Leg 4: Charleston South Carolina To Fort Lauderdale Florida
- therapturedesigns
- Jan 30, 2019
- 9 min read
The format of this blog will be slightly different than the last blogs that I have done as it contains less travel days and more days on shore. There is very little to write about on the days when I’m traveling as they are typically long day is filled with very little of note other than lots of areas pass through
December 16, 2018-December 19, 2018
When I arrived to Charleston South Carolina I initially went to a marina farther up the river in more of the industrial park area. As there were marinas nearby that offered haul out services for my boat. Thinking that I might need a cutlass bearing because of an odd vibration in the engine I waited there for four days. Before I was finally able to get a diver to come and take a look at it. He determined that it was just a blob of barnacles growing on one blade of the propeller which was causing the odd vibration in the engine. Once he had cleaned it off and scrubbed the bottom. The engine was running fine with no noticeable vibrations
While I waited for the four days I made friends with the guy on the boat next-door who is very nice and interesting. We talked quite a bit over the coming days while I was waiting for a diver to come and take a look at the bottom of my boat.
During my stay here I also took the chance to go to Walmart and resupply a little bit for both Charleston and for the last leg of the journey down to Florida.
December 19, 2018-December 22, 2018
After I got my boat looked at by the diver I moved over to a different marina right in the heart of downtown Charleston to celebrate Christmas a little early before I travel down through Georgia. I would spend Christmas Day and New Year’s Day at Anchorage throughout Georgia, and Florida and so I wanted to celebrate a little bit for Christmas before hand.
Charleston was amazing and hands down my favorite city that I’ve stopped at since I started this trip. There’s tons of history from the beginning of the country all the way up to modern times to take in and I’m pretty sure I went into every history museum in the city as well as taking walking tours of the beautiful city neighborhoods.
The nightlife in Charleston is also fantastic, one of the first nights I was there I went out to a local bar. Even though I was the only person in the bar when I arrived by, the end of the night the place was packed. I met some other people from out of town and we became friendly deciding to meet up the following day for lunch.
One of the more unique things that we did was go and visit a old plantation in Charleston which was an interesting way to take in a bit of history as well as to observe the amazing gardens that they had. I saw my first alligator here as well!
December 22, 2018-December 25,2018
Moving on from Charleston I traveled down the ICW into Georgia. However, I had very good and favorable wind conditions so I did not actually get to see much of Georgia as I went offshore for most of my way through the state this ended up saving me a substantial amount of time. I was able to cross the entire state less than two days the anchorage is here also beautiful and pristine with hardly anyone around Definitely some of my favorite places I have stayed.
Christmas day may have been my favorite day of travel on this entire trip so far. It was an absolutely stunningly beautiful day in the mid to high 70s and it allowed me to sail almost The entire day downwind at an average of 5.75 kn which is pretty good. Also it made the day really enjoyable was that I was in range of cell service so pretty much the entire day I was on the phone with friends and family wishing everyone a merry Christmas and it really made the day fantastic being that I also just left Charleston a few days earlier and had a few bags of ice on board I also had some Christmas steaks and red wine as well as a phenomenal sunset!
December25, 2018-January 1- 2019
Crossing into Florida was a major milestone. However, I find northern Florida to be a little bit of a headache. As the fact that it is such a nice place in the winter time means that many of the anchorages are completely choked with abandon and derelict boats that offer no areas to anchor. This required some interesting anchoring techniques including deploying two anchors to prevent the boat from swinging or changing directions with tide and wind directions as well as to keep the boat from swinging into the ICW.
Looking into the abandon boat problem it is apparently a significant issue in Florida. Being that they are boats you cannot simply tow them away when they are obviously abandon. Instead the state must pursue a process similar to that of eviction and It can often take months and months to get them to be declared derelict before the state is allowed to remove them. Then there is also the obvious funding problem of who pays to remove these boats. That usually ends up being taxpayers, and there is a certain amount of money allocated to this. Since arriving in Florida one of the things that has blown me away the most is the sheer number of obviously abandon boats, and sunken boats. Coming from the north east there’s hardly any shipwrecks that are visible, anywhere as far as I’m aware of. When boats are sunk the state and insurance companies are very quick about removing them from local waters. You would think I economy such as Florida that thrives on the boating industry would do more to remove these obvious impediments to people coming here.
The northern section of Florida while beautiful did not offer many good places to anchor nor any good places to go ashore and so I did not stop very long in any one place and simply plowed through all the way down to Stuart Florida. On New Year’s Day we had some high winds so I cut my travel day short, and instead went to an area known as Dragon Point. Where for the first time I was on this trip I was actually able to capture dolphins playing in the water right around the boat a few feet away.
January 2-7
Arriving in Stuart Florida to visit family was great! It was nice to see my first familiar faces of the trip and I had a great time spending time with Bill and Joan.
Using the opportunity I resupplied it at a BJ’s with enough food that I hope will last me for most of the time that I am in the Bahamas. Aside from fresh fruit, vegetables, and bread, etc. etc. Buying as much canned goods as I could possibly fit on the boat. As well as stocking up on things that cost significantly more in the Bahamas, such as beer, wine, toilet paper, sunscreen etc.
I then took a few days to do some projects around the boat the biggest of which was reattaching my solar panels which I had tested and installed Back in July and then taken off for storm in august. After reattaching them I was glad to see that they seem to be working just fine, and we’re all putting out enough power that I could now use all the electronics on the boat without fear of potential he having the batteries run down overnight.
I had more friends and family planning on meeting me in Fort Lauderdale on January 9th so on Monday the 7th I pulled up my anchor and continued on my way. Making my way to the north of West Palm Beach Florida where I anchored for the night. The further south through Florida I move the nicer the areas seem to be and the less number of derelict boats appear.
January 8, 2019 – January 30, 2019
Reaching Fort Lauderdale was so far the biggest milestone of the trip as I have now come as far south as I need to in order to cross to the Bahamas!
It was also great because Friends and family would be visiting over the next few weeks! My cousin, Daniel flew in for a few days and we got to explore the city together! We went to the local science museum/ aquarium, and an arcade!
After Daniel left my friends Russ and his girlfriend Beth flew in and stayed on the boat with me! It was also great to see some friends! We spent time relaxing on the beaches, Walking around the city, we went to Hollywood as well as walk through a couple of swamp areas which was pretty interesting there’s a great few days with them visiting!
After friends and family left I had two days to kill until another friend arrived so I took this time to further resupply the boat. As well as get some freelance work done! This worked out very nicely as I made a nice little chunk of change in the two days of downtime that I had as well as spent some quality time laying on a beach in the sun!
My friend Whitney stopped in for a night and we spent the day relaxing on the beach and seeing some sights! It was so great to see so many friends and family on the section of the trip and it definitely made me feel a little homesick for all my friends and family who I haven’t seen a few months now!
Once everyone was gone I left the marina where I had been staying and moved over to a local Anchorage that I had stayed in when I first arrived in Fort Lauderdale. A small little Cove, it was fairly protected from the bad weather that was forecast to happen over the coming week. A cold front was moving in and would not allow good weather to cross to the Bahamas. The forecast included two or three nights of 30 mile an hour average winds putting out the storm anchor and a decent amount of rode I buckled in to spend at least a week on the boat before the storms would subside enough for me to go to shore during the day and leave the boat without fear of it drifting away in the highwinds.
I tend to pride myself with somebody you can spend a decent amount of time alone without really feeling cooped up spending an entire week on a sailboat with it pouring and super highwinds all day every day was even starting to get to me there’s only so many books I can read and movies I can watch on my before it the boredom really begins to set in. However I did use this opportunity to get more projects done around the inside of the boat including tidying up some wiring that had been finished just not tidied up since the summertime as well as to continue to rearrange and find spots for things to live over the coming months the boat was now quite full of supplies and there was very few places left I did not have something stored in them!
Finally sometime around January 27 the weather finally broke and I was able to go to shore for the first time in a while. I’m anchored right across the way from a state park which has a free dock for transient boaters so I rowed over to the dock and used the opportunity to walk around the massive park as well as use their outdoor aerobics equipment to get a workout in. God it finally felt good to not be on a boat!
Over the coming days I would prepare the boat further from my Crossing to the Bahamas including refilling my water tanks, Going over to a local marina to get more fuel, Engine maintenance and inspection, preparing all the lines running rigging etc. etc. and cleaning the boat as my uncle would be flying in to make the crossing with me.
Lastly we finally had enough sunshine to start recharging my batteries which over the past week had run down fairly low due to the fact that the sun hadn’t come out fully and was able to type up this blog posts and arrange photos.
If everything goes according to plan and the forecast does not change I’ll be making the crossing to the Bahamas sometime between Friday, February 1 and Sunday or Monday, February 3rd or 4th. After that I’m not sure when the next time I’ll be able to write up a blog post will be as I am planning on buying a Sim card however I’m not sure what the coverage is like in the Bahamas especially in some of the out islands this may be the last blog post until I return to the United States sometime around April.
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