Sunday June10: Charleston, SC

Once again, another week is history. Can't hardly remember being in Darien :-) I do remember, though, waking up about 6 am or so, looking out my little porthole and seeing the current running in our favor. It was a quick wake up and within 10 minutes we were on our way! The 7 mile detour off of the ICW up the Darien River was navigated in much less than the hour and a half going up as we bucked the current the whole way up to Darien. It wasn't long before the rain clouds started showing up so Steve quickly put up the flybridge plastic. It was a day of dodge-em with the rain - looking back it was pretty nasty while looking ahead it was a beautiful day. I chose to look ahead :-)

The waterways through this part of South Carolina are pretty much marshland still with the occasional resort popping up. The picture left is a sample of the homes on the shoreline of Hilton Head Island. One really nice thing is we are again able to travel with very high tides - usually a 7 - 9 foot change from low to high. It makes some of the waterway markers very close to the water! It was a long day (70 miles or so) until we stopped outside of Savannah for the night. They had all we needed: a place to ride to breakfast on our bikes. It was called "The Breakfast Place" - go figure.

Dodged the rain again on Thursday with a stop for the night at Port Royal, SC. The marina had a loaner car so we explored the area - including a drive through historic Beaufort. Steve managed to find a local fish market at a sort of road side stand. The owner was originally from Cincinnati and wanted the folks in Ohio to know how big South Carolina shrimp grow!

It was again an early morning to catch the current - not so much in Port Royal but in the small creek off of the South Edisto River. First was Beaufort and the wonderful homes which line the river through this city. South Edisto Island is where Jim and Linda Murray live - about 4 hours boat travel time from Beaufort. You may remember we first met them in Michigan as we were traveling through the Great Lakes in 2010. They made the mistake of inviting us to "stop by" anytime we are going by - and we did! Again! We had stopped last fall as we were traveling south. Jim and his brother met us at the dock, we packed our backpacks for the night and off we went.

As it turn out, Peter and Cheryl (from Surona) were ALSO at Murray's! Their boat is at a marina in the area getting some work done and they happened to also be visiting. How wonderful it was to be all together again! We had reunited in Marathon early this year but only for a short time. Linda and Jim provide a venue for weddings on their property - it is absolutely wonderful. Live oaks, a beautifully manicured lawn and a view that very few are privileged to have. The swing Steve and I are on has been in MANY photos - as we evidenced as we were able to peek at the wedding's going ons later in the afternoon. Nathaniel joined us in the picture on the swing as he also did with Jim and Linda (he is their great-grandson). Peter and Cheryl opted to have their picture taken with all of their friends. Mmmmm ..... tell you anything? Even Nathaniel is leaving .....

Murrays have a HUGE magnolia tree next to their home - wonder if Matt and Wendy's will ever get this large? On Saturday, Peter, Cheryl, Steve and I headed over to the marina to see Deja Vu. Guess we hadn't done enough on their boat yet so we were going to assist in installing a new windlass - sounded good to us! Stopped to see a very famous live oak on the way to the marina. It was HUGE. Estimated to be 3-400 years old. It's called the Angel Oak. If you want to read more about it, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_Oak. Note that the stated age here is 1500 years. WRONG - live oaks typically live no longer than 500 years as they begin to rot from the inside out. Sadly when we arrived at the yard at which Deja Vu is sitting, they were closed. No work on the boat today :-(

Might as well work on our boat then, right? Cheryl joined in as we used Jim's power washer to clean the textiline covers on the boat. Worked ok and certainly got rid of the last of the midges smashed up against the windows. Steve finished up with a power wash of the decks. Nice. We spent the evening sitting on the porch with an eye to the wedding going on. It was fun - the band was pretty good and we sat on the flybridge enjoying the last few songs. It was up early and on the river for us so we spent last night on the boat so as to not disturb everyone when we got up and left. What a wonderful time we had ... Hopefully we'll see Murray's on the Chesapeake this summer and Peter and Cheryl at some point up the coast as well.

The trip from Edisto to Charleston was uneventful. More boats out than usual but since it was the weekend I guess it wasn't totally unexpected. It was overcast and cloudy with rain threatening most of the day. As soon as we arrive to our dock at the Maritime Center in Charleston, it was off with the bikes and off to Harris Teeter - the best grocery store ever (maybe even better than Trader Joe's!). I went just to provide an extra backpack. No way would Steve have gotten everything back in one trip.

Tomorrow it's off to Georgetown. We expect to be by Matt and Wendy's in North Carolina on Friday, weather permitting.