We're in Savannah and have decided to revive the BlogSpot.  Find us at Dalmatian1111.blogspot.com 

CMC

Here we are in the Charleston Maritime Center, our home for the winter.  It's fairly quiet in this marina for being right in the center of a bustling city.  Our berth is well protected and we are only two blocks from stores, pubs, museums, and restaurants.  There's a free trolley that will take you throughout the city and buses running to all the surounding shopping centers.

Awendaw to Charleston

We stopped to anchor on the Awendaw River in the Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge, 64,000 acres of wilderness that is mostly inaccessible because of the wetlands and dense undergrowth. We can attest to that. Its quite a relief from the noise of the mill in Georgetown. The trip here was the thinnest water yet. Many times we turned up enough silt to render our depth-finder useless because of the false readings. It is also a waning moon so the negative tide is 1 foot below average.

North

East

This is our view of the wildlife refuge.  Tomorrow we plan to leave on the high tide in order to be on the low end at Charleston thirty miles away. This will also help us dock since the Cooper River will be at slack at about noonish.



Well, having writen the above we found the trip into Charleston to be a bit more intense.  There were areas of swift currents from different rivers that pushed us sideways in several narrow passages.  We also met a couple tugs pushing barges northward straining to keep in the channels too. 

As the tide fell it went below normal by a foot or more creating long stretches of 7 foot water.  We officially draft 6 foot 10 inches and have water tanks and fuel at about 2/3 full.  The boat slugged through the bottom muck and drug three times nearly stopping us.  It wasn't until the broad Cooper River in Charleston did we feel free of the bottom.

We delayed our entry into the Charleston Maritime Center for 1 1/2 hours until the three knot current abated.  It was still a rough docking, but we'll be here for a while to attend to family matters and some repairs.  That will be all for now.

Tom and MaryLou
S/V Dalmatian

Georgetown

This is one of the bridges that passes over the ICW in Myrtle Beach.  It was more stylish than any of the others so MaryLou decided on the shot.  There was still some haze in the air from the morning fog. 

 

 

We did notice an aquatic plant floating in the waterway.  It is water hyacinth which is an invasive species filling in the slower moving waters and choking out the native plants.  Its also becoming a problem for navigation since it collects in huge mats making it almost impossible to motor through.

The Georgetown SC area is rich in the history of our country and was also the center of commerce for this part of the state.  Besides fishing and tourism there are two different mills that add to the local economy.  We walked down Front Street near the paper mill and found this old cannon along the way.  Made in the early days of our country it is a 24 pounder that was found burried in the sand.  It has a federal stamp and number, but its uncertain on how or why it is here.  There are only two others remaining of this size in the US.  I think I remember they are in Savanah.

 

 

The cannon could shoot a 24 pound ball a mile so it would have been used to fortify any port along the water.  I did notice something different in the two pictures.

 

 

 

If you didn't notice, there was an armoured car stopping at the local bank just behind me.  We walked back through town to the fish market to get some local shrimp and did a little shopping.  There were also several historical points of interest.  One was the sinking of the USS Harvest Moon during the Civil War.  

 

Four nautical miles from downtown Georgetown is the wreck of the Harvest Moon, a Union paddle wheeler. During the Civil War, Georgetown was taken without resistance, but soon afterwards an angry local resident placed a mine near the Harvest Moon in the middle of the night. The mine exploded when the ship got underway the next morning, and the Harvest Moon sunk - in the shallows, where the rusting smokestack can still be seen today (the rest is buried in mud). 

 

If you would like more info, here are some local webs http://www.cogsc.com/History/History.cfm  and http://www.georgetown-sc.com/history/historicgeorgetown.shtml .

 

By the way, the shrimp was good on the grill.

On this day

Well I gotta tell ya, "On this day nothing happened!"  We left at 0700, no fog or rain.  The sun came up beautifully and with the tide falling we got under eleven bridges.  We saw a bald eagle and many ibis and herons.  The temperature climbed into the 70's.  We were able to follow the magenta line and it never fell below 12 feet in depth. 

Coming into Georgetown we followed the advice of Active Captain and kept to the right side of the channel and we powered through mud to get to 8 feet and anchor.  Tomorrow we should leave at high tide so there won't be any mud issues. 

The only minus in the whole day was seeing an invasive plant in the waterway.  It is the same plant that people buy for their backyard ponds with their little waterfall.  It appears that there isn't anything that will slow its progress as it covers all the waterway and kills the native plants.  Such a shame, at least we can see what the ICW should look like before it gets choked by this plant.

Complication

We're sitting in the Barefoot Marina waiting for fog to lift.  It hung around until 9 am before it thinned out.  The problem is twofold:
1   It takes away valuable time needed to reach the next anchorage.
2   The tide runs out quickly so this morning we found ourselves unable to move from the dock.
The water didn't return until 1 pm so we would just barely make it to the next stop.  We decided to stay and it was a smart move.  The fog rolled in around 4 pm and we would have been out in pea soup trying to find our way in a narrow channel.  Hats off to Mike and Hank for having the experience to see the big picture.

We'll try tomorrow since the high tide is almost 1 hour later and the fog should thin earlier.  Soon the new moon phase will create higher tides so we'll be looking out for the fixed bridges at high tide again.

Belt

I went out to look for a belt and found one that needed some assembly.


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