On The Road Again

We left Charleston early Sunday morning. A small craft advisory meant we are sticking to the ICW but hopefully by Tuesday or Wednesday we will be able to venture outside and take the fast route to Florida. The skipper is keen to visit Cape Canaveral. It would be wonderful to see a rocket go up but I doubt we will be that lucky.

We had a lovely time in Charleston and the skipper installed our new semi flexible solar panel. The wonderful thing is that being on the bimini you do not even notice it's there. 

Xmas shopping in King Street was very entertaining. One end of the street is full of look but don't touch shops where the price tags rarely descend below three figures. One men's shop had blue jeans, a mere snip at $300 dollars US. Mind you we should have known, not many men's shops have French antique bureau and chess set displayed in their windows. As you walked away from the Gucci, Louis Vuitton end of town the prices were more in the cruising end of the budget. Clothing is certainly very cheap in America and generally good value for money. Though we were very impressed that the up market men's store had a NZ brand Rodd and Gun for sale. The Rue du Jean cafe had great food, especially the dessert. The photo of the chandelier is from inside of one of the cheaper chain stores but what a setting for a clothing store. 

We also found a teeny tiny Xmas tree for the boat.

As I have mentioned before we haven't seen many mammals (apart from humans, of course) but the bird life has been amazing. Yesterday I looked out the port hole at the fog and saw the most disgruntled little brown bird sitting on the flag of the boat next door.  By the time I raced down for the camera and returned his day had gone from bad to worse as the bird in the picture had replaced him. 

The marina was on the edge of the city but had plenty of bird life. Returning from the bathroom late in the evening I disturbed a Night Heron. He looked at me and lumbered off his perch and his squawk of protest sounded definitely like he was swearing at me. It reminded me of the Cockatoo in the Dunedin Gardens Avairy. He had a great repertoire of comments but his favourite was 'fxxxx off'. Obviously some uni student had spent a bit of time coaching him to startle the tourists.

We are now in Steam Boat Creek having wended our way through some of the very tricky shoaled sections of the route by catching high tide. We were doing 8.9 knots with tide at one stage. We anchored early as there is a seven foot tide range at the moment and tomorrow's section is supposed to be one of the worst shoal areas of all.