Passage to Charleston

Back in the USA!  Wow, what a great passage J  We had a largely uneventful trip to Charleston and are happy to be back! The trip took a total of 61 hours and we covered 547 nautical miles. 

Unfortunately, we didn’t get off to a very auspicious start. We made the decision to leave quite late on Monday – after the marina had closed. This meant that we couldn’t request that the chain across the marina entrance be left open for us so we needed to wait until around 9am to leave. Low tide was at 10 and we didn’t want to leave on a falling tide because the channel is so shallow. So while the best departure time would have been sunrise, we didn’t head out until 11. We were told to keep to the center of the channel but went a bit to starboard coming around the turn and whomph – we were dead stopped and aground! We’ve been in and out of Palm Cay several times so we knew we’d lift off with the rising tide but it was a drag to be sat there. It only took about 10-15 minutes before Martin was able to wiggle us off using the thrusters. (Yea hydraulic thrusters - they don’t heat up and time out like the electric ones can and we sure ran them hard.) And we were off, again! 

Much to our relief, we passed through Nassau Harbour without incident or a cruise ship entering. 

We were happy no ship was coming in and equally happy to pass this spot :/

 We saw a very sad sight as we passed the bridge just before Atlantis.

Very sad 

The squalls waited for us to leave, very polite!

Looking back at a rainy Nassau

The real excitement of the day was seeing a whale at the tongue of the ocean. I was a little worried that something was wrong with him. He stayed at the surface until we were close (we made sure to keep a healthy distance from him) before he did a shallow dive. He was small and seemed to be alone. We checked him out in passing and saw no fishing lines, nets, scars or abrasions so hopefully he was just relaxing on a lazy afternoon.

Blowing spout

Later that afternoon we had a big storm cloud form just over our heads and follow us for about 4 hours across the bank. No other squalls for miles, go figure. Wednesday was largely uneventful and calm. We saw very few ships and hit the Gulf Stream where we picked up 3 knots that held for the duration of the time we were in the stream. We cruised steadily at about 10.4 knots for 2 days.

Wednesday day

Sunset on Wednesday

Thursday early morning it got a bit bumpy before returning to very calm conditions in the afternoon.

Martin enjoying the view on Thursday

Sunset Thursday evening

We met a really nice sailor (on the VHF) who was single handing it from Marathon to Charleston. His SSB had gone out and he asked us if we could contact his wife to let her know he was okay. We got her number and gave her a call, she was very happy to hear from us! I saw two dolphins but they didn’t stay to play. They were really big, very dark and really fast. I’m wondering if they were dolphins, or if there are small whales that fit that description? I know there are several different kind of dolphins so maybe these were just different from those you usually see farther south.

As you can tell by the photos, our panorama didn’t change much and the conditions were ideal…

This trip we did things a little differently than we have in the past. We kept to our 4 hour shifts as that seems to work well for us, but stayed in the pilot house a lot more. Normally we each spend most of our time off-shift below, leaving the person on shift alone in the pilot house. This time we only went below for extended periods of time when we had to sleep. It was a bit frustrating not to clean or pick up while underway but conditions late night Wednesday/early Thursday would have made me queasy if I’d been below. So it helped with sea sickness, eased the anxiety I can feel alone at the helm and made time pass more quickly for both of us. We also discovered the Sirius station “Road Trip Radio”, music from the 60s through today. Simon and Garfunkle, Styx, Queen, Blonde, Sir Mix a Lot (!), Ramones, Gin Blossoms, Black Eyed Peas, Lady Gaga. Quite the mix. It was a “this is your life in music” experience, we had a great time singing along.

We approached Charleston in the evening and the temperature dropped almost 5 degrees. We happily turned off the ac and enjoy a fabulous evening. Because it was a less than ideal time to arrive (around midnight) we anchored off the south channel next to Fort Johnson. This was a first for us – to enter a major shipping channel and anchor at night. We’ve been through here a few times now so we knew the lay of the land/sea which made it much less scary.

Martin dropping the hook

Our views in the morning

Our slip at the City Marina (Megadock) isn’t guaranteed to be free until noon today so we slept in and are having a lazy morning.  We head in to the marina around 1, at afternoon slack current. Then we’ll head over customs and check back into the country.

So now we’re in Charleston, one of our favorite cities. We need to figure out how long we’ll be here and what our next move will be (weather will likely be a deciding factor). It’s comforting to know that we’re only about 4 days (including 1 overnight) from our hurricane hole in Virginia.

We’ve been in the Bahamas for 2 months so we’re looking forward to catching up on all things internet, being able to call friends and family cheaply, ordering a few spare parts/boats bits we’d like to have on board and maybe visiting Amazon.com. Woo hoo, all the conveniences of home!

Boat Business. Blossom performed like a champ with the exception of a slight engine issue, see below.

• Revisiting the varying RPM/Engine load. Oddly, about 12 hours into the trip this began again. It was mild, not nearly as drastic as it had been a couple weeks ago, but it was there. After a couple hours everything stabilized, but we were running at 25 rpm lower with a decreased fuel burn (about .3 less). This lasted several hours and then it went back to normal. Fouled fuel filters again? What could be in our fuel? Martin is going to change the filters out a second time and polish our fuel while we’re in Charleston. Then we’ll see how it does when we head north next.