South Carolina 2

12- 13 November - The next morning was a short trip to Isle of Palms Marina, where we met with my friend Elizabeth, a native of the area. We took a slip at the marina ($1.50/ft) to make it easier for meeting up with Elizabeth. We hung out for a couple of days, and Elizabeth toured us around the historic old city. We were able to top of our propane right at the marina, which was a welcome convenience. Our generator had lost it's output, so we suspected the notorious capacitor. The marina found a supplier for us and Elizabeth took us to get the parts. We decided to mount the capacitor outside of the generator housing to make it easy to replace, as it is really hard to get to. As it turns out, the old capacitor was good after all, and the breaker inside the housing had tripped.I figure we must have been running both air conditioning units (for heat) and the battery charger at the same time. Some quick calculations indicated that load might exceed 5 kilowatts, so that's probably what did it. Note to self: keep up with what you flip on!

14-15November - Motored to Bass Creek, near Beaufort, SC. This is a stunning anchorage, partly because of it's isolation. Nothing but grass and water for miles. Except for a few fisherman who cleared out at dark, we had it to ourselves. We made it to Beaufort the next morning and took advantage of the free city dock to have a look about town. We lunched at the Magnolia Cafe, got some cash at Wachovia and headed out. The wind was picking up but we had no problem getting off the dock. As we pulled out of the harbor, there was Salty Paws passing right by, so we decided to sail with them. They suggested going down the river on jib alone, which makes it easy. Jim, a fabulous photographer, snapped this photo of us sailing down the Beaufort river. The wind kept building over 25kts and we were moving quite smartly on jib alone.

Jim and Bentley decided they were going to go outside the next day, so they dropped anchor near the river's mouth. We weren't thrilled about being exposed with all the wind, so we decided to make for Skull Creek at Hilton Head. But unfortunately, we didn't take into account how rough it might get in Port Royal Sound. We rounded the buoy and pounded our way into a very unpleasant chop, with gusts creeping up to around 40kts. The cats got sick and our speed came down to under 4 kts, and even a couple of times to about 2.5. Stuff started sliding off of tables inside and clattering about the cabin. But by this point it didn't make much sense to turn around as the stretch was thankfully only about 4 miles. It took us about an hour to cover that distance and finally as we made it to the lee shore things calmed down.