Charleston, SC

We are still in the land of 7 to 9 foot tides, twice daily. The heavy duty concrete floating docks at all the marinas move up and down on huge concrete spud poles that are covered with barnacles and become exposed when the tide goes down. The tides also make for some strong currents, sometimes pushing you along and sometimes slowing our boat to a snail's pace. We are used to anchoring in strong currents, but the currents here change direction while you sleep !!! Here's a spud pole covered with barnacles.

When we left the Isle of Hope Marina, we passed this mega yacht boatyard. These are just a couple of the huge boats we saw there.

As we entered the Savannah River (the ICW crosses pretty much straight across it), we saw this huge container ship coming up the river. Captain Steve decided (wisely) not to try to cross in front of him, so we turned to our starboard and opted for a port to port pass.

We were very close .... it was quite thrilling ...

... and then we turned to port, over his wake, and were on our merry way.

On the way to Charleston, we anchored out twice and had a "day stop" at Beaufort, SC. Pronounced BEW ford, there is a courtesy dock where you can stay all day, but not overnight. Here are Shingebiss and Eschaton at the dock. We unloaded the bikes and toured this charming and beautiful small historic town.

The road along the river is lined with southern style homes.

... and beautiful old live oaks drapped in Spanish moss.

We had a great gumbo and muffaletta lunch in the downtown, walked along the new riverwalk park, then returned to the boats to continue on to the next anchorage. We're seeing more homes along the waterway and they all have extrememly long piers leading out to their floating docks.

The scenery is beautiful as we wind our way through the rivers, inlets, and manmade cuts that connect them all to form the ICW. There's not nearly as much traffic on the ICW as we expected, especially this time of year as all the boating snowbirds and Loopers head north. Some days we hardly see another boat until we get to the anchorage or marina.

We arrived at Charleston and are at the Charleston Maritime Center Marina. Last evening we strolled through a historical residential area right near the marina and into the restaurant and market area. Very, very cool city. Today we took the water taxi across the harbor to Patriots Point where the aircraft carrier Yorktown and the submarine Clamadore are on display. The Yorktown served from WWII to the Vietnam War and has been at Charleston since 1975. Even though it's an older carrier, having never been on one before, we thought it was quite impressive.

We went up on the flight deck and saw the fighter jets on display.

Down in the engine room there were endless dials and controls.

The Yorktown is set up as a museum and as a tribute to those who have served our country, telling their stories with memorabilia and pictures.

This is the control room of the submarine.

This was the last diesel powered submarine, so again was an older model, but still very interesting. We spent the entire day at Patriots Point, there was so much to see. Tonight we are relaxing on the boat, listening to the Minnesota Twins beat the KC Royals on XM radio, our new entertainment option. Tomorrow we plan to bike around Charleston and see more of this great city.