Charleston!

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's) 

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 21 - April 21, 2017

Today we cruised from Beaufort to Steamboat Creek 2, a very nice anchorage next to a boat ramp that we found with Active Captain about halfway from Beaufort to Charleston.  Baxter loves the kayak and his trips to shore, and a boat ramp is pretty much the ideal way to land him, better than floating docks that are mostly too high to get out of a kayak easily! There are theoretically four anchorages on Steamboat Creek. The first two are 4 and 3 - why anybody would want to anchor at those spots eludes us, they must not have dogs, since there is no shore access.. Anchorage 1 sounded great too but we couldn't find it!  

South Carolina ICW Shoreline

In Beaufort, Jonathan and Rosa on Salty came over from their anchorage in Beaufort Harbor on their C-Dory 22 Cruiser to tie alongside us, and we had a great visit before loading up the kayak and heading out. The shoreline between Beaufort and Steamboat Creek was uniformly marshy grass. I don't think we passed more than five or six homes along the ICW between Beaufort and Steamboat Creek. What we did pass, or passed us going the opposite direction, were three or possibly four tugs and barges. They all asserted their right to take their half out of the middle! I was too busy dodging them without running aground to take any pictures!

Along the way, we did make a phone call to a mobile boat service in Charleston to see about having the Honda BF150 serviced, since we are right at 100 hours now. Not only would it require getting the boat out of the water, the mechanic was solidly booked through the end of next week. I feel a whole lot better, though, about blowing by the 100 hour mark after talking to Pete at West Coast Marine and soliciting Bob Austin's sage advice which is always solid! Sooner or later though, we will have to bite the bullet and get the service done. The key I think will be to schedule far enough ahead. I also have not given up the thought that I can do the oil change at least without a haul-out.  The lower unit lube can probably go 200 hours, and will require a haul-out, but if we plan far enough ahead, we should be able to schedule that. Another suggestion from Jonathan was to get it done in a small town with a lot of small boats, not a big city with a lot of big boats. That probably is good advice too!

Our anchorage here is very quiet and peaceful, and taking Baxter to shore was a piece of cake. And talk about friendly locals, a lady whose husband was fishing off the dock asked if we needed groceries and offered to drive us to the grocery store! I thanked her profusely and politely declined, since we are well provisioned from Savannah!

A couple of other boats that we have heard talking on the VHF are also here across the creek from us, a Nordic Tug we think is named Black Tie and a sailboat named Escapade. We look out from our anchorage here at a very nice private dock with a little round building, possible a dock house or whatever, but it is pretty cool, whatever it is! 

Private dock and little round building

Tomorrow on to Charleston!

DAY 22 - April 22, 2017

Typical private dock

Today's cruise into Charleston from Steamboat Creek was amazing for what we did NOT see - any significant number of homes along the ICW. The homes we did see were quite modest, but they all had a private dock and boat lift. The one thing that has been a common denominator for Florida to here is FISHING! People are fishing off small boats, off bridges, off boat ramps, and off piers of every description! Today when we got here, I found some terminal tackle on the Bomar hatch on the bow! It had shrimp and bacon on the hooks as bait. To quote Jimmy Buffett "How it got there, I haven't a clue"!

Barge with crane

Tug

Some other sights along the way were a barge and tug along the shore. These are typical of what passed us yesterday going the opposite direction. When we see these guys coming, we move over and get out of the way! A lot of the barges seem to have dredging equipment or pile driving equipment. Whatever it is, you do NOT want to be in their way! There are no ordinary right of way rules here, it is the right of way of tonnage! Also these guys are not very able to maneuver, so it makes sense not to challenge them!

Daydream at Charleston City Marin

When we got to Charleston Harbor, the boat traffic was incredible! Little boats, big boats, boats going every which way. It was a challenge to dodge all the boat traffic! It was also a challenge to find the entrance to City Marina! It was considerably past where the Active Captain marker showed it, but the City Marina staff talked us in on the VHF!  We had heard the currents in City Marina made things difficult, but we did not have a problem with that. If we had a problem (and I don't really think we did), it was that it was windy as all get-out - and C-Dorys do not fare well docking in the wind! All the same, I got us in and docked. Scott from the marina caught our lines, and we got docked and tied up without any real problem!

The first thing we did was to make our Fort Sumter tour reservations for tomorrow! We will take the Fort Sumter tour at noon, get back around 2:30 p.m., and then take the horse carriage tour. We will then take a walking tour of any place that seems particularly interesting!

We decided to take the marina courtesy van into downtown Charleston to explore a little and have dinner out. We walked King Street, and found a nice little restaurant...a sushi place! Of course the South is not where you come to have sushi, but it looked good and it was, especially the Crunchy Eel Roll!  Oh yes!

Citadel Lutheran Church

The Citadel

Then we walked over to Marion Square, which is very cool.  The most famous building on the square by me is the original Citadel College. It has long since moved to another part of town, but the building is still unmistakably "The Citadel"!  Also in this square is a huge monument to Charles C. Calhoun. He was the seventh Vice President of the U.S., and a spokesman for the Plantation System and Slavery. He is evidently still revered here, for reasons that elude us. On the far end of the Marion Square is a wonderful church spire, which we believe is the Citadel Lutheran Church.

Tomorrow, showers, breakfast on the boat (Spam Eggs Benedict!) and maybe some laundry, then we take the 11:00 a.m. courtesy van for our Fort Sumter tour!

DAY 23 - April 23, 2017

Today was our day in Charleston, and we did not waste it!

I got up early and headed right for the shower, since I did not think there would be too many people lined up at 6:30 a.m., and I was right!  I then took Baxter for his morning constitutional. He has learned to pee and poop on the dock, since it is a LONG way to the grass outside the marina, and the marina has dog poop bag stations at several spots along the docks.

Our tour boat, Spirit of the Low Country

The aircraft carrier Yorktown

Our Fort Sumter tour was at noon, and we didn't have to be at the Fort Sumter Visitor Center until 11:30 a.m., so we had lots of time for coffee and a leisurely breakfast! We took the marina's courtesy van to Liberty Square, picked up our boarding passes, and soon enough we were on the tour boat Spirit of the Low Country to Fort Sumter. It was about a 30 minute boat ride. Along the way, we passed the aircraft carrier Yorktown, which has been retired to Charleston Harbor.

Fort Sumter from Tour Boat

Cannon at Fort Sumter

Fort Sumter, as pretty much everyone knows, is where the first shots of the Civil War were fired. The Confederacy had been formed but U.S. federal troops still held Fort Sumter at the entrance to Charleston Harbor.
On April 12, 1860, a warning mortar was fired by the Confederates, and then the bombardment started in earnest, lasting 34 hours. There were only 85 federal troops garrisoned at Fort Sumter, and they were divided between fighting the fires that broke out in the wooden buildings within the fort and trying to return cannon fire. The commander, Robert Anderson, realized their situation was hopeless and arranged to surrender the fort to the Confederates, who allowed the federal troops to withdraw. We learned a good deal about the Civil War and its causes. There were many rationalizations, but in the end it boiled down to the fact that the entire economy of the South and the plantation system would collapse without slave labor.

Ruins of Fort Sumter

Flags that have flown over the fort

The fort, constructed in the 1830s after the War of 1812,  today is mostly just historic ruins. A concrete battery was constructed inside the fort that remained manned through World War I and World War II, but was decommissioned shortly after World War II ended. The original exterior walls had been badly damaged, and after the Civil War ended, it made no sense to try to repair the original walls of the fort.  It is now preserved and operated by the National Parks Service, which has a museum and gift store inside the concrete battery, and NPS rangers give educational and entertaining talks on the parade ground.

Sailboats in Charleston Harbor

Ravenel suspension bridge

After about an hour at Fort Sumter, it was time to board the tour boat back to the Fort Sumter Visitor Center at Liberty Square. There were some sailboats in Charleston Harbor that caught my eye as well as the Ravenel Cable Suspension Bridge,
which the tour guide said was the second longest cable suspension bridge in the world, a claim we did not take the time to verify, but is is still a pretty impressive bridge!  This week was Race Week in Charleston and there were many sailboats large and small that were involved in the races. Two of the larger sailboats are moored near us.

Mansions on the Battery

After returning from the tour, we headed to the horse carriage tour area, where there are three or four companies that offer carriage tours. We pretty much randomly chose one that had tickets available for about an hour later, which gave us time to go Henry's on Market for a pretty darn good lunch! We asked the carriage tour folks if there were a restaurant where we could get She Crab soup, and they said Henry's at the end of the block had wonderful She Crab soup. Patty has become fond of She Crab soup, a Southern delicacy with crab roe in it, but to us, it tastes a whole lot like our old standby, Whiskey Crab Soup from the late lamented Shrimp Shack in Bellingham! The carriage tour was wonderful, and was well narrated by our carriage driver, Ben. The tour covered so much of the historic district, and we learned a lot about Charleston's original construction on marshy round, and its history of hurricanes, fires and even earthquakes. We saw many homes from the colonial and Victorian era. Probably the most impressive homes were the mansions on The Battery, which were only seasonal homes for the very rich.

St. Philips Anglican Church

St. John's Church

We also learned that Charleston's nickname is The Holy City, because of the large number of churches there. At one time, we were told, there was one church for each 14 inhabitants. Again, we did no fact checking on this! But we passed so many churches, of so many denominations, that it seems plausible! One of the attractions Charleston offered to immigrants from around the world was religious tolerance, except apparently for Catholicism! The reason for this was that Catholicism was the religion of the Spanish and French, and letting Catholics in was viewed as possibly furthering the imperial objectives of Spain and France!

Permanent shops at City Market

After the carriage tour was over, we walked across the street and had some ice cream in a little retro market, and then went to The City Market. This is a covered market that was established in 1790 and stretches for four city blocks along Market Street between Meeting Street and East Bay Street. At both ends,
there are transient vendor tables, while the central part is permanent shops. We had read nothing about this, but it turns out it is one of Charleston's major attractions. We were a bit late in getting there, and the transient vendors were mostly packing up, but the permanent shops were all open. There were crafts of every description at the transient vendor tables. Patty looked at some sea grass baskets, but they were very expensive, and so she passed!

We called the marina courtesy van from the City Market, and it picked us up about five minutes later and returned us to the marina, pretty much exhausted! We finished up the day with Facetime with Barrett and Romy in Portland and Lydia, Harper and Asher in Okanogan! All in all, a pretty great day!