The Chaleston Shuffle

What an amazing city...Charleston,NC...tons of restaurants, incredible amount of history every turn you make, beautiful homes and really friendly people. Being the cheap sailors that we are, we took advantage of the local trolley to see the city ($5) for the day. We were in Charleston in 2001 and found a French resaurant that was affordable, casual and all the bread,stews etc are homemade. As I was walking hru the city I fell upon this amazing place once again...time to drool...cheese and pate platter with homemade bread..$9.50. We also walked throughout the Battery area that has all the old (Civil War) mansions that are in impeccable condition, beautifully manicured yards with fountains and flowers. We then left Charleston to Beaufort, SC and stayed until the weather was right to go on the outside to Fernanadina Beach, Florida. They have mermaid sculptures in the town near the businesses...pretty cool. We made our exit from Beaufort at 3:30 in the afternoon and made it to fernandina by 10:the next day. They sail mimicked a roller coaster ride that you could not get off of...big winds and waves and pitch blackness for most of the early morning. We did have 2 other boats that left with us and we were able to talk via the VHF....kinda nice to hear a familiar voice in the middle of such a wild ride. The other cool thing was all the shooting stars that we saw when the moon was bright!!!As we pulled into Fernandina, the sun came out and the weather heated up. It was a nice welcoming after wearing every piece of foul weather gear we have....Now we are in Jacksonville...back to warmer temps....Yeah!

The Skinny On The ICW (intracoastal waterway)

We left Beaufort,NC 5 days ago and are now in a Marina in Charleston,SC....The trip down the ICW was filled with incredibly gorgeous scenery, amazing homes, beautiful wildlife and Scary Skinny Water..When I say skinny I mean skinny. Skinny means shallow...the Icw is maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers. Their job is to try to maintain the depths of the ICW at a minimum of 12 feet. Their mission is impossible because of one thing: Mother Nature. As you motor down the IcW you pass inlets that have water constantly flowing in and out of them from the Atlantic Ocean. This flow of water causing erosion and shoaling at each of these openings...One day (after the Corps dreges)the inlet could have 12 feet of water and then just a month later the water is only 5 feet..(at low tide)....Certain areas are worse than others. Bottom line: we never went completely aground.YEAH! We had some incredibly nerve racking scenarios but we did not go hard aground. Part of the time we had some huge motor yachts in front of us that would call us on the VHF and tell us about some skinny 5 foot depths and try to tell us what part of the channel we should stay closer to..At one partcularly shallow area John made the decision to go outside the channel marker to get to deeper water. This concept is counterintuitive...But it worked....Pretty cool! It's amazing you can actually start to think that 9.9 feet is deep water. We have a draft of 6.6 feet, meaning we need at the very least 7 feet to not go aground. We also anchored at a creek off the IcW
in rainy, awful cold weather. As soon as we started to anchor the wind popped up to 25-30 knots. The Nationl weather service came on to say that an unexpected gale came thru the exact area we were in...no where else. To say that the nite was dark(pitch black),windy and miserable is an understatement. The next morning in very foggy weather we preceeded to move further South. The sun finally came out when we got to Charleston...Thanks to Blue Blaze for their support...sometimes they would the lead boat and contact us immediately to tell us to go to the right or left to get to deeper water....Big help!Some pics of the ICW...

Time To Catch Up

Since I last left everyone, we were on Tangier Island. We sailed onto Willoughby Bay, just off the channel from Norfolk Harbor. It is a crazy place where you have to keep very close track of container ships. Navy warships, barges, and other boaters. We almost had a close encounter with a container ship. They appeared to be anchored in the channel (not that unusual) but upon the sun moving and finally shinning upon the bow, I yelled to John that it was moving very quickly towards us. They were being pushed by a pilot boat and the captain came on the VHF to warn us to get out of the way. Luckily, we were already moving out of his direction and over into safer waters. We stayed a nite in Norfolk with 3 other boat(all friends) and moved a slow 10 miles to Great Bridege where you can tie up for free for a nite.Great Bridge is like an oasis for a cruiser because you are no more than a 15 minute walk to a grocery store, drugstore, landromat, liquor store, bank...you get the picture. I can not forget the mexican resturant...all good things. One of the great things about fellow cruisers is that everyone has a specialty...One of our friends loves to bake bread (which we are very fond of) and he gave all of us a baking lesson. He definitely has the touch..the bread turned out amazing. It looks simple enough so I have purchased all the necessary ingredients. After the bread baking lesson we were give a tortilla making sesson by another cruiser...again it looks easy enough. They do not last in the fridge very long because they are so fresh without preservatives...but they do not last long also due to the fact that they are scumptious! I know you are thinking that it is a lot of work making bread and tortillas from scratch but that is one of the wonderful things about cruising. If you go to places where the bread isn't tasty, then you just make your own. The Bahams is known for many things but the bread is not one of them Our nite ended with Chris jackson reading an excerpt from his book Scimitar Moon...he is very talented and it is a treat to read...Pretty cool!.Now we are in Beaufort, NC...great town, very sail friendly. Beautiful day...No pics today....problem with website....

Life in Tangier Island

We are on the move again...going South. Our first stop was Tangier Island, Virginia. The island was founded in the 1600's..The town still has decendants from the original settlers. The main industry has been crabbing/fishing but tourism (ferries from the main land) helps when the fishing is slow. We came into Tangier on a blustery day and major concern that the depths going into the channel would be very shallow. We bounced off the bottom once coming in...not bad. We were glad to see Mr. Parks (79 year old owner of Parks Marina) waiting to help with the docklines. We had tried consistently to get him on the phone or VHF to no avail...His wife answers the phone but she is a bit challenging to talk with...he affectionately refers to her as "Fang"...as in Phyllis Diller. Anyways he helps us to tie up...our depth reader at the bow read 5.6 feet (we have a 6.6 foot draft---amount of water under the boat)..We were not going anywhere in a hurry. Then we assisted our friends on Blue Blaze...luckily uneventful. Then Mr. Parks, who was a crabber for 40 years took us on a golf cart tour of the island. What a character...he calls every guy on the island by the name of George...and every woman is Sweetie..The tour took about one hour...We met the local cop, known as Da Cop...he has a great sense of humor, definitely a half full glass kind of guy. His one daughter is the PA (Physicians assistant)on the island, the doctor comes once a week. In emergencies, a helicopter would arrive and whisk you away to Salisbury. The island has 3 resturants that basically close for dinner by the time October comes around. The internet and cell phone service is non operationalon the island. Despite how caught in time the island is, they have a part time resident who pilots his helicopter to his home on the weekends from DC....He also created a Tangier Island Museum that had closed by the time our tour ended. Here are some pics of the island and of course a pic of Mr. Parks...