After leaving Georgetown, SC, we decided to anchor in Five Fathom Creek to put us closer to the inlet for an Atlantic crossing to Charleston the next day. We dropped anchor in what our depth finder and Navionics said was 12 feet of water. An hour or so later, Randy said he thought we were dragging and we ended up in 2 ft of water with the tide going out. Needless to say, we were aground. Like walking on an angle on your boat aground. We’re not sure whether we actually drug anchor or that Navionics was showing us we had more water than we did. We had to wait until 8:30pm for the water to come back in so we could pull the anchor and reanchor in another spot. Thankfully, all was ok.

The next morning, we headed out on the Atlantic toward Charleston. We had 10-20 kts of wind and were able to sail for an hour or so before the wind died. We motor sailed the rest of the way there. The water was a bit swelly and hitting us in the beam making it a little uncomfortable. Captain was a bit nauseous for a while and got better but by the time we were an hour out from Charleston, Sophie began to get seasick. In her 10 years living aboard and cruising, that dog has never been sick. We’ve even been in very similar wave action and she was fine. We’re hoping it was just an isolated incident because it was tough to deal with a pup who kept vomiting or needing to be taken out front to the potty patch in swelly seas. By the time we dropped our anchor near the USS Yorktown in Charleston, the crew was exhausted.

As Sophie and I were relaxing in the aft cabin with a movie, Randy runs over at about 8pm telling me to get up because our high water bilge alarm was going off. We open the hatch in the main salon and water is pretty close to the top! I assisted Randy in pumping out about 7 large buckets full of bilge water! After that, he double checked the float switch and pump to make sure nothing was wrong with it. We finally determine that one of us must have accidentally flipped the switch to the pump in the off position. We were definitely relieved that it was a dumb user error and nothing serious to do with the boat. Whew!

After our previous couple of nights events, we decided to go into a marina for a couple days to regroup. Our night in the anchorage next to the USS Yorktown was a bit windy, lumpy and sleepless so tying up to dock for a couple nights seemed like the thing to do. We left the anchorage and went into Charleston Harbor Marina & Resort on the Mt. Pleasant side by Patriot’s Point. This marina was a bit more expensive than most we’ve stayed at because of its amenities fees. Since it is a resort, marina guests pay an additional fee to use the amenities such as resort-style pools, fire pits, fitness center and shuttle. Since temps were in the 60’s we weren’t going to use the pool, but we did take advantage of the fitness room. While there, we did several loads of laundry and walked to the grocery (Ubered back) to provision. Randy worked on fixing our broken shower handle and troubleshooted our leaky hot water heater hose. We rewarded ourselves for the work at happy hour at The Fish House, one of the resort’s restaurants. While sitting at the bar, Randy recognized Jason from Youtube Sailing channel Gone with the Wynns sitting behind us. We got to meet him and have our picture taken. It was a pretty cool experience! That evening, I streamed a movie for the first time in months. Talk about a luxury stay!

After we left the marina in Charleston, we motored 35 miles to an anchorage called West of Watts Cut near the South Edisto River. It was cold and windy that day and Sophie and I opted to stay in the cabin under a blanket while cruising. From there, we made our way to Beaufort, SC where we spent two days. We walked around town visiting the usual establishments like knitting shops and pubs but it was quite cold with temps only getting to the mid 50’s. Needless to say, it was time to move on and hope for warmer weather as we headed to Georgia and Florida.

Georgtown SC to Charleston, SC = 65 nm
Charleston, SC to Beaufort, SC = 64 nm

Bridge Openings = 2

TOTAL miles to date: = 2,335 nm
TOTAL Bridge Openings to date = 44