St. Johns Yacht Harbor

Again we get up at 6:30 to get ready to leave. We need to pumpout and get fuel. But leaving our dock is complicated by the wind now out of the east pressing the boat against the dock. We use a technique called warping, driving the boat forward with just the bow line on a dock cleat to kick the stern out as the rounded bow rocks against the dock. With the back end of the boat now 45 degrees off the dock I quickly put the boat in fast reverse and Linda tosses the bow line off the dock cleat as we quickly back out before the wind can push us back into the dock. I am successful on the second attempt. It definitely takes some commitment to power out this way and I do have commitment issues.

The weather sucks so much forecasting is "?"

Heading west from here we travel through another of the notorious shallow areas north of Isle of Palms. Our first time through here 5 years ago, was near low tide and we barely cleared through, passing a number of boats aground. Had depth readings that matched our keel depth. This area has been dredged, but it fills back in. Today we will be going through on a rising tide, half way to high tide. Don’t expect any problems and don’t have any. At the end of Isle of Palms is the Ben Sawyer swing bridge that first opens at 9:30 AM after morning commuter traffic shutdown. This time of day it opens on demand and since there has been little boat traffic it quickly opens for just us.

Passing Fort Sumter

We are soon in Charleston Harbor and with such a stinky day there is no pleasure boat traffic and fortunately no commercial traffic to worry about. The winds are suppose to build to 25-30 mph with gusts to 40 in the afternoon, so we pass on staying in Charleston harbor. St. John’s Yacht Harbor is about 5 miles west of Charleston and we plan to take an Uber tomorrow back into town.




We get in to St. Johns around 12:30. After lunch I tackle another project that I have be procrastinating on, installing a new outlet in our head. Catalina’s original one interferes with opening our toilet seat and you can not leave anything plugged in and use the toilet at the same time, rather stupid design. As with most boat projects getting out the tools and cleanup took up half of the time to complete the project.

I was initially concerned that when they had us dock, bow in, to the current at the time, facing south, the wind would be blowing hard on our stern later.  Fortunately we are almost all the way down the fairway between the docks so the outer boats are blocking much of the wind and waves.