After a quiet night on the hook in Wrightsville Beach, we weighed anchor before sunrise and headed down the ICW for Myrtle Beach. However, as we passed the entrance to the Atlantic at the Cape Fear River, Kay said let's go for Charleston. I checked our fuel, and a quick calculation indicated we could make it even if the wind died down. In fact it worked out pretty well. We had enough wind to reduce the power to about fifty percent, giving us about 6.5 knots, which put us at the Charleston Harbor entrance just a bit before sunrise Saturday. Perfect timing. It took us another two hours to make it by Fort Sumter and into the Charleston City Mega Dock. We tied up, cleaned up the boat, had lunch, and after a hot shower, we napped for a couple of hours. I chose the solarium which was quite warm and peaceful.

When we awoke, the Ashley River boat parade was in full bloom. A very nice warm wind was blowing just right for Saturday afternoon sail races. The sailors of Charleston were out in force, and we enjoyed the view while waiting for the marina shuttle to carry us downtown to Meeting Street to visit the Calhoun Mansion, the largest and finest home in the City. I must have missed why it is called Calhoun, as an Atlanta grocer by the name of Williams built it. In any case it was very interestingly built and filled with incredible antiques from the Victorian era. One of the recurrent themes was a rope motif around all the Windows and doors. Our guide told us that to Charleston folks, that symbolized what they called money on the water. In other words, the builder had made his money in shipping. Kay and I concluded that we also had money on the water: ZT!

We had a quiet walk up Church Street to the hustle and bustle of the town market, and then down King Street to see some of the Antique stores. Charleston is just plain fun, and clean, and very pretty. Life seems to have a slower and more graceful than most modern cities. It's a place that invites a long stay of exploration. But, we were on a mission. Low Country shrimp and grits. We picked up our grits at Vickery's and the marina shuttle carried us back to ZT. We were going to have dinner watching the UT game, but fortunately, as it turned out, the local ABC affiliate carried some non descript game, and we were still pretty tired. So, we turned in early anticipating an early launch for Beaufort.

About 0300 a really fast moving cold front blew through dropping a bunch of rain and causing me to get out to check the mooring lines. All was well, and by the time we got up the weather was back to blue skies, but windy and cool.

We took off down the ICW heading toward Beaufort figuring that it would be miserable outside in the Atlantic. For a while we followed a river cruise ship called American Glory, but she was considerably slowed by the wind and all the turns in the various creeks and rivers of the ditch, so we eventually passed her and beat her into Beaufort by over an hours.

Arriving in Beaufort just at sundown was beyond my powers of description beautiful. The Low Country was burnished in shades of brown, red, and green. The sunset was out of a Zane Grey novel, and the town was quaint and charming. However, our continuing quest for the best Low Country grits was thwarted by the lack of open restaurants on Sunday night. The dock master told us there was a grocery store about three quarters away across the bridge we had just sailed under, so we took off on a quest for grits and some victuals for our galley.

Well, an hour later we finally found the Publix, and the nice folks in the store sent us across the street for dinner at Steamers. No grits, but a fine Gullah dinner of sausage, shrimp, and potatoes.
On the cab ride back we measured the walk at over two miles. Oh well, we really needed the exercise anyway.

So this morning we shoved off well before sunrise and led the few and the brave past Paris Island and out into the Atlantic for our third overnight sail. Our plan is to make it to the Ponce Inlet just above Cape Canaveral at Smyrna Beach, then proceed down the ICW for a few miles before stopping for a rest. It's now about 2100 on a dark and moonless night and it looks like we are right on plan for our 185 nautical mile passage. We are about 35 miles off shore, so this is as far as we have been from land since making for the Keys last May. We have seen very few other ships, and no other yachts since we left St. Helena Sound. Not much wind, but a very smooth sea state, and the milky way is so thick with stars it looks like you could reach up and pluck one out of the sky. Kay is asleep here in the solarium, and I am on watch. She has leaned navigation and chart interpretation very well, and is now confident to stand watches for short intervals while I get a cat nap. We have set up the GPS chart plotter to give us an alarm at ten mile check points which works out to about every hour and a half. Also, I have the radar set up to sound an alarm if any target gets within three miles of ZT. This system has really worked well, and I am very impressed with the technology. We are out of cell phone, and thus, internet range, but the satellite TV is working fine and gives us a bit of comfort at being still connected to the land. Even at this distance, and off the mostly uninhabited coastal islands of Georgia, we can see a faint glow of lights over to the west. Several times we have been fooled by rising stars and planets, thinking they were ships. Distances on the water are always deceiving, but even more so at night. One lighted beacon we spotted took us over three hours to pass. It drove Kay nuts because it looked like we were heading right for it for the longest time.

With this over night effort, we should be in winter quarters at Ft. Pierce by Wednesday afternoon. We are both anxious to get home to family and friends, so I know we will get the boat squared away early Thursday and head for the closes airport.

Well, I just spotted another boat, or planet, and I better get back to navigating. I'll sign off for now. But first, I must tell all that we had a perfect sunset for a green flash, and once again, the legendary light eluded us. I?? m still convinced it's a sailors tale.