Sailing with Bob & Vickie

You are probably tired of hearing about the bridges and tide but it played a huge part in today's travels. Serendipity has a higher mast than most of the sail boats we have encountered, she needs at least 64 ft (at 64 ft our antenna scrapes the bottom of the bridges) to clear a bridge and this morning we left Isle of Palms Marina at 8:00 AM because we needed the tide to be high enough to keep from running aground (there is a 6+ ft differential between high & low tide in the channel and we draw 5 ft and our alarm was sounding that we were below 7 ft at close to high tide). We try to schedule our arrival at the bridge as the tide is lowering. At a distance we see the fixed bridge and through binoculars we see the clearance is 63 ft. Even though we are on the downside of high tide it's not low enough to get under so Bob holds Serendipity in place until the board on the bridge shows closer to 64 ft, which is not easy with all the current & wind against her. Finally we slowly go under the bridge and the antenna brushed the bottom of the bridge but we clear and all is good! Timing has been so important on this ICW trip, we need high tide to maneuver the channel and low tide to clear bridges and they are only a few miles apart. As we sail through Charleston harbor, the current is strong against us and we are barely moving at 2 knots (7 knots is a good travel speed). Very close to the marina is a sailboat that ran aground and is lying on its side in one foot of water (at lower tide level) - it apparently fell victim to the shallows and has been there for quite a while, this isn't the first time we have seen this problem while on the ICW. We don't like showing other boater's misfortunes, this is why we have been so careful about high tide, low tide, bridge heights, charted water levels, marinas we can go into, marinas we cannot go into, and more. We arrive at St. John's Yacht Harbor near Charleston, SC at 11:45 AM and Bob cooks chicken on the grill, shrimp and peas. I put my IPAD in a bag of rice so I won't be FaceTiming for awhile. HAPPY 20TH BIRTHDAY TO TAYLOR & KIERSTEN - Love and miss you!