get the Beaufort bridge to open. Sailing is like camping, not so bad if it is raining once you are underway, just getting underway while it is raining not that great.
We were a little disappointed that we could not sail, the weather on the ocean was real bad with winds coming from the direction that we traveling to at 30 and 40 Knots, so it was decided that we would take the intracoastal waterway to Charleston. That was hairy itself, especially when we had that cold wind coming off our beam without the protection of the dodger.
Although we had our long underwear and cloves on it was still quite chilly, but we managed. A few miles from Saint Helena we found an anchorage for the night. You can see this spot if you check our SPOT locations because as far as I know this is the first location that the SPOT marked. I must have started it wrong when we set out that afternoon.
We anchored as far as I know off the middle of the channel but in the morning just as we were leisurely preparing breakfast, we got the danger doubt single from a giant tug blasting his horns, who said that we were in the middle of the channel, and that he could not get around us. We May have drifted but I looked at our location on the chart plotter and we were not in the middle of the channel he was just breaking our balls to impress his girl friend. We raised anchor anyway and left right then, planning to have breakfast later once we were underway, always a good practice anyway. Get to your next destination early in the day before you are to tired to make the right decisions.
We arrived at the Charleston Harbor Marina and resort area just around one in the afternoon. You mat find the time is different looking at SPOT.
We were hoping to get in some sailing during the week but the weather never cooperated. We were able to get his boat cleaned and address some miner problems plus figure out how to do some more procedures on his combination chart plotter radar.
We ate great during this trip John is into this health food thing involving no dairy, wheat, or sugar, which worked for me I could be a little more heathy. We did go to dinner at the Boat House restaurant where I was able to get my fix of Shrimp and Grits. The next day John met a friend for dinner, so I went back without adult supervision and had the same meal of Shrimp and Grits again. You don't get that up in New England, so I take advantage when I can. On Friday, March 28 we secured the boat, rented a car and drove 5 hours back to Atlanta. On the way we stopped in Augusta, Georgia so John could show me the statue of James Brown in the middle of the town square down town that he built.
From there we went to a friend of Johns, Simms Bray, where we had a great dinner and spent the night. This was great for Simms as well as me, because though we knew of each other for a few years through John we had never met.
On Saturday I jumped back on a Plane and came back home to more cold weather and snow. Sorry that SPOT did not work as good as I expected but you will sort of get and idea as to the terrain the we did encounter.
For the next few weeks I will be concentrating on getting Captain Ed's Sailing up and running I have a feeling when this cold breaks we will be in extreme heat but who knows.
