Since leaving Beaufort, SC at about 2:00PM on Sunday, we have done about 226 miles on our voyage to Oriental, NC. We actually made 65 miles today and even left later than usual. We originally were only doing about 30 - 40 mile days but after spending the 6 weeks in Savannah we decided to dead head to Oriental.

On Sunday evening, we stopped at the Steamboat Creek Anchorage in preparation for going outside the next day. Then on Monday morning we headed out the North Edisto River Entrance to the Atlantic.The trip from there to Charleston Harbor was pretty uneventful except that the winds were not very strong at the beginning and we didn't make very good time. Then about the time to drop the sails and head into Charleston Harbor the winds increased to about 18 knots. This made getting the sails down, for us, a little difficult. But, we did arrive safety.

The pictures below is of the sails when the wind was directly behind us at one time and we went "wing on wing". This means that rather than having the sails both on the same side of the boat, we had them opposite each other, picking up more wind.

The following show Captain Bligh, aka Captain Nancy munching on a plain bagel (the only thing she and I felt like eating due to a little queasiness) while first mate Tom, in his off shore harness was out tending to the rigging. After finishing my "harrowing" tasks on the boat, I was allowed a similar bagel and glass of water!!!!

No, I'm not doing what you might envision!!!

As we entered Charleston Harbor, we saw Ft Sumter off our port side and a tug pulling a barge. Then, we saw a container ship that, at first, appeared to be coming right down the channel toward us. Fortunately, he made a turn and I made a turn and we passed smoothly.

The next day we stopped off for a short visit to the Capers Island Heritage Preserve and took a short walk from the ICW to the Atlantic. Saw several birds and one alligator. It was a pretty dissolute beach except for the folks that were dropped off by a tour boat for a little beach combing.

Yesterday, we stopped in Georgetown, SC and got some fuel and water as well as dumping our waste tank. We did a short walk of the town, which is a tourist town but wasn't too touristy!! We also had a nice lunch in a small Bistro. As we were leaving town, we passed the local steel mill and paper plant. So, Georgetown is also a factory town.

 

Today, as I said we did 65 miles and Nancy had the helm most of the way while I worked most of the day. We arrived about 7:00PM at our anchorage and enjoyed a nice, homemade veggie pizza. The ingredients were prepared, by me, while underway and popped into the oven after anchoring. It's a lot cooler here, by the way we crossed into NC earlier today, and the wind is blowing pretty good. Should be a good night for sleeping!!

We found the northern part of SC, just below Myrtle Beach very pretty and made a note to do a possible land trip there sometime.

I do have to mention, what I call a tale of two bridges and our governments wastefulness. In the picture below, you will see two bridges. One is the old swing bridge which has to have an operator to open and close it. The other one is a 65' vertical height bridge which most sailboats can pass under. We saw this on 2 different occasions in north SC. It seems the new bridges were built to eliminate the old bridges, the operator and a waiting to open time for cruisers. But, the locals decided they didn't want their old bridges torn down so they managed to get them on the National; Historical Register. Now, the new bridges have been built for, I'm sure, millions of taxpayers dollars and the old bridges are still there with an operator and can't be destroyed. Our government at work!!!!


                                       

One last comment. Not all boat's fair well or are as loved as TW2!!

I hope everyone has had a good week so far.

After leaving Savannah on Thursday and anchoring out Thursday night, we arrived in Beaufort (Bew-fort), SC on Friday afternoon. Beaufort is a neat little town with a really nice waterfront park and many old historical homes that were built by the plantation owners. They built these waterfront homes for the cool summer breezes. Most are built with the first floor up off the ground and are usually two stories with the warp around porches on both floors. Very elegant and stylist, although I would think not very cost efficient in today's world. They are, however, beautiful homes.

It seems that we arrived at the end of the two week Water Festival here in Beaufort. In addition to the craft fair going on there were several other events left on the schedule. We went into town on Friday evening to attend the River Dance, with a band from Knoxville, TN playing. Usually, I enjoy music of bands from TN but, unfortunately this band, The Dirty Guv'nahs, played for a much younger crowd and the music was impossible for our type of dancing.

On Saturday, there was an air show scheduled and we were advised our boat could remain at anchor but we couldn't be on it during the show since we were in the flight path of the aerobatic planes. Made sense to me so we went ashore and enjoyed the show.

We were able to have a short tour on a docked shrimp boat while there, similar to the one Forrest Gump had, which by the way Forrest Gump along with many other movies including the Great Santini, Prince of Tides and Bagger Vance, were partially filmed in this area.

Here are a few pictures from Saturday.

On the shrimp boat:

The swing bridge we'll pass through when leaving, different than the draw bridges and high vertical bridges we are used to seeing:

Sky divers and aerobatic planes:

This sky diver attempted a water landing onto a small floating raft:

And didn't quite make it!!!! But, a really nice try.

A couple of shots looking out at the anchorage:

A really pretty area.

As some of you know, I also lost my phone of the way back in the dinghy to Tumbleweed. After a pretty extensive search, I have determined it may have fallen out of my pocket into the deep blue sea. I'll let you know when I have another one.

We'll be headed on north from here either later today or tomorrow. We'll do a short run up the ICW, then go outside for about a 20 mile sail into Charleston Harbor. Since we drove up to Charleston from Savannah for a day, we probably won't spend any time there. We've decided to pretty much "dead head" on up to Oriental, NC (about 350 miles) where we plan to spend 3 - 4 weeks just hanging out and enjoying living in a marina where we'll have all of the amenities we could want.

I hope everyone had a nice weekend and a great week ahead!!

We robbed a bank, settled our account with Hinckleys and got the hell out of Savannah at 12 noon today. It's great to be underway again. We crossed the Savannah without incident or even seeing a commercial ship. Now, we're about to cruise by Hilton Head Island. We should be in Beaufort, SC tomorrow and plan to spend a couple of days seeing that town.