Charleston (St. John’s Island), SC June 22-24, 2014

June 22-24, 2014 

Last sunset at Lady's Island

We departed Lady's Island Marina (Beaufort, SC) on Sunday, headed toward St. John's Yacht Harbor on the outskirts of Charleston. We anticipated a long boating day. It was our intent to spend a couple days at this location, then cruise on to the Charleston Maritime Center in downtown Charleston Tuesday afternoon. 

Boat racing through a sound.

Nearing St. John's Yacht Harbor, we noticed the rapidly accumulating storm clouds and noted the smaller boats bound for shelter. A marine information broadcast (US Coast Guard) caught our attention, warning us that we were soon to be caught in a "35-knots-winds, lightning, and heavy rain  storm." Yep, got that right! Clay did a masterful job of doing donuts in the deepest of the ICW (with no depth finder during the storm, I say 'deepest' without conviction) while I sopped rain water that was penetrating our leak-proof top with a chamois cloth and prayed. We tho't we had a pretty tight seal on the top, but we'll now have to revisit that. This is a safe boat with a good captain...and he makes a pretty pattern on the chart plotter during storms!

Windshild view

Maneuvering in the ICW on the GPS screen

Docked at St. John's Yacht Harbor after making our way up the Stono River, we connected electric and water to find we had no air conditioning. Clay's preliminary diagnosis was the pump had gone out, and he quickly found resources available for repair. One reputable fella with a pump in stock committed to a Monday morning appointment to get the system going again. Yay! It's pretty darn humid here (actually, REAL humid), so we need the ac for the humidity as well as for the heat. 

Typical ICW scene

With Sunday's up and downs behind us (we hoped), we headed to the marina pool to check it out (we waded while talking to two couples from the Charleston area) then visited the Stono Breeze Cafe for snack bar hamburgers. Back to the boat, we attached our new doorway screens; opened windows, portholes, and hatches; and aimed fans to maximize air flow in hopes of keeping comfortable during the overnight hours.

Marshes

Monday morning found me wondering why the salon seemed so bright at such an early hour. Duh! The winds (Clay says multiply knots by 1.15 to convert to mph) had torn off the port windshield screens (two layers worth) as well the wiper blade. The additional fasteners he'd had installed were no match for Sunday's wind. Too, we mounted the fly bridge steps to revisit leakage from the port side of the ceiling; we've determined rain actually blew in through the zipper teeth. It was a monster of a storm! I guess that adds a couple of line items to our to-do's.

Note the waves above the cloud

Monday continued as an office day (Clay researched screening options while I handled some paperwork), a project day with Patrick's arrival to fix the ac (which put Clay is learning mode as he observed and worked alongside Patrick), a laundry day with a 10-minutes roundtrip walk to the laundry room, a pool day with some laps for me (turnaround somewhat difficult with entry/exit steps along the full width of the pool; obviously, they didn't design the pool for laps), and finally a shopping day. We borrowed the courtesy car and drove across the bridge toward Folly Beach for a late afternoon run to the canvas shop, Wal-Mart, and the highly-recommended seafood shop (Crosby's) for fresh shrimp and shark steaks.

Erie sky at St John's Marina after the storm

We concluded Monday with grilled shark steaks, romaine and squash and pasta salad. The raspberry wasabi dipping mustard (thanks, Rohrs, for leaving it with us) was a wonderful addition to the shark as a finishing sauce. Yum! Hope I can find a source for more.

Our dock mates at St. John's (named after the island on which this marina is located) were Looper wannabes with boat at the ready, so they were most interested in touring our boat and learning of the prep we'd made prior to (and complications during) our ten months aboard to date. They boarded and toured Tuesday morning prior to our departure for downtown Charleston. With only an hour anticipated cruising time, we had opportunity to spend some of our morning hours with them as well as to accomplish our morning walk, a challenging lap swim and a laundry load of rugs prior to departure.

A brief hour after departing St. John's, we were cruising thru the busy Charleston harbor with first mate Sal helping Captain Clay pick his way thru the myriad of markings on the chart and chart plotter to navigate our course to Charleston Maritime Center.

We were soon to welcome John and Kristen aboard the SaSea Sally at this downtown Charleston location. So, with more of our Charleston adventures to come, we bid you adieu 'till we meet again" (via email).