Charleston, SC

Originally posted at www.svsweetescape.com

We arrived in Charleston on Thursday.    

Readers will remember that we ordered a life raft while in Annapolis and were unable to catch up with it in Yorktown, VA as originally planned.  Consequently we had the package sent to the Charleston City Docks - not the marina where we ended up staying.  When we called attempting to make a reservation, we were told they were full.  Thats why we ended up at the Charleston Harbor Resort four miles away from our elusive life raft.

As it turned out we were fortunate.  This is a very nice marina with a great staff and lots of amenities.  We took advantage of one such amenity shortly after getting Sweet Escape secured Thursday afternoon when we boarded the complimentary shuttle to downtown Charleston.  The shuttle drops off and picks up in front of the Ben and Jerry’s on Market Street every two hours.  We were dropped off at 4:15.   We had dinner and Judy did some shopping along King Street, the famous shopping district in Charleston.  It didn’t take Brian long to realize that the sooner we get out of Charleston the better at least as far as our wallets were concerned.

We decided to catch the 8:15 shuttle back to the marina and arrived at Ben and Jerry’s at about 7:40 which meant we would have to wait.  In the area of the Ben and Jerry’s are located several candy stores, one especially noteworthy for it’s delicious buttery tasting pecan pralines and it’s slightly nasally woman who shouts “free samples” every time someone walks down the sidewalk past the store.  It is almost comical and Brian had to resist the urge to walk back and forth in front of the store to see how many times it would take before she stopped calling out “free samples”.  We must confess to having tried a “free sample” and then purchased the goods to enjoy later back on the boat.

Our impression of Charleston is very positive.  It is an historic and very pretty city and would be a great place to spend a vacation.

On Friday we again took advantage of the shuttle and went to the Harris Teeter grocery store where we did some serious reprovisioning of the boat.  Friday was noteworthy for another reason.  The USS Yorktown, a post WWII era aircraft carrier is docked as a floating museum next to our marina.  Upon our approach to Charleston we had noticed that there were bleachers on the deck of the carrier and could not understand why.  As it turned out, the Yorktown was to be he site of 2012 Carrier Classic basketball game between Marquette and Ohio State.  The game was scheduled for 7:00 PM local time on Friday.  We ran into a lot of Milwaukee and Wisconsin people who had flown down for the game.  The Goodyear Blimp showed up and was circling the marina but...the game was not played.  Because it has been colder than normal here, no one apparently thought about the possibility that the playing surface, being outdoors at night,  would collect condensation making it slippery and thus dangerous for the players.  That is exactly what happened and the game had to be cancelled.  Wow - I imagine someone is sweating their job over this one.

On Saturday we put our dinghy in the water and drove the four miles to the Charleston City Dock where we finally collected our packages, including the life raft.  We also hired a diver to check for any damage to Sweet Escape’s hull resulting from our unfortunate encounter with several submerged logs on the Dismal Swamp Canal.  Luckily the diver found no damage other than some missing bottom paint.

Saturday afternoon we broke out our folding bikes and put on 12 miles.  The bikes did fine - we on the other hand are a work in progress.  We rode to West Marine and then to Walmart before returning to the boat.

This morning (Sunday) we fueled up and pumped out and left Charleston for parts south.  We only ran 25 miles today and are anchored in Church Creek with four other boats as this is written.  Tomorrow we will head to Beaufort, SC (pronounced bew-fort and not to be confused with Beaufort, NC, pronounced bo-fort) about 50 miles south.  It is supposed to turn cold again later in the week and we would like to be as far south as possible when that happens.