Charleston to NC by car

We woke up on Thursday and radioed goodbyes to our friends who were leaving the anchorage to go to Georgia. About 9 boats headed out within a couple of hours of each other. Those of us remaining sighed in relief since we now had a little more space and didn’t have to watch so closely to see if any of us were going to swing into anyone else. A boat near us that was having such a difficult time at anchor took this opportunity to move over a bit and reset his anchor. Boy, were we surprised when he pulled up his chain and found no anchor at the bottom of it! I guess he lost it during last weekend’s heavy blows when he pulled through the anchorage; but Reinhart thinks something a little fishier than that might have occurred. As we were watching him scratch his head in disbelief, we looked to the southwest and saw another flock of boats making their way in. Seven boats came in as quickly as possible and threw out anchors even closer than the boats which had just left. Many of them hopped into their dinghies and headed into town quickly, leaving us to watch nervously for the turn of the tide. Once the tide had turned and it was obvious we were safe we decided to take advantage of the gorgeous day and go for a bike ride. We rode over the new Highway 17 Bridge over the Cooper River, just because it was there, and then we headed out for the Charleston Battery to check out the historic mansions.

Claus and Barbara on “Jonathan” invited us over on Thursday evening. We had wine in the cockpit as the tide turned and watched the neighboring boats swing dangerously close. It gave us a little chance to laugh and visit with them before they weighed anchor and moved to a different spot within the anchorage. Barbara fixed a delicious dinner for us and we had a lovely evening.

I don’t know if it is possible, but Friday turned out to be even prettier than Thursday, with incredibly clear skies and a high in the 80s. Right around lunchtime we heard someone call our names and lo and behold it was Nancy and Paul on their Caliber “Aurora”. We got to do a little catching up with them and found out we had been stopping at all of the same places since we left Annapolis, but our paths didn’t cross until now. Too bad, since we were just a couple of hours from leaving the boat alone in its anchorage to drive with Nancy to NC. Claus dinghied us over to the marina and Nancy picked us up; currently, we are at Nancy’s to pick up her doggie, Jasper, and publish the blog, but we’ll be on our way soon. She’ll drop us off in Charlotte and Cortney will pick us up for a fun night with her. We hope everyone has a great weekend!