We went out for dinner last night - sheer extravagance! The marina is part of a resort hotel complex that has a dining room and bar and grill as part of its facilities. We opted for the Bar and Grill simply because it was less formal. There was a slightly different menu but the food all comes from the same kitchen anyway. Barb had the Maui maui fish sandwich which I tried too - pretty good, but not so much so that I can understand why everyone raves about it; and I had a Black Angus Beef Hamburger which was also really good, but I couldn't tell the difference if it had come from a White Angus, or a purple pokadotted Angus, or even, shock and horror, from a Jersey or Holstein.

Then we made a really early night of it and crashed at 1830 and slept through until about 0400 when I got up to check on things. Nelleke was just as happy as could be riding out some strong winds and heavy chop that had been muted by the breakwater here. The problem in Charleston is that if you have the wind and tidal current going in different direction you are going to get some wave activity even at a dock behind a breakwater.

This is a HUGE marina with over 450 slips and although it's across the river from the city of Charleston proper, they provide a shuttle service that runs hourly back and forth to the city.

We visited the city today by way of the shuttle and I must say that Charleston is the first of the US cities that I have been in on this trip that really typifies everything that I had been led to expect of a southern city with all that implies in terms of grace and charm. The other cities such as Annapolis seemed to have a foot in the north and the other in the south, and Norfolk is so totally coloured by the huge military presence there that the profession of arms seems to have become its identity. No, Charleston is it and can be summed up in three phrases - history, fine art and good eating. The city or at least the core of it is very clean and with almost no panhandlers, unlike Halifax. And those two panhandlers that we did meet, weren't recognizable as they took 15 minutes to get to their point of putting the touch on us for money. The first showed up with Palmetto Roses to sell us and spent 20 minutes preaching to us. The second spent 20 minutes telling us about how he loved Jesus, the gospel, how his Daddy was a preacher, how his Granny, whom he loves dearly, had brought him up, telling us how God loved us since he loved everybody (that one gave me a bit of a pause - sort of the booby prize for us for some reason) before he finally got around to hitting us up for change.

We took the shuttle to town which dropped us off right in the heart of Market Street and we walked down the road to the very well appointed and laid out visitors centre. This gave us a pretty good idea of what we wanted to see in the day that we have allotted. Our first stop was the aquarium where we met up with a couple who had contacted us by way of our blog and a mutual friend Tim Tregano from back in Halifax. Zoltan and Dora turned out to be wonderful people on a C&C 40 called Dazzle out of Toronto. Although they didn't come to the aquarium we met them after we had and spent the day wandering about Charleston in their company.

First though, the Aquarium - this is a really worth while stop. I have been in much larger ones but none better laid out nor any that are so obviously dedicated to the preservation of not only the oceans but also all of the aquatic environments, in this case of the South Carolina region. They also took the best photo of barb and I that I can remember. Unusually one of the other of us is blinking, frowning, talking or something else that spoils it. This one happened to work out perfectly. We have scanned it in and it is one of the photos on the blog.

Charleston is one of the only places that I can remember that has actual operating gaslights on the street for illumination. It was fascinating to see and I had to convince myself that it wasn't some really good trick of technology. But, no, they really were burning! Neat!

We walked through the open air market in Market Square and watched the ladies from the outer islands make baskets from sweetgrass and palmetto leaves and even bought a couple of small pieces to bring back to the boat along with the rose that we had bought from the first panhandler. Then we walked back to their boat where Zoltan and Dora plied us with single malt Scotch and Slivovitz before walking back to find a restaurant for dinner. We went into this place which seemed nice but not too expensive and ordered meals and that's where things unravelled a bit. They had an offer on the wall for specials and on Wednesday the ladies could have a free steak dinner. Barb didn't want the steak but I did so I ordered what she wanted and she ordered the steak. When they arrived the waitress came over to tell us that the steak was only for the ladies so we were supposed to pretend that she was going to eat it. Well apparently that wasn't good enough for the owner, who, by the way was the guy that enticed us to eat there from the doorway, and when the bill came they had added the steak to the bill. When we asked to speak to the owner, the coward had conveniently disappeared and left the resulting mess to his subordinate. Needless to say we weren't happy. We pointed out to the staff - what was the difference who ate it? The bill for the table was the same. We asked - would he prefer that Barb just say that the steak just wasn't to her taste and sent it back instead of having us switch plates mid way through and eating the meal. Although we eventually got satisfaction this cowardly idiot's policy spoilt what would have otherwise been a pretty good meal.

After that we talked Zoltan and Dora into coming with us on the ghost walk that we had bought tickets for previously in the day, but unfortunately the tour was full. So they returned to Dazzle and we went on the tour. This sort of thing is really interesting for people who are history buffs as a good tour guide, and Hoon Calhoon, ours was really good, can make the history that surrounds the tour very interesting indeed. Our first stop was the Provost Jail under the old Exchange Building which was full of history, ghosts, and intrigue. He then took us down Market Street showing us the history that was behind many of the buildings including some very posh looking hotels and about their ghosts and the reason that they are suspected to haunt the premises. He finished up at the old graveyard downtown where he regaled us with stories of premature burials and showed us photos taken on previous tours of mysterious orbs that appear on the camera but not to the naked eye. Some of the people took photos too and they got the orbs as well. Eerily neat! This tour was well worth the relatively small amount of cost for the fun and education that it provides. In fact we learned that if you look around you can usually get coupons that will give you a dollar or two off the face price of the ticket.

Oh! We stopped at a place called Kaminsky's on North Market Street for desert while we were waiting for the shuttle and we shared the best piece of pecan pie that I have ever personally tasted. Most pecan pies, albeit very good, are essentially a sugar pie with a layer of pecans on the top. This is the first time that I have had a pecan pie with pecans mixed all through the sugar filling. Damn it was good! It was so rich that the two of us were unable to finish a single slice, but it was enough to make us forget about the so-so dinner at the Crab Place on Market Street.

Anyway, after that we waited for the shuttle to take us back to the boat. We have pretty much decided to take the ICW tomorrow if the weather isn't too nice just to continue to make the miles, but Clearpoint tells me that it should be good weather. So after we're up tomorrow I'll check again and maybe we'll do the 60 miles or so offshore to Beauford.

I'm up. I've checked. Nope. Wind on the nose. ICW it is. We'll make it most of the way to Beauford today, anchor tonight, and go the rest of the way tomorrow with all things considered and with any luck. The day after that with good weather we'll head offshore to some place in the outer islands of one of the Georgia deltas. We have heard that Savannah is nice but the docks are expensive and the anchorages are poor so we'll probably give that a miss. From the weather forecast we might be spending a day in Beauford as the weather forecast is calling for 25+ knots from the north on the 22nd.

I have also just checked out our new temporary neighbours on the transient dock behind us. There is a British flagged boat called Distant Shores that is flying the Canadian flag like a burgee, so we are assuming that we have the Shards as dock mates. We will likely be leaving before they are up, but it was a brief brush with Canadian cruising fame.