Charleston and a side trip to NY

Rainbow in Charleston

What a fabulous time we had in Charleston! It’s hard to believe that we were there for just over 3 weeks. Although it’s more appropriate to say that Blossom was there for 3 weeks as we used Charleston as a staging ground to do some traveling.

NY, NY

A few days after we returned from Savannah we headed north to New York City. Many years ago I graduated from university and immediately headed south to Washington, DC. where I spent most of my 20s. While there I met an amazing group of people, we were all young, idealistic, energetic and a tad crazy - we shared a lot of good times J  Fast forward 25 years and well, it’s time for a reunion! Our ring-leader from back in the day managed to herd about a dozen cats and we all ended up in NY City the weekend of the Cure concert. It was so wonderful to see everyone and amazing how little we’ve all changed (other than a gray hair here or there!)

Thank you Hugo for an amazing reunion! (and several of these photos!)

It had been planned quite some time ago but we weren’t sure that we could go until less than two weeks ahead of time (an invest in the Caribbean or tropical storm would have prevented it). Anyway, it all worked out and we flew up for an amazing, action packed, non-stop weekend filled with reminiscing, laughing, hugging and just a bit of food and drink! I was so happy that Martin got to meet everyone, and vice versa.  Oh, and the Cure were fabulous (my first time at Madison Square Garden).

The Gang

Drinks on the rooftop

Good friends and fun J

The Cure

We returned to Charleston to find 2 more Nordhavns on the docks as Giddy Up and Sunday Morning (both 55s) had come up from Georgia. It was wonderful to see Jim & Anne again (we’d met once, a few years ago in San Francisco) and to meet Van & Tracy.  And then, a couple days later, Jo & Robbie arrived on Southern Star! Woo Hoo, it’s just been a big party!

Solstice Strawberry Moon

Our last week flew by in a whirl of activity. Anne was amazing and managed to get reservations at both SNOB (again, omg what an amazing restaurant) and Common Green (also amazing). We hosted a happy hour on Blossom one evening and all talked the night away. Then we ended our stay with a potluck on Blossom – another fabulous evening. I love the Nordhavn community, such fun, warm and wonderful people!

Gourmet Hamburger bar (thank you Anne & Jim!)

The Nordy Gang J

We also were able to visit again with my cousin, Kayleigh, Shane and her family and roomie. They treated us to a fantastic lunch (try the East Bay Deli, wow, those were excellent sandwiches!) This time I got some good photos J

Kayleigh & Shane

Will, Becca & Luke

And just that fast, our stay at Charleston was over. We’re so happy that we were able to meet up with Jo & Robbie and we’re looking forward to heading north together. We only have a couple weeks of cruising left and I can’t think of a better way to finish our season than cruising with them! We’ll be heading up to the Beaufort area, to Cape Lookout, where we’ll anchor for a couple of days. From there we’ll head up the inside to Virginia. Our plan is to keep Blossom at AYB (American Yacht Basin) so depending on timing, we may stop once we’ve reached there, or dip into the southern Chesapeake and then go back down to AYB.

[I’m a bit behind on the blog, the next entry will be about our passage up to Cape Lookout and a continued Nordy reunion with Giddy Up and Sunday Morning - woo hoo!]

Tropical Storm Colin and a visit to Savannah

Moon over Charleston

Storm cloud

Blossom on the dock with the big girls

Well our first few days back in the states were eventful! We docked at the City Marina Friday afternoon during slack tide. We’re the penultimate boat on the outside of the Megadock, it must be close to a .5 mile walk to land from here! Our first order of business was to check back into the country. We were on our way to the marina office and then to Customs and Immigrations when we learned that Customs and Immigration actually come to your boat here, you don’t go to them. Well that was very cool because it was really hot and we much preferred clearing in on our own boat. Two officers arrived within an hour and we were done in about 10 minutes. Nice!

SNOB

We planned to stay in on Saturday night but instead ended up eating out at a fabulous restaurant, SNOB (Slightly North Of Broad). A friend recommended that we check out SNOB while in Charleston. I looked on Open Table but they had no reasonable time slots open for a couple of weeks. Late Saturday afternoon I saw the tab still open on my computer and hit “refresh” for the heck of it. Surprise! A 7:15 slot was open. OMG, what a meal! Thank you sooo much, Gail!

Fountainhead -  250+ feet!! She left the other day

On Sunday we visited with Kayleigh, my first cousin once removed. (Yes, I had to look that up – child of a first cousin is…? J) We had a wonderful evening together and a great dinner at Coast Bar & Grill which is located in an alley where you could believe you’re in France with cobblestone streets and ivy covered brick buildings.

Tom Ka Gai, I’m getting my cooking groove back on

By Monday we were in “storm” mode as Tropical Storm Colin started its ascent through the Gulf, to Florida and on to SC. We were pulling in our canvas and cushions when a captain from a large boat on the dock approached. He was quite adamant that we should turn our boat around to face west, implying improbable predictions of our swim step getting crushed off the boat, waves topping our boat deck and more. He planted himself on the dock and wouldn’t let it go. Long story but we finally turned around, if for no other reason than to make him go away (which he promptly did once we had redocked). Then we settled in for the storm which ultimately, was a lot of rain and winds topping at 30ish knots. It wasn’t even enough to wake us up. (Captain gloom and doom came by the next morning with a beer for our trouble J)

Shane & Martin

Sunset in Charleston (photo credit to Shane)

Over the first few days we also solidified our plans for the next 2 weeks or so and decided to stay in Charleston. The weather was looking good and this gave us the time to visit with my Mom. She came down on Wednesday and we enjoyed dinner with Kayleigh and her beau, Shane. It was a fabulous dinner (Kayleigh makes some A-mazing lasagna) and we really enjoyed getting to know Shane.

Sunset in Savannah

2 photos because I love them both

On Thursday, me, Martin and my Mom headed south to Savannah. We’ve all wanted to visit Savannah for years but have never made it down there. What a beautiful city! We stayed in the oldest hotel in the city, The Marshall House. I’m lame and didn’t take a picture, so here’s a stock photo.

The Marshall House

The lobby - wine, cheese and historian in the evening!

Our creepy hallway

AH! What was that??

It’s a gorgeous hotel that served as a hospital during the “war between the states” and is said to be very haunted (a major theme of Savannah – hauntings) We didn’t see any ghosts but we did thoroughly enjoy our stay!

We packed a ton into 3, very hot days. We walked all over the city and did several tours including a trolley tour, a walking ghost tour and a ghost trolley tour J and a narrated cruise on the Savannah River Queen. We visited the Owens-Thomas House, Davenport House Museum, Mercer Williams Museum House (made famous by the book, Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil), and the Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum.

One of the beautiful squares

Fountain at Forsyth Park

Mercer Williams House

Scott, our walking ghost tour host, those eyes!

The cemetery is beautiful

Savannah River Queen

Hot afternoon on the river

Savannah River Front

The Waving Girl of Savannah, Florence Martus

Dredging the river, cruise ships will come here one day

Tug central

Taking fire from Old Fort Jackson!

What’s that? A Nordy in Savannah! (there were two 55s but I didn’t snap the pic quickly enough)

And talk about food! We ate lunch at Zunzi’s Take Out and Moon River Brewery (haunted), dinner at Vic’s and the historic The Olde Pink House (also haunted so they say) and drinks on the rooftop of The Bohemian (twice!). And of course, we had ice cream from Leopold’s (home of the original Tutti Fruitti).

Free ice pops and stickers that say “Shit Yeah” while waiting in line at Zunzi’s

We all had the Conquistador sandwich, voted “best sandwich in the south” and “one of the best 3 sandwiches in America” by the Travel Channel. Yup, it really was that good!

Moon River Brewery. The upper floors aren’t used – too many bad things happen up there (!)

They warn you…

But the beer is very good

This is a rather large freighter coming down the river just outside Vic’s

The Olde Pink House

Leopold’s Ice Cream

That’s the normal line at Leopald’s. Yes, we waited. Yes, it was worth it.

So yeah, we basically ate and walked our way through Savannah! It’s a stunningly beautiful city with Spanish moss dripping from old Live Oaks, blooming magnolia trees, steeped in history (though much of it tragic) and a true feeling of southern hospitality.

Mom enjoying the view from the fly bridge

We returned to Blossom yesterday. We had a fabulous grilled dinner on the boat and met new neighbors across the dock later that evening. TC and Brenda invited us over to tour their truly phenomenal boat, one of the most amazing trawlers I’ve ever had the joy to visit. She's a custom build out of Brazil, perfectly planned out to most minute detail.

We were sad to say goodbye to Mom today, as she headed back to Myrtle Beach. Martin and I are settling in again before our next adventure which we’ll write about next week!

Boat Business: We haven't been on Blossom for a few days but Martin has a list. More on BB the next blog...

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This is our blog about cruising. I rarely post about current events, and don't consider it an appropriate venue for political commentary. However, it feels disingenuous to ignore the tragedy that has occurred in Orlando. Our hearts break for the senseless loss of life and for those many people who have lost their precious loved ones. Wishing for so much more love and so much less hate and violence.

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.