Day 306, Thursday April 24th
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| Sarah G bashing through the waves near us |
Well Julie is on shift first thing in the morning and
figures she went right through a dolphin aerobic class. Sitting from the stern of the boat the
dolphins were taking turns jumping right out of the water for about 30
minutes. Possibly even longer but she
could no longer see them. The dolphins
also came to visit a couple of times during the morning shift, swimming
alongside the boat. The winds were now
on the nose, but fairly light until about 10 in the morning but they started to
pick up and we were slowing down. We had
not anticipated high winds at all but they continued to build. We veered our course inland about 15 degrees
to try to weather the waves that were building and have a bit better
speed. We had anticipated only another
20 hours of sailing to get to Wrightsville beach, but our expected arrival was
now going to be 40 hours as our speed dropped to less than 4 miles an hour.
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| Wave beside the boat |
The group of us started to chat about heading into
Charleston for some sleep and take off again the next morning. We were undecided but veered our course more
inland in case the winds did not shift as we anticipated. After about an hour the winds had now built
to 20 knots and the seas were really starting to rock and roll. The waves were steep and not very comfortable. We veered more and headed for
Charleston. Sadly we were still about 15
miles away so another 3 hours of these uncomfortable sailing conditions. We were very glad we bought a good ocean
going boat. Strangely enough at one
point there was about a 25 foot open fishing boat zipping along beside us. They were being bashed around but seemed
unconcerned. None of them even had life
jackets on. We past them within a 100
yards as they had stopped for some reason.
We thought they might need a rescue, but guess not, as no one radioed or
waved their arms at us, so we kept going.
Finally we saw the channel markers which start about 5 miles
off the coast. We would be inside the
jetty in another 30 minutes and sheltered from the waves. The current once we reached the jetty was
helping us along and we reached speeds of 9 knots. Lucky the tide was going in as an ebb tide
would have made getting into the channel difficult and slow. The harbour was large and windy, but not too
wavy. We made our way up the Ashley river
and decided to take a marina slip for a couple of nights so we could enjoy the
city. We had been told not to miss
Charleston so having the weather turn nasty was not such a bad thing.
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| Selfie in front of the customs house Charleston |
Once docked, we headed for the showers and into town to have
a look around. The historic district was
cool and we had a fabulous dining experience at Pearlz. This is an oyster bar and we caught happy
hour and ordered some shrimp and mahi tacos, along with a few cold beers. It was all delicious. Some locals came in and did a shooter with an
oyster in it and we decided we should follow their lead so joined in. After all it was an oyster bar. The shooter itself was like a Ceasar drink
with an oyster in it.
We headed back to the boat by 8:00 still exhausted from our
overnight passage and looking forward to a good night sleep at dock.
Cheers
Julie and Dawson
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