Hello Charleston, SC

Monday morning and we leave Beaufort, SC and head north towards Charleston, SC. The rivers are lined by houses very similar to this one. And, just like Florida, most of them are for sale!

This picture is pretty typical of our ride northward to Charleston. The rivers are wide but the channel is narrow. The channel, usually marked with "ranges," is about 15 ft. deep. Outside the channel and the depth is lower than 5 feet. How low - we don't know - so far we've been able to keep in the middle of the channel.

Just because the river is wide doesn't mean that it is deep. The docks are long to try and get out into navigable water. Each dock is labeled "No wake" but there are thousands of these - we motor right by the ones that don't have boats in the water. We have to slow for others. If you look carefully, you can see it would be a LONG walk from your house to the end of the dock!

Which boat is ours??? This is our slip at Charleston Marina. We arrived in a 25 mph wind off the starboard side. The landing wound have been difficult without the cruise ship there. We got behind the cruise ship and voila, no wind. The ship is headed to Jacksonville, FL and left at 1030 at night.

We walked around the marina area of Charleston and I really liked these row houses.

This is Linda's favorite house in Charleston -so far! The gardens are beautiful, and some of the houses use gas lanterns to light their doorways.

These are the cheap slips in this marina. Note the sailboats in the corner! Very wide tidal ranges still. What a sunset!

Hi - we are now in Charleston, SC after a beautiful ride of about 70 miles through the wide and mostly deep streams and creeks of South Carolina. The weather is beautiful and the boat is working well. We are currently docked at the Charleston City Marina - the biggest marina that we've stayed at yet and one of the nicest and cleanest. There are 400 boats in the marina with 100 spaces for transients. Each dock has gas and pumpout so you don't have to move the boat to the gas dock. There is complimentary wi-fi that works and the restrooms are modern and clean - what else do we need? I made arrangements for a Volvo mechanic to come to the boat and change the oil and fuel filters - we are almost exactly at 50 hrs. so it is right on schedule. They're supposed to come either today or tomorrow. I also am having some important mail forwarded here - we may have to stay an extra day til that arrives. We are planning to stay until Wednesday but will probably be here until Thursday, or maybe longer if the weather doesn't cooperate. We plan on exploring this city a little bit. This marina has a courtesy shuttle into the city and back, which is great.
I figured I would give some statistics of our trip so far:
We are at mile marker 570 - which means it's 570 miles to Norfolk, VA
We have traveled 418 miles up the ICW on the east coast and additional 175 miles getting to the east coast - for a total of 593 miles so far.
We have used 426.88 gals on gas since we put the boat in the water for 1.4 mpg!!!
Gas costs have ranged from $2.79 - 3.47 per gallon
We have 67 hours on the boat - so we're averaging 8.8 mph.
The first 17 hours were breakin time so the actual time on the ICW is 50 hrs. for an average ICW speed of 11.9 mph.
We normally travel between 50-85 miles a day and a total of 4-6 hrs a day.
Interior living dimensions:
Main room - 10 ft. long X 5 ft. wide X 6 ft. high (also includes kitchen and v-berth)
2nd bedroom - 6'5" long X 5 ft. wide X 2 ft. high
Bathroom - 3 ft. wide X 2 1/2 ft. deep X 6 ft. high
That equals about 88 sq. ft. of which 31 sq. ft. is only 2 ft. high!!!
Just a small note about Kilkenny Marina, GA - I just was reviewing the paperwork and noticed that they billed me for 49 g of gas when I only got 39 gal! I would normally think it was a mistake except they were so unfriendly that I have to recommend to anyone reading this that might go on the ICW - don't stay at Kilkenny Marina, or certainly pay more attention then I did.
That's all from Ken for now.

Hello from Linda- So far, I LOVE SC! The ICW is gorgeous and the people are friendly. As you can read by Ken's writing above- the living space on the boat is small and getting smaller by the day! But to me that just means we need to get out more & explore. Last pm we walked thru part of the city- mostly OLD residences with 2 story porches and beautiful architecture. Today we are taking the courtesy shuttle to SHOPPING!!! (can you tell I'm excited!?) We had to pay the marina for a 30' boat even though we are only 26' long. We are surrounded by HUGE boats. The marina next door wouldn't even let us in (we ARE riff-raff!) even if we paid for the 30' space! The bath house is nearby with showers, laundry, and heads- it's FLOATING just like the dock we're tied to. Off to walk the dog (poor thing is getting to be afraid of grass- cuz that's where all the burrs are!) Love to all-