Steamboat Creek to St Johns Yacht Harbor to Isle of Palms

Day #528; Loop Miles to Date = 5,887

This morning finds us sitting at Isle of Palms Marina in SC, on an absolutely spectacular day...Happy first day of Spring, btw. We are now north of Charleston, and this trip up the ICW we blew past Charleston in our quest to reach New Bern, NC by about April 1st. (Shout outs to cousin Phyllis and sister Lisa...sorry that we did not stop this time through and that we missed seeing both of you.) We are off again this morning as soon as the tide has a chance to come in a bit more to cover some shallow areas just north of where we are. But first...time to share a couple of mini-adventures from the past few days...

Our anchorage at Steamboat Creek was once again peaceful and beautiful...

This was just as we were returning from our morning dog walk. Shortly thereafter, our mini-adventure for the day began. While we were walking the pups, another boat who anchored with us was also walking their 2 mutts. We exchanged "good mornings" and went on our way. Later as we were loading our dingy onto the boat, we noticed that one of them had taken one of their dogs back to their boat, and was now trying to paddle back to shore to retrieve his wife and other dog. Wait a sec...why is he paddling with one oar, against the current when he has a perfectly good motor attached to the back of his dinghy? The short version of the story is that 30 minutes later, we were again loading our dinghy onto our boat - after having dinghy-towed them from their boat back to shore, and then back to their boat with all crew accounted for. They would have had a really long morning if our towing service had not been readily available...but it all worked out, and as it turned out, they were able to depart the anchorage before we got out of there a bit later.

So, we followed these guys from about 2 miles back for most of the morning. After about 2 hours, we spotted some blue flashing lights up ahead, and upon closer inspection, we see that this same boat has now been boarded by the Sherriff's Department! Lady luck was not on their side this day...random draw had them being the boat that the Sherriff decided to board for a 40 minute safety inspection.

We finally caught up to them and passed them while they were undergoing the inspection.

There was even a Sherriff's chopper in the air for support. We suspect that there was some training going on, and our anchorage neighbors were just the lucky ones chosen to participate!
 

We were only briefly at St Johns Yacht Harbor, but found friendly folks, quite a few live-aboards, and a nice facility. We were tied up to an outside T-Head, and had a bit of rocking going on when we got there, but it calmed down nicely for the evening. However, the forecasted north winds arrived the next morning, and given the orientation of our docking situation, we were just getting slammed from the stern with 2-+ chop. It felt like someone was standing on our swim platform swinging a sledge hammer...shaking the whole boat every few seconds. But, due to the prevailing current, we couldn't safely get off the dock until the tide ran it's course and the current slackened and started to reverse. So, we put up with this for about 2 hours, and then finally were able to get out of there. The un-docking was non-eventful because we waited...it wasn't fun waiting, but it was the right decision at the time.

The rest of the day was nice...Charleston Harbor was a bit rough with the 15mph winds, but it was manageable.



This is as close as we got to Charleston...this is the main US Coast Guard station in Charleston Harbor, just east of the City Marina. This day found a couple of cutters at the dock, and later we heard another cutter reporting that they were out and about coming North through Elliot Cut about an hour behind us.

So now we are off to enjoy a 26 mile cruise to a 1-night stop in McClellanville...it promises to be a gorgeous day to be on the water...all for now.