Travelling to Charleston

Leaving Palm Beach

We made it!  We are currently docked at the Charleston Maritime Center, right near downtown Charleston.  We have an amazing view and location - I’m happy that we’ll be staying here for almost 3 weeks!

The trip went well though we had a bit of a hard time getting ready. The day before the passage I realized that I’d lost my sea sickness wrist band. I searched the entire boat and where that little thing is hiding is anyone’s guess. Luckily, the patch did me fine and I was no worse for wear (though I’m ordering another band today!)

We also had some issues installing our new sat phone – the iridium go. We still hadn’t heard a peep about our KVH satellite phone, so we ordered an Iridium Go as a backup (thank you Nancy for all the info!) The first unit arrived with no accessories or instruction booklet, obviously a return that hadn’t been checked by Amazon. The store was very accommodating and they overnighted us another, complete one. Once installed and activated, we found that it needed to be attached to an external antenna to get decent reception. We had thought ahead and had such an antenna installed, but the end of the cable attached to it needed a connector installed. Long story short, we couldn't reach our electronics guy, Martin spent 3 hours the day before our departure trying to find a part and install it, and we ultimately were saved by a crew member from the boat next door who was an electronics guy in his former life! Austin came by in the afternoon the day before we left. He took one look, said, “nope, you’ll need to undo all that”. Fifteen minutes later he had reinstalled it and we were getting 5 bars on the phone. Once again, we meet the friendliest, most helpful people while cruising!

With the sat phone in order we were ready to leave. The current in Charleston is notorious so I called the marina on Friday to ask about our arrival. They said we had an easy slip to get into, right across from a tall ship (cool!) and to enter on an ebb tide, preferably near slack at either 6:30 or noon. We knew that if we maintained our cruising speed of 7.5 knots it would be a 48 hour trip and we also knew that we’d pick up some speed in the gulf stream but we weren’t sure much. Boy did we underestimate how much time we’d save!

We left Palm Beach around 9 in the morning to find that there was a fishing tournament taking place. Check out all the returns on our radar! 

It was a beautiful, sunny, warm, breezy day. Couldn’t ask for better. It was just cool enough that we turned off the ac so we could enjoy the breeze. It felt great to open up the boat and air her out.

We had a good push behind us almost immediately as we picked up a half knot just outside the inlet. In no time we were flying along at 11 knots.  We were making amazing time and even thought that we might be able to squeeze in at dusk on Sunday evening and anchor for the night. But then the sea state changed rather abruptly on Sunday morning. We had very confused 3 foot-ish seas. Blossom doesn’t like confused seas and her autopilot threw it’s hands up in disgust. After constantly adjusting the autopilot and snaking for a couple of hours at a significantly reduced speed, we did too.  We didn’t want to arrive in harbor in the middle of the night (it was looking like we’d arrive at midnight with the reduced speed). Instead, we decided to go closer in to shore to try to get out of the lumps and bumps and slowed down to 1300 rpms (we normally run at 1500) so we could arrive at dawn and go straight to the marina. It worked like a charm and we crept into Charleston with the dawn and a dolphin off our bow.

Views from our fly bridge

We slid into our slip at what must have been exactly slack tide. We tied up and met with the harbormaster when the office opened so we could take care of business, arranging washes and repairs (see below). With that done, we both promptly fell asleep. That evening we went out to dinner nearby, came home, and went straight to sleep. Now we’re back on schedule and ready for the fun to begin! 

Boat business:

Any excitement on the trip? Of course, but nothing serious, just smelly…

• Black water woes. Remember the fix for the bad smell – cleaning and rebuilding our manual black water pump? Well, we tried to pump our black tank overboard and the manual pump *leaked*. Martin caught it quickly, but not quick enough. Yeah, let your imagination run wild with that one. Some days it really does suck to be Martin L  We’re cleaned up now and will pump out at the marina in Charleston. PAE mailed us a new pump that arrived today. Martin found a guy who will come tomorrow, to install the new pump. (In the meantime, Blossom is back to smelling fine after using up a good amount of rescue tape on the pump and bleach in the basement.)
• Engine temp. We watched our engine room temps since this was a long, hot passage. We’re still running very warm at about 30 degrees above ambient temperature but it’s better than +45 degrees which is what we had before the Delta T redo last winter. With water and air temps at 84, the ER stayed at 110-117 depending on what was running (when the gen is on the temps go down because the alternators don’t have to work so hard.) 
• As mentioned above, we now have an Iridium Go as well as a KVH satellite phone which we hope will be reinstalled while we're in Charleston.
• Keeping tidy. We had B's outside washed down today (she's sparkly and salt-less now) and we have someone coming tomorrow to clean her inside. (Yes, I'm getting spoiled, don't judge.)  We want Blossom looking her best for our visitors :)