Day 221: Saturday, April 13, 2013

Port to Port: Charleston to  Minum Creek Anchorage

Underway: 7:30 am      Motor Off: 6:02 pm      Miles Traveled: 51      Stayed At: Anchor

Mile 464 to Mile 415 (plus 2): Spring has sprung in South Carolina. The birds are singing (and doing lots of fishing). We are always amazed to see butterflies flying into the wind (and beating us). The college coeds are definitely ready for spring (and dressed for it). And we are back marking time by watching the green and red marker buoys go slowly by and flipping pages in the chart book. Life is good.

Today was another long and productive day. We started early to get a boost from the tide and were sailing across Charleston Harbor before 8 am. We passed by Fort Sumter where the first shots of the Civil War were fired. It’s strange to think about all the history that has happened here over the years – now people are sightseeing and fishing instead of firing mortars and muskets. Except for taking the sail down for a swing bridge (we don’t like the extra complications of a sail when transiting bridges), we motor sailed for almost ten hours. It helps to counter the current and makes the day go faster.

We are surprised how remote the ICW has been so far. Except for few bigger cities, we have seen very few houses, only a handful of marinas and traffic has been pleasantly light. We expected more civilization. This makes it easy to put in long days to crank out the miles – there really aren’t many places worth stopping.

The scenery has started to change gradually. We still have lots of swamp grass lining the channels but more forested areas have started to appear and palm trees and much less common. Dolphin are still abundant – we usually see our first one of the day within a half hour of leaving our anchorage. There have been a lot more birds (hum…more birds and less civilization, I wonder if there is a connection).

If our weather window holds, we should enter North Carolina by Monday or Tuesday. Another milestone to look forward to.