Bill, Alison, Mike & Rob

We had a smooth and easy sail to Charleston. We left Miami on Wednesday morning and, with lots of help from the Gulf Stream, were cruising past Fort Sumter by noon on Friday.

The conditions conspired to give us an easy trip:  the seas were calm, the current gave us a 3 knot boost, and the sky was blue with the occasional huge cumulus clouds. While we often saw rain and lightning storms off in the distance, they thankfully stayed in the distance. With little rocking and rolling, we were able to make hot oatmeal and fruit each morning and great dinners (thanks to Alison and Rob!) each evening. We saw less wild life than past trips, with only one sea turtle and a few dolphins, but a rather sinister-looking submarine did cut across our bow.

Our big excitement was flying Archie’s new asymmetrical spinnaker. Bill found the spinnaker in Marblehead and we lugged it down with us to Florida. (Because it was a few pounds over the weight limit, the JetBlue ticket agent kept asking us, couldn’t we take something out of the bag to reduce the weight? We kept responding, not unless you want us to tear the sail into two pieces.) Because we had never flown a spinnaker on Betty Ann and needed to make a lot of decisions about how to rig it, we weren’t too sure what was going to happen when we hoisted the sail. But lo and behold it was a thing of beauty.

In Charleston, we pulled up to the city marina’s so-called Megadock (about a mile long) and nestled ourselves in among the mega-yachts with their hired crew, chandeliers and acres of teak. One of our behemoth neighbors even had a stern that opened up to reveal another 20 foot motor boat sitting inside, like something out of a James Bond film.

Once in Charleston, the thunderstorms caught up to us. Sitting below sea level, it doesn’t take much to cause the city to flood. On our way to sightsee one afternoon, we had to walk an entire block, shoes in hand, through a foot of water. Archie, always in the right place at the right time, got photographed by the Charleston Post and Courier as he waded through the flood.

Rob, Alison, Bill and I flew back on Sunday morning. Archie’s new crew arrived on Monday and departed for Point Judith on Tuesday morning under sunny skies. Hopefully they will have as smooth seas as did we.