Boating is not just fun, games and glamour…

Some days it’s fixing toilets and scrubbing the decks :)

Our first day in Charleston was a busy one. Jeff’s friend Simon, who is a captain of a local boat, came by and very generously spent the day with us.  We were able to get a tour of his boat and then stop at a West Marine and Lowe’s to gather supplies for the toilet and AC projects. 

Martin creating his charging device in Lowes

Blossom at the dock, Charleston Harbor Marina

This morning we moved over to the Charleston City Marina megadock.  Once again we waited for slack tide and then we left the dock. The wind was blowing a bit and we had to navigate down a fairly narrow channel in the marina lined with very big, very expensive mega yachts.  Martin did great!  We had a bit of argument with the dock hand who wanted us to pull up 5 feet away from the boat in front of us. We agreed to 10 feet and feel far too close with a tropical storm coming up the coast (even if it’s not expected to affect us too much, any swell could make us bounce…)  Apparently a very large boat is coming in behind us tomorrow.  So this meant that we tied the boat down and then had to undo it, move it forward and redo the lines. Good practice, yet annoying.

Blossom bowsprit to the left, Marlow to the right

This marina is right in Charleston and I’m looking forward to getting the bikes out and going in to town this week.  But today we had business to take care of. Martin transferred fuel to the starboard tanks and we’re almost level now. 

Conducting the highly technical "blue tape test" to see if we're level

Then he and Jeff fixed the master head toilet this morning – major victory!  

It always looks worse before it gets better...

While they worked on that, I scrubbed the decks and wiped down the stainless rails. 2.5 hours of cleaning – dang!  Today was a good day to work around the boat, it was only 85 degrees with a breeze. This morning was the first time I was actually a bit cold on the east coast since March. In the afternoon, Martin pressurized the tempered water loop after creating a device to do so and filled our water tank using his home made filtration system (he's turning into MacGyver!).

 Jeff and I ran up to the marina store and found Ginger Beer in cans (total coup, we’ve never seen it cans before and we avoid glass as much as we can – wine being the big exception of course), as well as some Mt. Gay rum.  Dark and Stormies for happy hour today! 

It's all about the rum!

Today was left for boat chores so we could get keep up with the growing list. The boat is big enough that if we let things like repairs, cleaning and maintenance items slide, we worry that could get overwhelmed and have a hard time catching up.

Tomorrow we’ll work on more Blossom protocols and paperwork with Jeff and I’ll clean up inside. 

My favorite place to get work done on the boat

I want the boat nice and clean for my Mom!  She and her friend Desnee are driving down from Myrtle Beach to spend the day on Thursday.  I’m so excited to see her and to introduce her to Blossom!  

Time to sign off, it's cocktail hour on the fly bridge and we're having dinner in Charleston tonight...