Except for thinking we might run out of water after seeing stranded boats all high and dry, nothing bad happened between when we posted underway two hours from Charleston and when we tied up just behind Looper boat One Eye Dog. We last saw them in Marathon about eighteen months ago.
The next part of this post probably won’t be interesting to anyone other than us, because mostly we just hung out with Greg and Mary Jane, Doug’s friends from the Knoxville days. Mary Jane recalls much more about their MBA classmates than does Doug, who basically has no memory of them at all. MJ now is living Dana’s dream of working in a cool bookstore. Back in the day Doug played lots of basketball with her husband Greg, who was a college superstar (years earlier) and still has the MVP trophies to prove it. They have a wonderful home on Kiawah, with an amazing beach right out their back door.
Dana particularly enjoyed Bucky and Willie’s unbridled exuberance.
Greg delivered the scooters, which already have proven useful as transportation to mediocre Mexican joints that are way too far from the boat for one of us to to walk without complaining. Greg also picked a series of fabulous restaurants where we ate so much awesome food that walking instead of scootering is a good idea. We had such a great time with Greg and Mary Jane that we forgot to take a single picture with them.
On Sunday, the awkwardly-named “Invest 96-L disturbance” threatened to turn into a tropical depression or tropical storm, which more importantly to us threatened to bring rain and sustained high winds to the exact spot on the east coast where we tied up Tumbleweed safely. So we bailed on the plan to move up to McClellanville on Monday, and slept in instead. Which not only was safer, it also allowed for an easier recovery after Greg and Mary Jane kept us out way past our bedtime Sunday night.
Turns out staying was a smart call. The “disturbance” indeed became a tropical depression—Tropical Depression Four for anyone who cares about such things—bringing forty-knot gusts directly to the awkwardly-named The Harborage at Ashley Marina. Later on it became Tropical Storm Danny.
Obviously this ain’t a hurricane, or even a storm of significance to normal people. And bizarrely, the definition of “normal people” in these parts includes drunk people on floating tiki-bars that can’t possibly be Coast Guard approved. Where are the life jackets? Fire extinguishers? Flares?
But we’re not normal people. We’re liveaboard boaters. Who hate wind. We don’t go out in storms if there’s a better option.
Still, Charleston was a great stop even the second time around.
Tuesday, by comparison, was a glorious travel day, although early on we wasted a bunch of time waiting for a tow named Pops to get through the Ben Sawyer bridge until he decided at the last minute to back out and wait for an opening.
It wouldn’t have killed him to weigh in with his intentions when he heard us on the radio discussing the bridge with Ragamuffin—the NPY 43 right behind us—but whatever.
Hey this is different. We last saw a lifeboat like this one at Port Hawkesbury on Cape Breton. But that was for training. This looks like a personal toy.
We looked up the mothership. This is a lifeboat from USNS Yukon, which was a support vessel that essentially served the Navy as a floating gas station. The Yukon has the distinction of being involved in THREE collisions with other boats, which frankly seems like a lot. The other odd thing is that the stamp on the lifeboat says its capacity is sixty-nine passengers, although it’s smaller than Tumbleweed. Going down with the big ship might be preferable to spending days adrift with sixty-eight other smelly sailors in a sardine can, fighting over the last remaining morsel from an emergency food pack that expired six years ago, and hoping that navy snipers don’t mistakenly think you’re a Somali pirate. It’d be even worse if you were the only girl.**
Then on up to Georgetown. We have quite fond memories of this place from when we spent nearly a week here with Mallory and Shannon and bought matching Grouper Therapy shirts and tried to turn a tennis court into a pickleball court using blue painter’s tape only to have the wind prevent us from using it. Things were much calmer when we arrived yesterday.
Today was a great day to bring out the scooters. A week ago the two-and-a-half miles to Walmart would’ve been a deal-breaker. Today? Piece of cake.
We also learned a very valuable lesson. Although scooters can take us a long way from the boat, when the one of us who says “Na, it’s not going to rain” turns out to be mistaken, we might still be a long way from the boat.
We did score the SD cards and fly swatters we need, however, so on balance things worked out.
Ron and Cathy—celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary aboard an express cruiser named Moor Time—stopped by to discuss the joys of selling their house and buying a trawler. We recommended it highly.
Finished off a great stop by having sushi with the crews from One Eye Dog and Gypsy’s Palace. Good times.
Tomorrow we’re heading to the Myrtle Beach Yacht Club—which is in Little River and not Myrtle Beach—to ride out the holiday craziness. And maybe storm craziness. Because now they tell us that “Invest 97-L really is the one to watch.”
Great. Just great.
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*Toby Keith isn’t our kind of country, but the post title is in honor of Mary Jane’s classic move at the upscale Italian restaurant, where the maître d’ failed to see the humor in it. “And you, sir, do not have a pair of testicles, if you prefer drinking from glass.”
**This would be an excellent place to insert a line from the Emma Watson scene in the very funny but profane This Is the End, but our blog is a family blog.
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