Another ADRENALIN RUSH!
Between Dewees Creek and Charleston is an area known for shoaling. As we wanted to arrive at the dock at slack
tide we had a choice of arriving at low tide at 8:30am or high tide at
2:30pm. We decided to go with the
earlier tide and didn’t read the Active Captain notes until we were on the
way. All the notes were about scary
shoaling and we were passing through at 1 foot above low tide. With one eye on the channel and one on the
depth sounder we progressed slowly. We
are happy to report no grounding but did have readings as low as 3.5 feet. Since we draw 4’7” we must have left a ditch
in the mud or sand. Now we have about
four areas where we can lend updates to Active Captain reports.
After settling in at the Maritime Center my sister arrived
so we had a mini family reunion. We
stayed at her house until Sunday when she, her son Justin and his kids Owen and
Ava came down. We watched the Charleston
Christmas parade, just a few blocks away.
Monday was our planned departure date but 1) Forever Exploring was due
in, 2) the weather was wet and rough and 3) CMC had space for us, so we stayed
another day. It was nice having a day to
visit with fellow boaters and make trips to the local West Marine, Post Office,
and grocery store for a few forgotten necessary items…like chocolate. Plus, my sister came down for dinner that
evening.
We had been having trouble with our VHF radio since Maine earlier this year. We could receive OK, but the transmit was intermittent. Having 3 or 4 bridge conversations cut short due to the bad xmt, now was the time to deal with it. We were going to cross the Golf stream shortly and wanted a good radio for safety sake. I took a trip to the local West Marine, a $20 cab ride, to sort out and play with the various radios. Looking for the best, we decided on a Standard Horizon over an Icom because it had more dedicated buttons rather than a bunch of soft buttons. It also has MMSI, AIS, and a host of other fun things. We are all set now.