Yellow Boat: 01/07/08 Leaving Charleston Harbor onto ICW

January 2008
We're on the Intra Coastal Waterway once again headed south.
It wasn't an easy thing to do, casting off our lines and leaving Charleston, we had some grand times, met some interesting people, and made some dear friends in a very short time.

We weren't the only ones leaving. Seems many sailors had made their repairs, replenished provisions and were now beginning to shove off. We helped others cast off their lines...but now it was our turn and it felt sad to be heading out, and a little awkward. What had become second nature now took some thought. We navigated past a couple of markers, waited out our first bridge, and began watching the depth sounder like it was the newest reality show, yes we are on our way again.

Made a short trip without any fear of running aground, and that was with a falling tide. :-) I took the wheel and found where the shallow water was, but not bad. An Osprey with a fish hanging from his talons flew over and an eagle was right behind chasing. It appeared the eagle was trying to steal it or maybe just get it back? We cheered for the little guy (Osprey)! The eagle flew back over us without fish. Enjoy lunch Osprey.

Passed up TooGooDoo Creek (tough with a name like that) and came into Tom's Point which was hard to see till you were right on it. We anchored for the night.

Bob put us on 2 anchors - up & downstream due to current and 8' tide. I watched us swing off one and onto the other in a smooth circle. I'd never really seen that happen...sort of neat and impressive.

HIGH TIDE....

LOW TIDE!

This morning the sun is shinning, the birds are singing so we've decided to enjoy this beautiful spot and go investigate. You can see by the pictures that was the right decision. The creek rambled back about 4 more miles and surprised us with how many houses were actually on it, some with long docks reaching out to the creek. There were oyster beds and little islands that wecouldn't see from our anchorage perspective.

Along the way we watched a yellow butterfly slowly loose ground against the wind and fall into
the creek. We managed to rescue and place it in the bottom of the dinghy in a sunny spot. Careful not to squish him we unloaded the dink and got back aboard Hakuna Matata. At some point later the butterfly momentarily landed on the boat, took off and once again had a splash down at sea. Bob jumped into the dink, as I kept an eye on the floating yellow butterfly, and he scooped it up. This time he went to the marsh shore and tossed the butterfly up into the air hoping it would fly towards land instead of water. We watched it fly out of sight and felt good that it was in a friendlier environment.....so, Hakuna Matata butterfly.

Everyone is relaxed as the day ends and the sun sets.

THEN ANOTHER BEAUTIFUL SUNRISE BEGGING US TO STAY LONGER

SO WE DID!

There's always things to be done - some up high, so Bob climbs the steps up the mast to install a lightning dissipater (looks like a wire bottle brush to me ).