May 14th

May 14. We’ve been in Charleston for a few days now. The anchorage is wonderful and horrible at the same time. There’s a 2 or 3 knot current ripping through at all times. It makes finding the right spot to drop the anchor a real challenge for some people.

This Canadian boat came in late yesterday and dropped the hook. At the time they were off to the side of us and seemed to be a pretty good distance away. As the tide here goes out all the boats are held to the rushing current facing west. The wind meanwhile is blowing straight from the east. So as we get to slack tide different boats start to turn and face the wind at different times. As the last of the tide is ebbing we notice that the Canadian Catalina next to us is starting to sail at anchor and is way out of rhythm with everyone else in the anchorage. Of course you know who their anchored next to.

We’re still facing the last of the retreating tide as the Catalina darts towards and then away from us. What was once over a hundred feet of space between us at times becomes less than 6 feet. We were just about to head into town and now we’re saddled with watching this A-holes boat as they have already gone ashore for the day. At one point Christy is able to easily reach over and touch the other boat with our 8 foot boat pole as she crosses our bow.



Finally the tide starts to flood and we all fall into place facing east. Shortly thereafter the Canadians come home to their boat and before we can bitch to them at all they pull their anchor and leave for parts unknown. They have no idea how close they came to disaster and left in a fog of idiot’s bliss.

Alright back to Charleston. The town is awesome, the place just oozes history. On our first trip into town we walked about 6 miles and covered a lot of the downtown scene. It did turn into a kind of a forced march after awhile as the day was pretty hot.

So on our second day we rode our bikes into town to do our nosing about. We decided to take a narrated horse drawn carriage tour of the town. We were fortunate to draw a very enthusiastic young lady who was very animated about the characters, patriots and scoundrels that once roamed these streets. It was a lot more fun than I thought it would be.



Charleston had a more prominent role in the history of the United States than I realized. It was important to the patriots of the Revolution, the pirates during the days of pillage and plunder and of course the Civil War. Its really a remarkable place and we look forward to our return.

Boat Name Of The Day: Everyone has heard of Sinbad the Sailor: well there’s a powerboat here called Sailbad the Sinner.