Today, for the first time we really struggled with just one motor. Currents in Charleston Harbor are really strong, so we timed our docking for slack water at 12:40, but with the wind we still had a lot of trouble. I can't really explain it, other than we narrowly avoided disaster. Ben had a little bit of an opportunity to play around with the wind and currents because we didn't time the "Ben Sawyer" bridge opening very well, and had to wait in 3 knot currents, without being able to turn to port (left) between 11:35 and noon when the bridge finally opened. We might have been ok except for the crab pots, the boat which decided to pull some of those crab pots, and the sailing vessel which passed us, and then turned around back towards us to furl their head sail, forcing us to avoid them (without turning to the left).
When we got to the Charleston Maritime Center we did a few drive byes to check out where exactly they wanted us to pull into. We saw the dock master waving, but wisely waited in the channel until Ben had formulated a plan to pull into the marina. I think I'll wait for Ben's captain's report to give the rest of the details, but after we were secured to the fuel dock, and everyone's blood pressure started to drop, we all agreed we would stay at the fuel dock for the night. (Wind, waves, current, and a packed fairly exposed marina make parking a boat tricky. Especially on a cat with one motor!)
After that our day got much better. It was less than a mile walk to the Apple store, and when I showed up magically my computer turned on. Not sure how he did it, but thanks genius bar man! I went ahead and bought an official apple battery (which they surprisingly had in stock) even though I'm pretty sure that was not why my computer would not turn on the other day (really it turned on, the screen was just blue...). Oh well, it's working now, and after returning to the boat I promptly backed everything up on a hard drive which will be accessible during the trip (I had been worried that if the computer was dead I wouldn't be able to access any of my data until we get back to Charlottesville in March).
We really enjoyed the walk to the Apple Store -- Charleston is beautiful. I'm not exactly sure how much of the city is this old, but the part we were walking through had several houses built in the 1600's! I was looking up the driveways and thinking, this was built for horse drawn carriages, because it's been here before there were cars. There were parts that reminded us both of New York City, but then we saw a car pull a u-turn in front of several other cars, and no one honked! It's like a NYC, but people are nice to each other.
We are also docked only 1/8 of a mile (according to the guide book) from a Harris Teeter, so we did a major shopping trip. It was probably very green of us to bring two backpacks, a tote bag, and a wine carrier, but it was also very useful - all were full and I was carrying the paper towels and the bottle of pom juice loose (we have one more tote bag which somehow didn't make it to the store, we need to track that down). Our carton of eggs were precariously stuffed in the outside of Ben's backpack, but all 12 made it safely back to the boat.
The best part of our evening, however, was dinner at McCrady's. It was highly recommended by Ben's business partner Lori (Ben's Editors Note - she insisted we go and asked repeatedly if we had been yet). It was amazing. Outside of meals in NYC and Joule (in Seattle), one of the best meals we've ever had. I can't even begin to describe the octopus (and fennel) starter or the grouper (and beets) main dish. Both were amazing. Ben even loved the desserts! One of the desserts was a 10 sorbet tasting course - all the sorbets tasted exactly like what they were supposed to be. It got a little old looking at each other and saying, oh my god, this really tastes like beets! (ok, maybe not old, it was pretty cool.)
Now that my computer is back up and running, expect more pictures! Later I will have to post some of Woodstock and Escapod and from our Thanksgiving dinner.
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