Ending One Trip With Plans for Something Much Bigger

The weather was beautiful for sailing today, but our plans were dashed by rum and cider. Apparently the amount of rum consumed is not fit for print, and we slept in to an hour that did not suit our plans.

We did take the time to finally resolve the chart plotter reboot issue before the anchor came up. It's nice to have that resolved.

After a quick pancake breakfast, we headed up the intracoastal, back to Ashley Marina. We gave things a good cleaning, and disembarked. Matt headed back to Beaufort, and the rest of us headed to Bob's house. After getting ourselves cleaned up, we joined with Ronda and her sister, Ashley, for some gallery walking and some drinks and snacks in downtown Charleston.

Although we are sad to see this trip end, we are excited about planning a sail to Connecticut. We know what we need to accomplish, and it is a lot. But accomplishing this will improve us immensely as sailors, and that will be a good thing.

Rum Recovery Adventure

We woke up this morning with in anticipation of some good sailing, however maintenance comes first. After breakfast, Bill and I worked on a solution to the rebooting GPS. We still are having issues, but we feel like we are close, and have something new to try in the morning.

It was a bit chilly and overcast when we started the day, but the Sun came out and warmed things up for us. We were joined by Matt, and although we got a late start, it was a great day for a sail! We had a quick stop at the fuel dock and then spent an enjoyable afternoon sailing around Charleston Harbor.

The adventure of the day was when we discovered we were out of rum (time flies when you're having rum!). All was not lost though. We knew that we would be anchoring around the Stono River, and that we had to sail right past Bob's backyard. So naturally we called Ronda. The plan was to heave a line to her, and have her attach a full bottle of rum in a bag to the line, and we would reel in the rum. We had interrupted her football game, and it took a good ten minutes to convince her that we weren't drunk, and we actually wanted her to do this. We did get it done, and Ronda was clever enough to think of what we had not, and that was to put the rum bottle into something that would float. A few tries with the heaving line and we had our bottle (see Bob below holding the prize) . Sadly, we are almost out again and may have to repeat the exercise tomorrow.

We dropped our hook just before 5:30, and got the grill set up to cook some awesome inch and a half thick steaks acquired by Bob. We entertained ourselves at dinner by selected readings from the The Art of Coarse Sailing, which we read aloud to each other.

It is expected to be cold tonight, but we have rum and hot cider to warm us, and we anticipate some nice sailing tomorrow.

The Progress Continues

Another good but busy day. it started with an early rise, and some sewing repairs to the bimini. We seem to be developing some proficiency with Bob's Sailrite sewing machine, and repairs went pretty quickly.

Next of was developing a project list for our next major sail. In the last post, a mention was made of future goals. We spent some time last night talking about this, and we want our next big trip to be too Connecticut. Our plan is to have the Black Dog up there by the summer of 2020. The current plan is to winter out up there, and continue North the next year. So today, we started creating a project plan to ensure readiness to do this trip.

We took a break for a training session at Gritbox with Cody, and then lunch at the East Bay Deli. It was a hard choice, because there are so many great places to eat, but East Bay delivered on lunch for sure.

We spent the afternoon on the boat replacing lines, and re-furling the recently repaired jib. Then Bill and I set about working on a long standing issue, in which the chart plotter reboots when the engine is restarted. This may seem like a minor nuisance, but many times, when we are under sail and need to start the engine, there's something going on. But we think we now have handle on it. Of course to effectively correct the issue, we needed to.... wait for it.... GO TO WEST MARINE! So we now have what we need to hopefully correct this correct this troublesome issue.

After West Marine, a trip to the Gin Joint was in order. It is always a favorite spot for me, and many great voyages were planned there. It is a special bar that will let you spread your charts out at the bar.

We then met up with Ronda at a place called The Alley, for drinks and bowling with a large contingent from the Gritbox crowd to celebrate Cody's birthday.

We split a ride share with Ronda, since she was going home, and we were heading to the boat. Of course the rain picked up as we exited the car, so as Ronda pulled away in her nice dry Lyft car, we had a small dousing as we made our way to H dock and the Black Dog.

The Never Ending Maintenance Battle

So our plane was delayed a little last night (as usual), but we did get to Charleston by 10:30, and back to Bob's house shortly after 11. We took the opportunity to sample some new gins, and then we turned in, knowing we had some things to accomplish today.

We started the day at Grit Box Fitness, where Cody took us through a grueling kickboxing class, and we met up with an old Waffler favorite, Clive Greaves, for brunch at the Blue Rose. The food was excellent, and one item of note were the blonde Bloody Marys, which I heard were good, although I did not personally sample them myself.

The afternoon found us on the Black Dog to perform some simple tasks, which involved Bill and I hauling Bob up the mast in a bosun's chair. The jib halyard needed to be rethreaded at the top of the mast, as well as smaller lines for the radar reflector and flags. We also needed to have a look at the mount for the radar dome, so we can see about removing the inoperable radar dome, and mounting the working one there ( as opposed to where it is currently mounted).

Another task was to replace the jib sheet, but after looking things over, we made a decision that the jib halyard also needed to be replaced before it failed. This resulted in a trip to West Marine (no one who really knows us will be surprised by this).

We had a nice dinner at Bob's house (joined by Ronda, his most patient spouse), and talked about some long range goals over cocktails. More on that later.

Tomorrow will be another busy day with a boat related sewing project, and replacing lines on the boat. But it will all be worth it when we get underway.