Littler River Inlet, SC SM341 to Charleston, SC SM461

October 29 & 30, Friday and Saturday.
Finally some fair winds today. We made good use of them with and offshore overnight passage to Charleston. With only a little over 100 miles we delayed out departure to arrive at dawn. The winds were northwest 15-20 knots and slowly veered into the north east. Although the forecast had them strengthening a little overnight they actually diminished around 2am.
The autopilot continues to shear the cotter pin that holds the clutch lever on allowing it to engage the belt. I replaced it just before we departed and it lasted until we had to disengage it when the quartering seas proved too much for it. This sheared the new cotter pin off yet again. We had to hand steer starting around 5 pm. Later when the wind abated it would have been capable of handling the 4 foot quartering waves so we missed it dearly with the long night watches. We have stuck to the 1 hour watches during the day and depending on the difficulty going to 2 or 3 hour watches, so we started at 10 pm with 2 hour watches and went to 3 when the wind abated. I hadn't figured on the long length of time it would take to get up river to the Cooper River Marina so with our calculated arrival time up river of 7:30 it actually had us getting to the the breakwater for Charleston at around 6 am. It was still very dark and the wind had filled back in to 15-20 just as we were making the entrance. A Carnival cruise ship entered just ahead of us and a container ship was just behind us. We were monitoring VHF channel 13 and the container ship contacted us to let us know he was overtaking us quickly. We started moving over to the starboard side of the channel, but the waves were slewing us around a lot and the breakwater was unlit and bearly discernible on the chart plotter. The upshot was we did not move over quick enough for the container ships liking and we got a few blasts on his ships horn to properly motivate us to get more out of his way, which of course we did post haste. Lots of shrimpers heading out of the channel to keep clear of some with their booms extended taking up a lot of the available channel. The starboard running light burnt out after only a few days of use. I had changed it in Annapolis. We located a portable running light I had on board, that is intended for dingies and set it up to starboard to make us more visible. This is especially important as when our dingy is stowed on the cabin top it partially obscures the port running light from dead ahead. We arrived at sunrise and took a dock at the Cooper River Marina, where my new mainsail was waiting for us. Got a good nap in and retrieved the mainsail. One problem the fully battened main, did not come with the battens which were part of the order. A call to Lee Sails quickly sorted this out, but it will take another week now to get them shipped ahead of us to Fort Pierce where my Uncle Mike and Aunt Lou live. In the meantime with weekly patches of sail repair tape the old main still hangs in there. We were able to shower and take off at 2 pm for downtown Charleston with no charge by the Marina (thanks guys). I saw my friend Hugh who was very good to me when I had the boat there for the entire month of Dec last year, he checked the bilge for me a couple of times a week as I only had a manual bilge pump at the time, (now remedied with an automatic float operated pump) .
We motored over to the Charleston Resort and Marina next to the WWII aircraft carrier Yorktown. There was a big tent set up next door that had music playing so we just had to check it out. The marina let us stay a few hours also without charge while we hiked over to the music. This turned out to be pipped in music in advance of a concert due to start a few hours hence. We elected to skip this and got underway for the anchorage in front of the Charleston Municipal Marina. After another nap we heading downtown to Tommy Condon's Irish pub. As it was Saturday nite we had a heck of a time getting a cab and after waiting 45 minutes for two different cab companies to come we elected to walk.
As it turned out to be cool stroll thru the old neighborhood with stately old mansions and historic buildings. In fact we passed 3 different groups that were on guided walking tours of this area. We passed two different venues with something gala going on as the folks outside were in tuxes and evening gowns. Upon our arrival in the old market district we ran into many folks in costume for the Halloween weekend, fun stuff. There was an Irish band at the pub and we enjoyed them immensely. Turns out the band was the same one that was playing when Frank Cook and I were there last fall. We were able to hail down a cab for the way back as this is a hot spot in town.