Charleston, SC Wednesday May 30, 2012

While waiting for tropical storm Beryl to head far off-shore, we spent the day walking around Charleston. In the heart of the city, just off the city mmarket, are many old southern mansions.  Many of these homes have lovely gardens and fountains. Some of the streets have a small gardens that intersect the winding city streets. Below, Gordon and I cooled off walking along this garden walkway. 

Even though it was a hot and humid day, we were relatively cool amidst the lush gardens.

We were surprised to see gas lights on some of the homes in the historic district.

The planters on the window sills were lush with local plants.

There are some beautiful church steeples gracing the heart of the city.

We toured the Calhoun Mansion which was built in 1876 and is now privately owned. Below is one of the fountains of the home's  formal gardens.  The home is filled with Victorian furniture, antiques and art from around the world.  

There are many walking tours or horse drawn carriage tours that one can take to see the historic  and waterfront district. Gordon captured this picture of one of the horse drawn carriages.



Saturday May 26th, we took a harbor tour around Charleston. Lots of activity on the water-front. Below is one of the tall ships which was undergoing some general cleaning and painting. How about that bow-sprint!

This young man was climbing up to the crows nest. It was a little gusty so he was hanging on tight!

Our tour boat went by Patriot"s Point, which is home to a naval museum which includes an aircraft carrier, a destroyer and a submarine. We may be in Charleston for a while due to the tropical storm Beryl so this museum might be a good place to visit.

This beautiful cable bridge across the harbor glistens in the sunlight . Our tour boat captain took us under the bridge and then asked us to hold our ears as he blew the horn. The horn blast created a loud echo while we were under the structure. This bridge not only holds auto traffic but has a walk-way and bike path.

We also went past Fort Sumter and learned that the fort was attacked by the union for 18 months with zillions of shells. So the fort is just a smidgen of the original structure as a result  of the relentless shelling

Another view of the bridge!

These tall cranes are used to load freighters. There is a BMW car plant not far from here and the cars are shipped from these loading docks and put on "roll-on-roll-off" freighters.

We walked around the City Market which was crowded with tourists. Lots of activities during this holiday week-end so we shouldn't get bored waiting for a weather window because of the tropical storm.

May 25, 2012 Charleston, SC

After many delays we finally are sailing! We had to trash our plans for sailing in the Bahamas because of many unfavorable weather fronts we so we  head north! Our plan was a 54 hour run from Port Canaveral, Florida to Charleston, South Carolina.  We made better time then we planned. We had a good north bound current most of the way to Charleston, S.C.We left Port Canaveral at 8:30 a.m Tuesday May 22nd and arrived at dock in Charleston City Marina on Thursday morning May 24th at 11:30 a.m.  We both took a long nap after our arrival to re-coop from our night sailing adventures.

Port Canaveral Marina was our home port for two months this spring while we provisioned it for our sailing adventure.

Fishlips, is a great place to eat and overlook the cruise ships that leave Cape Canaveral for Caribbean Waters. We had several dinners there while waiting for our weather window. We also woke up Tuesday morning at 3:45 a.m. to the sound of the rocket ship SpaceX as it was launched from Cape Canaveral! We watched the successful launch from our deck watching the light of the fuel rocket and hearing the sound wave which woke us up.

Just as we sailed out of Port Canaveral we saw this submarine . We knew the port had a sub base but we never saw any boats until this voyage out of the harbor.

Tuesday night we had some thunderstorms off the northern Florida coast- Gordon tried to get ahead of the system but it seemed to follow us. Most of the lightening was between the clouds and off in the distance. We had some showers but not a drenching down pour.  We dropped our sails and motored bare-poled through the night. In the morning, Gordon found this flying fish on our deck. We had seen many of them in the afternoon.They looked like they were having a race flying around in circles as we motor-sailed past them. 



Sunset off the Georgia coast. We had a quiet night with no weather system to keep us on our toes. Not many ships off shore. Gordon talked to a freighter captain when we were crossing the Savannah Shipping channel. who wanted to know where we were headed and alerted Gordon to his direction after leaving the channel. We overheard the Coast Guard talking to the pilot boat that they were having night-time sea rescue drills and to be on the look-out for the sea rescue of divers being picked-up from the Coast Guard helicopters.

Thursday morning I took this picture of the picturesque historic houses along the Charleston harbor.

This is the Charleston City Marina where we are stopping for a few days. We will be visiting with my nephew and waiting out another weather system that is going to move in along the coast.