Charleston

Doin’ The Charleston


After an overnight sail from the St Marys Inlet, John slowed our arrival at Charleston to co-incide with the flood tide. The current in Charleston is between 2 and 3 knots and the anchorage off the town dock is tricky. The holding is poor and the bottom is littered with old moorings and other obstructions.




The Charleston City Marina is now known as the MegaDock. If anchored out it is $5 to use their dinghy facility.

Ten minutes by dinghy up the Ashley River at Brittlebank Park with a free dinghy dock, is a great playground, it is also on the downtown CARTA bus route.













Jack and James spent hours in the city Aquarium intrigued by a huge, two storey tank full of all kinds of sea life, touching and holding sea creatures and playing on a replica fishing boat.













The other big hit was the Lowlands Children’s Museum which offered a water play area, shrimper fishing boat, castle, arts and crafts room, play shop and Toddler’s area where James tumbled about with John participating from a bean bag. It is more an excellent facility for childsplay than museum but at $7 a day we didn’t care. The boys were entertained and a little educated.


The next days visit to the USS Yorktown an air craft carrier (submarine and other ships) on a permanent berth at Patriot’s Point spun Jack up even more. The boys had Top Fun in the cockpit of a WWII plane. For us it was an exhausting visit negotiating the boys through submarine watertight doors, up and down steep metal ladders which even with their boat training were intimidating. Of course it’s not so easy to order them “stop running”, when a whole hangar or flight deck with fast planes stretches out around them. Incidentally, but importantly, Jack had not seen Top Gun, he has seen the “making” of the film - lots of fast fighter jets doing tricks, Daddy’s day care.













On leaving Charleston the anchorage served up it’s final ugly experience. Our first choice was the charming, safe and good holding of nearby Wappoo Creek, but, we didn’t follow our instinct and experience, and suffered accordingly. As they left, Synchronicity pulled up an anchor, probably the same one we helped to untangle on another boat four years ago, Seraphim pulled up a twenty foot log, and Seawalk a bunch of roots

And onto North Carolina, 460 miles to Norfolk.

Toward Charleston

Charleston, South Carolina. 5th June 2009










From Cape Canaveral we headed north in the Intracoastal Waterway, (ICW) winding along from Titusville to St Augustine where we arrived in an anchorage up the Sebastian river to find mud. Tired after a long day, special help came which gave us everything we needed right there, right then, landed angels if you will, in the form of two good ole boys, Chuck and his pal who agreed a no questions asked, off the dock before the boss gets in at 9am, cash in hand deal of $40. Win win. The supermarket, electricity, water, rubbish and a secure dock in a mean current, all sorted. Officially it would have cost $90. (Another bonus was also a short walk to Theos, a top breakfast, but, our diet and early deadline meant that remained a delicious memory from 03).

From Florida into southern Georgia we motored on, dolphins, oyster catchers, ospreys and pelicans entranced us along the way. One night in a creek Jack watched egrets yanking worms from the mud at low tied, washing and gulping them. John suggested missing Georgia, which we remember as being stunning but the rivers wind in great loops, and it takes hours to travel one mile as the crow flies.


Seraphim and her companion boat Seawalk and new friends on a catamaran, Synchronicity sailed on the “outside“, in the Atlantic, which was flat. An overnight sail cut out five days chugging on the ICW. Sailing into any city is a kick, and Charleston is impressive.

Manatees and Astronauts

Mummy manatee

Whilst staying at the Harbor Town Marina near Cape Canaveral Jack and James were intrigued by a mummy manatee and her calf. A marina resident knew manatees prefer fresh, running water so left her tap running for the manatees to drink from it.





The Right Stuff













After days of Disney Jack still preferred his two days at the Kennedy Space Centre where he met a Shuttle Astronaut, Col John Fabian, played on the Space Playground, stood in a real shuttle and capsule, saw a launch pad, and stood under the massive Saturn V rocket. The real stuff outshone fake. And the boys really didn’t like best because we did, they liked it best because they did.














Reel Talk

I have lost count of the number of fishing boats that we have passed named “Reel Talk/Time“. It’s also an opportunity to cut in a segue but we haven’t had one for ages so, whilst anchored off Rose Island with the lights of Nassau on the horizon we watched “Deep Blue”, a disappointing film about treasure hunting, filled with exquisite bounty, sorry, bodies, of both varieties but filmed in Nassau.

And when we were in Titusville with the lights of the Nasa launch pads on the horizon we watched the film starring Ed Harris, (and other sculptured torsos) based on Tom Wolfe’s book about the first astronauts, Alan Shepherd, Gus Grissom and of course, John Glenn, performed by Ed Harris. (Not too many prizes for guessing my favourite.)

Mickey Mouse

Mid May 2009 M I CK E Y MOUSE

From Fort Lauderdale we pushed hard for 200 miles to Cape Canaveral to arrive in time for the Space Shuttle launch. Orlando was 45 minutes from Harbor Town Marina, a useful stop for the Space Coast and theme parks.













Our first park was the Magic Kingdom, which with boys of 4 and 2, was by far the most appropriate. The morning procession with dancing through the shimmering heat was a cracking way to start the children’s first day. Way after bedtime, at 9pm, came the procession of lit up floats in front of Cinderella’s castle followed by fireworks and Tinkerbell “flying” from the castle. Disney at it’s most spectacular and slick. It was a joy for us to see Jack and James’ simple delight in snuggling the Disney characters and giggling on rides such as it’s a “Small small world”, (which Sergej our Dutch friend informed us had nothing to do with Disney and was a copy of a famous Dutch ride in an Award winning park).










Other high points included, “Soarin’” at Epcot where we “flew” on a journey across the States, after which Jack was literally high as a kite. Flying over London with the Peter Pan ride, the spinning saucers in the Mad Hatter’s Tea party, the famous Dumbo ride, the huge “Honey I Shrunk The Kids” playground were other favourites, but watching a youngster being trained to fight Darth Vader was a bit “scaredy”. My favourite was the “Encounter” with Crash, the “dude” cartoon turtle from Nemo who really did interact with the audience. “Cooool.”













Dizzy-ing Nausea

Our name for Disney after two parks. $600 plus $12 a day parking, plus exorbitant food and tolls on the roads surrounding the parks, we felt that we’d been pummelled by Pete the thuggish dog (wolf) who demands payment from Mickey even when he’s trying to save Daisy and Minnie, to hell with them, pay up.












Fast Pass

I wish we could Fast Pass some experiences in life, supermarket queues, adolescence and heart ache. At least in Disney if you secure a fast pass you can return later and jump the “line”. Otherwise it can be an hour and a half wait for a 3 minute ride. Our only long line was 40 minutes for Winnie the Pooh, out of date, but thankfully the children did not notice. We got wise about the Fast Pass after that.

English Tea

I ran out of my favourite tea, Lap Sang Souchong, mid Caribbean and finally found it in the Twinnings cottage in the Great Britain part of Epcot’s World area. Charlotte from Hedge End, (fifteen miles from my mother) served us. Long dark hair and green eyed Charlotte is spending her gap year “having the time of her life” working in "England" in the plastic UK.










Six Packed

By this time we had done six parks: Magic Kingdom, twice, The Disney Studios, twice, Epcot, and the Animal Kingdom ,which we left appalled by the desperate gorilla in it’s plastic jungle, and hippo in a dirty pool, we were jaded by stroller police, (park your pushchair in the wrong place and you‘re told where to put it), and the trudging from ride to ride with tired children and worst of all the overt commercialism. Off the ride, through the shop to the exit.
Gradually the dream was fading. By our fourth parade the smiles on the melting dancers were grimaces. It was a pop rock version of the Red Shoes. The bubble was beginning to wobble. We were resenting every penny. As we were dragging ourselves home from the Studios, a fresh faced manager asked me to put my 2 year olds shirt on. I pointed out it was wet with ice cream, the automaton told me it was company policy. I told him we were leaving.













For three of our six days it rained, not just pitter patter, but, torrential, vengeance of God stuff. It thinned the crowds and stopped the rides. But whilst on our mission to “do” Disney, we carried on. The boys seemed to have more fun playing in the puddles.

The ICW

We are currently cruising north on the East coast of the USA along the ICW, the Intracostal Waterway, a system of rivers, lakes and canals that stretches over a thousand miles from Florida to the Chesapeake Bay.


Controlling depths vary from 7 to 12ft. Non-opening bridges have a 65ft clearance with one exception at 56ft in Miami. (The latter can be passed by a brief stretch in the ocean). Other bridges open on demand or to a published schedule. Bridge operators can be contacted on either vhf channel 13 or 9.

An excellent resource for those wishing to make this trip can be found by clicking here.

Our intention is to go to New York via the Chesapeake Bay both in the ICW or “Ditch”, and in the ocean. In early June we cut out most of Georgia, and four days on the ICW, by sailing in the Atlantic ocean. Four years ago we spent days winding through the beautiful grasslands of Georgia, breathtaking but felt like we only made about a mile an hour.

Guess where we are?

Space Shuttle

14.01 Eastern Time. 11th May 2009. Space shuttle Atlantis blasting off, viewed from Seraphim at anchor in the Cape Canaveral Canal. A very special once in a lifetime wow.

Watch a video of it here