Last Days in Charleston, SC

We had a great time our final week in SC. Our last free night at the Maritime Center we went for a walk around town and ended up at a restaurant called Poogans Porch. It was a Friday night and they were booked so we “had” to sit outside (it was hot) – on the balcony - all by ourselves. So we had a private dining experience overlooking a great people-watching street and we had this mural in the background – depicting all the major chefs in the city.

Martin and mural

Me enjoying our private dining

We took advantage of waiting for better weather to head up to Murrells Inlet for a few days to visit my Mom.  Mom and I talked quilts and made plans for our next project (we’re both going to make the same quilt pattern). One evening, we went up to Myrtle Beach for dinner and took a ride on the Sky Wheel – what views!

Cool pic looking up at Sky Wheel

Me and Mart with the Sky Wheel in the background

Myrtle Beach as seen from above

Mart on the wheel

Mom on the wheel

The pier at Myrtle Beach

Can you believe there were people swimming next to the pier where guys were fishing?  There have been several shark attacks off the coast of North & South Carolina this summer. Swimming in chummed water? No.Way.

Our last morning in the cockpit I was joined by a beautiful cormorant. They’re my favorite water bird and I enjoyed his company. Eventually he jumped in and had breakfast.

Cormorant enjoying the morning with me

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to stay very long because we had get back to Charleston to move Blossom over to the Charleston City Marina. We only had our slip until the 4^th, when another boat was due in. That Tuesday, we waited for slack and cruised around to the new marina. We stayed there, at the Megadock, back in October when we were on our way north to Baltimore. I hadn’t wanted to move – I loved the views and all the action over at the Charleston Maritime Center. In the end, however, I was really happy that we did! New views, new neighbors, lovely marina:

 View from our slip at City Marina

It’s slow season, a pretty empty dock

We had one heck of a storm come through one evening. A Beneteau in the marina next door was struck by lightening and it took out the power for a few hours. We heard the thunder clap and just knew someone had been hit. My greatest fear (other than fire), I feel so badly for those folks!

Notice the visibility during the storm – it was a doozy

Kayleigh came over one evening after work and we went out to eat at a restaurant that we found last fall – Blossom. Of course we to go back J 

Then one morning I was scrubbing our window covers and a couple walked by – Ann & Rick. They were at the end of the dock on their Nordy 55. We’re usually tuned in to picking out Nordhavns around us but somehow we didn’t see them when we came. They came over for drinks one evening and we visited their lovely boat the day we left. I’m so sad that we didn’t meet them until just before we left. They’re a really lovely couple and we could have talked with them for hours! Ann showed me the intricate mola's they bought while cruising San Blas, another destination on the bucket list. I hope we’ll be seeing them again next year!

So in ending, we had a fabulous time in Charleston and hope to return soon. Maybe next year we'll be able to visit Savannah, Hilton Head and return to Charleston. That would be awesome...

Saying goodbye to Charleston on a gorgeous day

Added note: we've arrived in Ft. Lauderdale after a 65 hour passage...all is well. Next blog post...

Visiting in Charleston

Isn't she lovely?

A month in Charleston, how lucky are we?!  It’s been a very full and fun month visiting with lots of family. We have absolutely loved our slip at the Charleston Maritime Center. Out on the end we had gorgeous views of the bay, bridge, and dolphins on their daily wanderings. We also had great people watching as tourists loaded and unloaded from the water taxis and tour boats. Huge car carriers and freighters slowly navigated the bay all day. We were also across from the fuel dock so we'd watch pleasure boats, ferries, mail boats and even the shrimp boats fueling up.

Shrimp boat taking on fuel and ice

View from the docks (photo by Makenzie)

Blossom docked at the Charleston Maritime Center

That said, we haven’t been very good tourists because I’m a wimp and I can’t take the heat! But we’ve had lots of social time and I’ve gotten a lot of quilting done.

On one of our first walks out and about we happened by the Emanual African Methodist Episcopal Church which is just down the road from the marina. It was sobering and heartbreaking to see the church, the thousands of flowers and people paying respect to the victims of such a hateful, cruel crime. 

After we had settled, my Mom drove down to visit us for a few days. We enjoyed the view and the breeze from the fly bridge every evening.  When I saw my Mom in May we talked about a new table topper for the salon. I told her what I’d like and this is what she brought down with her – how beautiful is that?

I love my new table topper – coy & cherry blossoms – perfect J

On the recommendation of a cruising friend (thanks Charlotte!) we visited the amazing Callie’s Hot Little Biscuits one day for breakfast – the.most.amazing.biscuits.ever. (in the narrowest store ever!) We also went to the aquarium which is just a short walk from the marina. The highlight was a brief “4D” movie, Coastal Predators (amazing footage of the great sardine run filmed by the BBC). It’s 3D with the addition of the water spraying and chairs bumping – pretty cool.

Calie’s Hot Little Biscuits

Lick-your-lips tasty!

Martin and Frog at the aquarium

Mom and I went down to see the Angel Oak one afternoon too (thanks Kayleigh for suggestion!) It’s a Live Oak, believed to be around 1500 years old. It’s magnificent.

Angel Oak

My Mom and the Angel Oak

Our next visitors were Martin’s mum, Carole, and her partner, Michael. We spent the first few days relaxing (they had a long trip from the UK) and enjoying our ocean view.

Michael relaxing on the aft deck

Once they had recovered from their travels, Carole and Michael were mad tourists – heading out every day to explore the city.  We spent afternoons and evenings together on Blossom, barbecuing and enjoying the cooler evening temperatures.

Of course we had to explore some of the many wonderful restaurants – we were able to go to Circa 1886, Halls Chop House, the Carolina Ale House and Fig. All were great, but Fig stole the show (though it’s loud!)  We went to the Pure Theatre one evening to see the play, Bad Jews. The acting was excellent but we were all a bit shocked.  It was billed as a comedy but was actually a quite serious play. 

On a slightly cooler day we all went up to Boone Hall Plantation in Mt. Pleasant, one of the oldest working plantations in the country. We toured the gorgeous house, enjoyed the coach tour around the property and learned a great deal from the Slave Street exhibit, “Black History in America”.

Michael and Carole on the avenue

Martin and me (with a map)

Martin taking a rest

A heron hiding in the marsh, love the Spanish moss dripping off the trees

Slave quilts

My cousins also came to visit from upstate New York over a long weekend. Amy, Jeff, Kelsey, their friend Renee and her daughter Makenzie came down to visit with their daughter Kayleigh who lives nearby. We had a fantastic time hanging out with them. On Sunday, we had a barbecue with everyone aboard. Our biggest party to date – we were happy to find that Blossom was plenty big enough to accommodate a 10 person barbecue!

Selfie Stick photo - woo hoo! Counter clockwise: Michael, me, Makenzie, Kelsey, Renee, Amy, Carole.

Martin (yes, there were many tvs at the Carolina Ale House!), Jeff, Renee & Amy

Carole & Michael

The girls! Kayleigh, Kelsey & Makenzie

That evening we broke out the molkky game and Michael crushed the competition with an impressive win!

Excellent photo of the molkky field (photo by Makenzie)

Playing molkky

Jeff flexing into his throw

Martin & Michael strategizing (photo by Makenzie)

Things got racy later in the evening when we broke out Cards Against Humanity. There was much laughter and a lot of giggling.

Reading the card

Reacting to the card  J

Two weeks flew by and suddenly it was time to say goodbye. We had a wonderful visit with Carole & Michael and were thrilled to introduce them to Blossom!

Carole enjoying the view from the fly bridge

Our plans were to start heading south as soon as possible once our guests had all headed home. (I have a nagging voice in my head reminding me that every day brings us closer to peak hurricane season.) We’ve ended up needing to delay our departure, however, due to weather. This gave us time to get our satellite phone worked out (see below) and a few days to head north and visit my Mom in Myrtle Beach (where the next blog post with pick up!)

How's this for a cool pic of our Blossom sign? (Thank you Makenzie!) 

Boat Business:  We’ve managed to get a bit done on Blossom during our stay here as well.

• Wash. Blossom got a professional wash and looked her shiny best for our guests. The indoor cleaning woman didn’t come, but that was okay, she was still pretty sparkly from her June deep clean.
• Pilot House Canvas Screens. These get extremely dirty and the forward port canvas has been getting mildew as well. The ac vent come out right next to the window creating condensation on the window.  Over time and in hot humid weather, this breeds mildew. We did some scrubbing and mildew treatments and they’re looking much better now.
• Black water overboard pump. We got our new pump and hired someone to come help install it. Let’s hope that the end of that for a while at least!
• Diesel. We moved across the way, took on 1200 gallons of fuel and pumped out.
• KVH Satellite Phone. What an ordeal!  We go the unit back from KVH and worked for 2 days.  Martin called and they agreed to send a tech out to the boat along with a brand new unit. It took a day of installing, upgrading software and connecting the new unit to our account, but we now have our satellite phone up and working again – yay!
• Support Strut. We received a support strut for the exhaust elbow on the main engine. There have been a few instances of the turbo being pulled off engines like ours (a John Deere 6090) by the weight of the exhaust elbow and riser. The solution is a strut attached to the engine block and elbow that supports the weight. It hasn't been installed yet, but is on the list!

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 :)

A Fabulous 4th

*Warning for readers interested in the boating part of the blog: this entry is all about our NY trip and contains no boat/boating content other than we’re planning to leave this weekend for Charleston. Our next post will be about our passage to Charleston*

We are back aboard Blossom after an amazing long weekend in upstate NY.  Every day was jam packed and we had a great time. I’m a lousy photographer – when I remember that I have a camera, I take lots of picks. But that’s not all the time, so I have an unbalanced album from the weekend. (I have a sneaky suspicion that my photo-taking is somehow related to alcohol consumption :/)

We arrived Wednesday evening and went out to dinner with my Dad and step-mom, Annette, and got caught up. We hadn’t seen them since last June so we had lots to talk about! We spent Thursday together and in the afternoon Annette’s daughter Gina, her hubby Brian and son Riley came too. We enjoyed a sunny afternoon chatting and then shared an excellent dinner. It was a great day J

Friday morning we took a drive through my old home town, Brockport. We even drove by our old house. All those little trees have grown so tall, it's surrounded by a forest now :)

That afternoon was our “We’re all turning 50 this year” party. There are 8 of us who were close in high school and we’ve somehow managed to keep in touch over the years. 6 of us were able to make it to the party as well as some spouses, children and a couple of parents too. Kim and Laura, we missed you!! Ray and Lyssa put together the best banner ever for the party:

The awesome eight - high school photos and a pic from our wedding party in 2012

 Jeanne and Ray went all-out hosting the party.  Jeanne is a certified sommelier and wow – did we have some amazing wine!  Here’s a shout out for her new employer - 2foodies Wine & Spirits in Rochester, NY. They specialize in small production wines & liquors and offer classes on how to pair wine & food.  It’s amazing!

Wine bottles on tap (for tastings), how cool is that?

Age has mellowed us all but we can still party, and my God, did we have a good time! Wine, food, water balloons, hola hoops, and most importantly, very, very dear friends.

Theresa brought us all “50 and Fabulous” sashes:

Paul got the “King” sash J

 Always the "king" :) I don't seem to be helping much

And we all got a birthday cake:

Thank you Amy!

 There was much wine consumed, including a Riesling and cabernet franc tasting.

We needed lots and lots of glasses!

The kids were there, no doubt rolling their eyes as their parents nerded out.

The kids watching it all - Makayla, Austin, Allison, Lyssa, Katy

Lyssa & Jeanne

Katy, Allison & Amy

 Hula contest! Allison rocked it with a double and Theresa was impressed

Elsie made it look effortless

Elsie, Allison & Katy hooping it

Paul and Martin give it a go

Martin needed to concentrate

Paul & Lyssa

Martin & Paul

Water balloon tossing...everyone had a different technique...

The peanut galley, Mike, Theresa & Steve (avoiding water balloons)

It was as much fun to watch as it was to play.

 What a day that was!  Happy memories to last a lifetime J

On Saturday, the 4^th, we headed south to visit my Dad’s family. My aunt & uncle have a beach house on Silver Lake that is the perfect summer home.  It was another day filled with family, friends, fun, food, drink and partying on a boat!

We spent lots of time on the water enjoying the boat and jet ski. We got to see the 4th of July boat parade.

Bill & Rae friend is dressed as a worm at the bait shop :)

A Tiki Bar Boat. There were flashing coconuts at the helm

Bill, Annette, Dad & Rae

Martin enjoying *not* driving the boat!

Amy, Annette, Dad & Jeff

Bill, Bill, Joyce, Rae, Zack & Kelsey

 Shanel at the helm with Jake & Kelsey

Zack’s turn

Jake drives…

Oops!

 Dad & me

Rae, Shanel & Jake

Jeff the chef!

We went back out in the evening. We snuggled to keep warm and watched a lovely sunset.

Me & Joyce keeping warm

Me & Martin

Bill at the wheel

Sun setting on Silver Lake

The gang and our patriotic (and very tasty) cupcakes!

Mart, Joyce & me

It was another wonderful day spent celebrating with family & friends!

The festivities continued into Sunday but I was really bad about taking pictures L  We all went to Makayla’s graduation party (yay Makayla!)  

Makayla helping her Dad blow bubbles

Makayla’s graduation table

That evening, Gina, Brian & Riley invited us and Dad & Annette over for dinner. We had a lovely evening relaxing from the weekend, topped off by watching the US team win the women’s world cup J

Now we’re recouping back on Blossom, we need a rest after so much fun (and food & wine J  It’s looking a bit hopeless to get the satellite phone repaired any time soon so we’ve purchased an Iridium Go that Martin is installing today. 

There’s a nice weather window this weekend so the plan is to head out Saturday. It’ll take us about 48 hours to get to Charleston. We’re looking forward to being back on the water (and moving)!