Past Charleston
02 February 2020
• Isle of Oalms
by Michael and Barbara Turney • Cold but sunny
Sunday 2 February 2020
Groundhog’s Day. Well, back home they have cancelled Groundhog’s Day because of snow! The rodent will be making his predictions via the social media, would you believe?
What’s wrong with this picture. Yesterday we stopped after only seven hours underway because yours truly was freezing and in serious danger of jumping overboard to end it all. We huddled in the cabin with oil lamps burning and propane heaters belting out the heat. If us wanted an article cruise I would have turned north last September not south. Come to think of it, there probably wouldn’t have been much difference in the outcome.
Nah. I’m just being a whiner. But right now I would like it if Nelleke was a 55-65’ power yacht with an on-board generator that was powering the heaters and the stove and, and, and......
Oh well. Our anchorage last night was at a place called Tom Point Creek which is wide and deep with good holding. We set the hook, put our the anchor lights and went below to warm up. Another early night with the plan for a short day on Sunday. One thing that we have been doing on this cruise, a lot, is listen to audio books. We have discovered that Stephen Fry writes and reads exceptionally well and have been entertained by him on numerous evening trying to stay up a bit later. As it is I still go to bed around eight o’clock and get up at five. The later is useful as it allows me to do the first parade and make breakfast for us by the time that Barb gets up.
Anyway, we were underway with running lights blazing in the early dawn T seven o’clock. Tom Point Creek is a great Anchorage for an overnight but there is little else to recommend it so we were happy to be underway. We decided on a shorter day as after Charleston there was quite a ways before there were any other marina’s that we could find and after the chill of last night we wanted somewhere that we could do a laundry and plug in the electric heaters and let them power all night.
It’s remarkable how some one little thing can change everything. Today when we raised anchor and set off it was frigid and throughout the day the sun warmed everything up to merely damn cold? But it was bright sunshine with clear skies. That made all the difference.
By 1100 we were motoring by the beautiful and historic city of Charleston and heading across the harbour to the continuation of the ICW on the other side. Through good luck we made the top of the hour opening of Ben Sawyer bridge at noon and by one o’clock we were tied up alongside at Isle of Palms Marina, a nice place. I had intended to treat Barb to a dinner at the restaurant here but it was closed and the deli in the market closes at three. But it does open for breakfast at six thirty AM so there is how I will treat her before we set off tomorrow.
We are at mile marker 458 now and tomorrow we are aiming for Georgetown at mile 403 or a 55 mile day.
Comments