Longitude, that is...Today's eastward progress finally puts us where we had hoped to get when we left the Bahamas. With all that has happened, that seems like a long time ago!

We made a shorter day today, stopping before 4 in the afternoon. Nevertheless, we still traveled 60 miles: The sun was only halfway up at 0630 this morning when we were picking our way out of our anchorage. The early start, combined with some favorable currents, made for relatively fast travel. The best part was on Charleston harbor where we had 15-20 knots of wind from behind us and we turned off the motor and sailed at 6 knots for almost an hour.

In reaching Charleston, we have left the wilder sections of the ICW behind us and returned to more densely inhabited regions. Nothing really urban, but many more houses, towns, and...*groan*...bridges. Time to re-discover the joys of holding still despite wind and currents while waiting for scheduled bridge openings. And making running calculations to see if we can make it to the bridge before the next opening. Today we only had two opening bridges, but they each provided their own thrill. The first, after making us wait a half-hour for the next scheduled opening, asked us to hold position as close as we dared to one shore while a tug pushing two barges came through: An interesting dance for three sailboats in less than 10 feet of water with 15-20 knots of wind and a knot of current! The second bridge, didn't bother to respond to radio calls from each of the three sailboats but just went ahead and opened as we got close. This would have been fine except that the other two sailboats headed under the wrong side of the bridge resulting a brisk Chinese Firedrill as they spun about and went for the other side just as we arrived. Evelyn was on the helm and, despite a rapid series of odd maneuvers by the other boats, managed to speed up, slow down, turn sharply, without panicking, and to smile and wave at the bridge tender.

We docked at the Isle of Palms Marina for tonight, and treated ourselves to dinner out to celebrate 5 days of excellent progress towards Norfolk, Of course, we still have 456 miles to go, but you have to set smaller goals and celebrate them or the end just seems too far off in the future to sustain ones drive.

Thus far we have been very fortunate with the weather. Although the strong northeasterly winds kept us from making a direct passage offshore, we've had mostly very nice weather in the ICW. The offshore conditions have become nice now, but we've reached the point where the distance advantage of going "outside" instead of following the ICW becomes much smaller, especially when one factors in the south-flowing currents near shore and the forecast for very light winds that mean we'd be motoring outside as well as in. So we will continue north in the ICW, enjoy the scenery and wildlife, and sleep at night. It may take us a day or two longer to get to Norfolk this way, but that's okay: There's a lot of open-water sailing ahead for us north of Norfolk!

(32 48.269'N 79 45.529'W)