October 31, 2013.

Probably the biggest benefit when traveling by boat is all the different people that you meet. The negative is the near misses in connecting with friends as you move through an area. The weather makes all of our travel decisions for us. Too cold, we flee south. Pleasant day with a fresh breeze from a good direction, sorry, we've got to be going.  You can't afford to leave those opportunities on the table.

We arrived at our friends Ken and Carols house in Oriental on Sunday afternoon. We have a short list of chores to take care of and a social schedule that we need to maximize. After tying up and dining with our hosts I checked the weather on the internet. We thought we would have a few days in Oriental but a window was going to open on Tuesday to go offshore. This forecast sentenced us to a very busy Monday.  A tiny book lending library in Oriental

I did the 50 hour service on the engine including it first oil change and then serviced the V-drive and transmission. Ken drove me out to Betas east coast headquarters where I bought a few spare oil filters and toured the facility. Once back at the boat I tuned the rig and serviced the watermaker. Christy did several loads of laundry and put a coat of oil on all our exterior teak and topped off the water tank. Then we drove down to the marine consignment shop to do some shopping.  And then there was a spontaneous cruisers potluck for 22 people at the home of a friend.

On Tuesday we left at 0700 and headed towards the inlet in Beaufort.  Pirates or not it was time to go.

After a quick stop for fuel we headed out onto a glassy sea. The forecast wasn't great for a sailboat but an extended period of strong breeze from the southwest was due to settle into the area the day after tomorrow.

So we jumped out and settled in for a 30 hour motor to Charleston.

The seas were flat and the trip would have been boring except there was to be entertainment. We ran straight through a naval training exercise.

It was fun to listen to “coalition” warships stop and board freighters at sea. We heard other boats being routed around the exercise but nobody said a word to us as we plodded straight through the middle of games. I'm glad that all the time I spent installing the new cloaking device wasn't a waste of time.

In Chucktown we usually anchor in the Ashley River across from the Mega Dock. Our friends on Ata Marie were in a slip on the other side of town so we decided to try dropping the hook in the Cooper River.

The nice thing about anchoring in the Cooper was the view of the bridge and the Yorktown. Dinner with the Ata Maries wasn't too shabby either. It was nice to catch up with them, next time we see them we should be down island.