Tuesday November 21
We had a quiet night anchored by the Charleston city marina. This anchorage has a bad reputation for fouling anchors. The city has done some dredging to try and clean up the debris on the bottom, but I was apprehensive about anchoring here. We anchored in 20 feet of water and had to let out 100 feet of chain. Attempting to retrieve the anchor tripped the breaker on the windlass several times. When the anchor was finally up, we discovered that it had a 5 foot piece of rusty chain hung on it. We were out of there at 8:45 a.m. and able to make the 9 a.m. opening of the Wappoo Creek Bridge. The homes along the Wappoo have picturesque lawns with wicker rockers, swings hanging with the thick Spanish moss from the live oaks and white birds in among the palmetto underbrush. The ICW begins to wind back and forth. There are a few shoaling spots to look out for here too. We are coming off of high tide at noon. Low tide will be at 4:30 p.m. We should be at our anchorage ahead of that. We had no problems today. We decided to anchor in the South Edisto River, just off the ICW, about 2 p.m. We had a late lunch and enjoyed having this anchorage all to ourselves. We spent the afternoon reading. There was a soft rain at 7 p.m.
Wednesday November 22
Despite the fact that the doppler radar showed strong thunderstorms covering the entire state, we only had a light rain overnight. We never heard any thunder. In fact, it was so quiet, it was deafening. No wind, no current, no generator....just quiet. We were awakened by a pop, pop, pop, pop...pop. Someone must be hunting ducks nearby. We are up and ready to go at 8:00. Retrieving the anchor this time revealed a huge tree limb. Dolphins are playing in the Hell Gate cut. We slow down, but have plenty of water going through an hour before high tide. The sun finally makes an appearance around 11:00 and warms to a high of 72°. We are early and the only boat for the 1:00 opening of the Lady's Island Bridge. The dolphins dance around us as we wait. We have a reservation at the Port Royal Landing Marina. They are closing early today for Thanksgiving. Michelle, the manager, was nice enough to wait for us. She caught our lines, filled our gas can, and gave us a ride in the golf cart to the office to check us in. She gave us a jar of sweet onion relish made locally, along with a canvas marina bag, some can koozies and information about the town. We wished each other a Happy Thanksgiving and she was off to start her Thanksgiving dinner. We spent the afternoon doing laundry and taking showers. Carl took me to the Back Porch Grill for shrimp gumbo and fried oysters!
Thursday, November 23
The rain caught up with us. It poured all day. One of the other transient boats here tells us that they invited a few marines from Parris Island to join them for Thanksgiving dinner. What a nice thing to do. We are usually with friends or at a marina for a potluck, so I did not get a turkey. I was lamenting over this when I talked to my sister who reminded me that Thanksgiving is really about being thankful. I do have so much to be thankful for. Now, I need to come up with something for our dinner. Carl really likes spam. Yes, really. So, I thought that it would be fun to make a Thanksgiving dinner with both unusual and traditional dishes. So I made maple and brown sugar sweet potatoes with marshmallows that was better than my usual casserole, cranberry sauce from dried cranberries and lime juice that was better than the canned variety, and spam corn cakes (spam pieces dipped in corn bread batter and pan fried). Carl gave it 5 stars! It filled us up and for that I am grateful. We will always remember the Thanksgiving that we had spam.
Friday November 24
The sun is back out! After sitting on the boat all day yesterday we are ready to stretch our legs. We take a long walk before breakfast. It is a chilly 41° this morning. We will spend the day doing boat chores. We still have "intentions" to go offshore and the weather just might be cooperating now.