As in Fernandina Beach, Fl to Charleston, SC. Fernandina Beach looked like a great little town. A good place to come back to in the future.
We headed out of the St. Mary's river inlet around 8am Wednesday. Now we have some idea of wind against tide. The wind was blowing in around 15 knots and the current was flowing out of the inlet at around 2 knots. That built up some good steep waves. We were stuffing the bow regularly. But no big deal for our 30,000 lb boat, unless you get seasick easily.
The plan was to day sail to St. Simons Island; but once we got out into the open ocean, we decided to go all the way to Charleston. This is about 160 miles, a basic 30 hour run, give or take. The seas were a bit lumpy but nothing serious. We've done much worse on Lake Huron.
We spotted at least a half dozen pods of Manta Rays swimming just below the surface, very close to the boat. We're seeing far fewer dolfins now. Still no sharks; that we can see anyway!
We always fret about overnight passages but this was pretty tame. We made it to Charleston Maritime Center around noon, just in time for slack tide. Reports are that it has a strong, difficult current running so our timing was great. We refueled and tied up by around 2pm and spent the afternoon relaxing and getting a bit of laundry done.
Saturday we rode the bikes into Charleston. What a beautiful city, so well preserved. Such a stark contrast to Detroit where by comparison, there is almost no preservation.
Our stay this time will be quick as we need to take advantage of good weather and get moving again north. But we'll be back.
Saturday morning, the tide is favorable for a run out of Charleston harbor, past Fort Sumpter, and north to Southport, SC. This will be another overnight run of about 130 miles. We figure on arriving around early to mid morning. We have anchoring options moving up the ICW depending on how tired we are. We're in travelling mode now and hope to keep up the pace into Oriental, NC.
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