Hope's and Howard's Sailing Adventures

We had thought about trying to reduce our total sea miles by sailing directly from St Augustine around Cape Hatteras and into the Chesapeake (a 4-day sail), especially as the weather was quite settled when we were in St Augustine …. but as we didn’t manage to leave on Tuesday, the weather window was shorter, so we opted to go the shorter hop to Charleston.

While in St Augustine, we had a couple of trips out with our real estate agent to see what the house market in St Augustine is like. Prices have gone up since Howard last looked back in March last year. We saw a few nice houses but this is not the right time for us to buy/settle down. We still have to decide where in the world we would like to have as our residence for the rest of our days…..

Having obtained our FL driver’s licenses, we departed around 3:30pm. On the way out to sea, we passed two old sailing vessels; one (Freedom, a replica of a 19th century double masted, top sail, gaff-rigged schooner) under full sail and in a fairly narrow part of the channel and the other (in the picture and looks like it is El Galeon, a replica of a 16th Century Spanish Galleon) under engine approaching the entrance. Howard in particular thoroughly enjoyed the sail that evening doing about 7.5 knots on a broad reach in wind of about 13-14 knots. If we had managed to keep up that speed, we could have reached Charleston before dark the following day…. but of course the wind dropped overnight so we ended up slowing the boat down so we could arrive in daylight. Indeed, the second night, we had a lovely 13-14 knot following breeze but were only doing 4-5 knots with the staysail, which we even rolled in further as we approached Charleston to slow us down yet more. We finally entered around daybreak to find a stream of sport fishing boats coming out.

We are docked in the Charleston City Marina on the outside of the Mega dock (and the furthest from the facilities). The dock certainly deserves such a name as it is about 1500 ft long and can fit many ‘mega’ yachts on it. We get our exercise, just visiting the bathrooms! The marina offers a shuttle bus service into the city as it is a bit too far to walk, especially in the extreme heat (around 107F/40C) that we are currently experiencing. We had a look around the city yesterday, which is clearly hurting from the senseless shootings and deaths of 9 people that just occurred (thanks Ruthie for the heads up when we arrived). Clearly there is/was wealth in this area as evidenced by the many mansions, high-end shops, etc. We had intended visiting the Charleston museum today, which is reputed to have perhaps the best representation of slavery, but we became too lethargic in the heat so ended up doing very little today.

We are hoping to set off again tomorrow around midday, after what remains of Tropical Storm Bill (which is predicted to head offshore much further north tomorrow) has no influence in this area. It looks like the wind will be quite brisk but fairly settled for the next few days so we should be able to round Cape Hatteras on Tuesday and then get into the Chesapeake by Wednesday. We’ll probably stop somewhere near the mouth, maybe Hampton, VA. All this is of course subject to change depending on weather updates in the morning and as we progress.