A Tale of Two Charlestons

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. That sums up our visit to Charleston in a neat and tidy nutshell. The city of Charleston is lovely, and totally worth the visit. But we had a couple of nasty mishaps that put a real crimp in our experience.

Traveling down the ICW has been a truly unique trip for Valkyrie’s crew members. Formerly accustomed to traveling mostly under sail in wide bodies of water, we are now motoring down narrow channels and rivers, passing under numerous bridges and enjoying the view of the relatively close shoreline on both sides. We have of course motored through canals plenty of times on our way up to Maine in previous summers, but the longest of those – the Chesapeake Delaware Canal – takes about two hours to get through. What’s different here is that we are doing this all day long, every single day. It’s kind of like driving a noisy truck down a scenic highway from Virginia to Florida, but only at about five miles per hour. Rick is mostly at the wheel, but I spell him from time to time so he can get a break.

Although the weather has remained cold even as we make our way south, the flora and fauna have been changing to reflect a warmer climate. We see pelicans galore, live oak trees draped with Spanish moss, and palm trees, most of which are obviously transplanted ornaments and not truly indigenous, at least before we arrive in Charleston.

After almost two weeks of exhausting, non-stop eight to nine hour days, we pull in to Charleston harbor, ICW mile 469, and slide in to the fuel dock. It’s late in the day, and we’re both happy to have made it here. We are short on all supplies – fuel, food, water, ice, etc. – and we plan to take a slip at the marina and enjoy a couple of days here, replenishing our larders as well as our psyches.

After filling the forward diesel tank, Rick sends me down below to watch the level on the main tank; we don’t have a gauge on that one to tell us when it’s full. After a minute or two, I hear from up above, “Shit!” “Oh my God!” and, “What a disaster!”

“I just put diesel fuel in the water tank.”

Holy moly. The only good thing about this is that I wasn’t the one who did it.

The filling ports for the two tanks – diesel and water – are right next to each other. They’re labeled, but look so much alike that Rick has long intended to paint one of them a bright color so as to help prevent a mistake from being made between them, but he just never got around to doing it. Now, in his bleary-eyed stupor, the unthinkable has happened. One of our water tanks has a gallon or two of diesel fuel in it.

If we try to empty our water tanks, we’ll be dumping contaminated water into the Charleston harbor. Definitely not a good idea. But even simply emptying the tank would not solve our problem. We’d still be left with a stinky tank that would ruin our water, possibly forever. We made our way to the slip, and went online right away to Google a solution to our problem. The online experts were decidedly unhelpful. The only mention of “diesel in the water tank” we could find had just one thing to say: Forget it!  The tank is toast. Basically, replacing the tank is the only sure-fire way to get rid of the diesel smell. This would be a big, expensive and time-sucking job, probably putting an end to our Bahamas plan. We could just not use that tank, close it off and only use the port side water tank. But that cuts our water capacity in half. Big. F-ing. Problem.

Last year, Rick put some internal ports on those water tanks so that we could have direct access when we wanted to clean them. We both thought this was a big mistake at the time, because unfortunately, the ports leaked. But since then Rick has solved that problem, and now we are damned lucky to have that port. We can use that big hole in the top of the long rectangular tank to get the fuel out! Diesel is lighter than water, and rises to the top in a red layer, not unlike oil on top of vinegar in salad dressing. Rick patiently skims off the diesel with a coffee cup, pouring the fluid into old empty containers. This takes a couple of hours.

After all that skimming, we have two empty gin bottles filled with our wayward diesel fuel, and not even a trace of pink in the tank water. But the smell of diesel is still strong. We add dishwashing soap, scrub like mad, and then pump it all out. This sequence, over and over. Fill, scrub, rinse, repeat. Now we have water that smells of diesel fuel and dishwashing soap. We decide to let the tank sit overnight, and go out to get some dinner.

Colonial  Lake, Charleston

Charleston is a paradise for foodies. I ran an online search for “best restaurants”, knowing that there would be many, but thinking that finding something within walking distance would narrow down the options to two or three. Boy was I wrong. My head was spinning, trying to decide between twenty-five or so. During our stay we ate at three very different places, one funky Asian, one upscale chic, and one low-country brunch with biscuits and grits, all fabulous. In between these meals, we took a very entertaining and informative “Gullah” tour, looking at the architecture, slave roots, and influence of African culture on the city.

Fish Stew Provençal at Fig

Part of the reason we decided to stay for a few days in Charleston was that I needed to fly back to Baltimore. I’ve had an ongoing problem with my neck and shoulder, and my doctor wanted MRIs of both. I had the neck MRI when we were in Baltimore in October, but unfortunately, my health insurance company wouldn’t approve the one for my shoulder. After much fighting, my doctor finally got them to OK the shoulder MRI, but of course, we are now on a boat in the ICW. I managed to get flights in and out from Charleston all in the same day, and off I went, badabing, badabang, badaboom!

All went well, until my third Uber ride of the day, back to the Baltimore airport. I said goodbye to the very nice driver, then entered the airport to stand in the security line, and when I tried to find my phone which held my boarding pass, I realized I had left it in the Uber car. D’oh! I’ll just call the driver – wait, I don’t have a phone to call him with! What the hell, even if I could call somehow, the phone number for him is in my phone.

Maybe I can call Uber directly? I run around the airport, looking for a pay phone. Apparently, they have gone the way of the dinosaurs and no longer exist. The airport information desk is empty. I try the “courtesy phone” in the airport lobby, but it only connects to 911 or airport offices. I run back outside, hoping the driver realizes my mistake and is coming back. No go. I run back in, now starting to panic.

After about an hour of running around, I go to the Southwest Airlines ticket counter. The lady there gets me a paper boarding pass, and lends me her own cell phone. But who do I call? “Call your own number, maybe he’ll answer.” Duh. Why didn’t I think of that? The driver doesn’t pick up at first, I have to keep coming back and re-borrowing that phone, but eventually he does answer. It’s now too late for him to come back to the airport - he is Ubering someone to DC – but he promises to mail the phone, general delivery to our next stop (Beaufort, South Carolina).

Meanwhile, Rick had been laboring on the water tank problem in my absence and worked a genuine miracle. His inspired solution? Use the one thing we have in abundance on the boat – GIN!!! He emptied the tank of all water, then swabbed the inside with a cloth soaked in Gordon’s, the idea being that the alcohol would help to evaporate the last minuscule traces of diesel oil. We had to keep the tank open to let it dry, and we had to repeat the gin treatment a couple of times, but the tank is finally clean and the water tastes fine! Gin really is the cure for EVERYTHING.

 

"Chin-chin!"

I’ll See You on the IC Double-Yoo

The Intracoastal Waterway – or ICW – is an inland waterway along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coastlines of the US. According to Wikipedia, “Some sections of the waterway consist of natural inlets, saltwater rivers, bays, and sounds, while others are artificial canals. It provides a navigable route along its length without many of the hazards of travel on the open sea.” Officially, it begins in Boston and runs around Florida, back up and around to Brownsville, Texas. But here on the East Coast, people generally refer to the ICW as a route that begins in Norfolk, VA and goes down to the Florida keys. There’s good reason to think that way too, because the miles along this waterway are numbered; mile 0.0 is in Portsmouth, just south of Norfolk. Fort Lauderdale, near Miami is mile 1,063, and that is where we intend to jump over the gulf stream to the Bahamas.

We had a marvelous week in the southern Chesapeake, on our way towards Norfolk where we were planning to start down the ICW. Pelicans are rarely seen in Baltimore, but just south of Solomons, only about fifty miles or so from Charm City, pelicans are everywhere. 

We made an overnight stop at Fleets Island, Virginia, with an uninhabited spit of low-lying land curving invitingly into a beautiful sandy beach. We had a lovely afternoon walk there, and in the morning were greeted with a pod of dolphins fishing for their breakfast just off the point near our anchored boat.

 

After the scenic beauty of the Chesapeake, Norfolk was a bit of a shock. The home of the world’s largest naval base, Norfolk’s waterfronts are bedecked with massive, ugly gray military ships, and giant cargo dockyards with their accompanying cranes and forklifts. The boat traffic in these waters is intense, and between the wake from the other boats and the sounds from the shore, not to mention our own engine noise, one can feel a little light-headed. I will never complain about Baltimore’s relatively modest stretch of industrial ugliness ever again. I swear.

Even destroyers can look good on a beautiful sunny day.

We spent the night in the mouth of the Lafayette River, a surprisingly tranquil and gentrified inlet located just behind a loading dock for gigantic container ships, and then moved down to Portsmouth the next morning so as to be closer to the ICW entrance. We took in a movie at the Commodore Theater, a beautiful old art deco movie house (the popcorn was under salted and stale, BIG disappointment), and then loaded up with provisions from the local Food Lion. Not that we actually needed anything…

I have a particular problem with food. During my childhood, my mother was, if I were being charitable, what one might call “frugal”.  A more accurate description might be “niggardly”. Scrooge had nothing on my mother when it came to food, and other things too, truth be told. She took care of us, yes, and none of us starved, but there was enough of a feeling of restriction and deprivation that I grew into adulthood with a definite insecurity surrounding basic needs. This shows itself in my cupboards and refrigerator at our house back in Baltimore. It’s embarrassing, but even without kids at home, my refrigerator is always packed with food, the cupboards stuffed to the gills. The minute the shelves show the slightest hint of available space, I begin to panic. Time to go food shopping! I have great sympathy for those poor souls who end up on “Hoarders” or other such television shows. It’s actually amazing that I don’t weigh three hundred pounds.

Now, on the boat, our larders are also totally overstocked. Funny how your neurosis follows you, even when your lifestyle changes drastically. Getting ready to go down the ICW for the first time has really brought out my food panic. Where will we be able to buy groceries? What if we don’t see a store for weeks? We MUST store enough popcorn and tonic water to last FOREVER!!

 

One of the prettier scenes in Portsmouth

We’ve studied the ICW Cruising Guide and Skipper Bob’s Anchorages of the ICW, stuffed our boat with every imaginable non-perishable canned or packaged food, loaded up on fuel and water – here we go!

 

Our neighbor at dawn

We left early in the morning, hoping to get in a fair amount of mileage. Most of the ICW is made up of narrow channels that can’t be sailed upon – we will be motoring the majority of the time for the next month. There are numerous bridges, many of which will need to be opened or raised in order for our boat to be able to pass through. There are even locks that are used to equalize the depths between various rivers and channels. All of these things cause delays, so we’re not at all sure how long it will take us to get anywhere.

 

Bridge #1

Our boat was first in line for the first bridge we came to, and we dutifully called the bridge master on our VHF radio. He would have raised the bridge right away, but then he learned that a train was coming through, so we had to wait. We had to just float around in idle in front of the bridge while watching car after car of the cargo train, not knowing how long it was. By the time the bridge finally raised for us, about forty-five minutes or so, there was a backlog of boats behind us, all jockeying for position. We all passed through under the bridge, one by one.

 

Rick is still nervous going under bridges... So am I - just look at it!

The  same group of boats ends up behind us at the Great Bridge Lock, at mile 12. There is quite a line of boats ahead of us, and there are already too many to fit in the lock. We will have to wait an hour for the next one. People on boats are pretty similar to people in cars; someone always thinks they are special and don’t need to wait politely in line. Most of the people who crowd ahead are in motorboats, and we notice that each time, their boat is from New Jersey. No judgments. Just sayin’.

This is the first time we have ever gone through a lock in a boat, and we don’t know quite what to expect. All of the boats are met by a man on shore and ushered in slowly, lined up as close as can be next to one wall of the lock. The boats farther back in line are parked on the other side of the lock. We’re all instructed to adjust our bow and stern lines as they let the water out because the water level in the lock is going to lower by three feet. There’s a party atmosphere in the air with so many boaters in such close proximity. Or maybe Rick and I are the only ones who feel that way. (We had some celebratory drinks during the hour we were waiting for the lock!)

The water slowly lowers, and then the lock is opened and we are free to go. Except, no, now we have to wait for the next bridge, just past the lock. 

This is apparently what we have in store for much of our way down to Florida. Go, then wait. Wait, then go. But hey, not being in the open ocean means no big waves, and that means no sea-sickness for moi. I’m actually in heaven.

The rest of our first day was pretty uneventful. The sides of the Virginia Cut were mostly cyprus-lined swamps, and then farther south across the North Carolina border the shores opened up to a wide expanse. The channel itself remained narrow, a dredged pathway through shallow water, and Rick did most of the driving. I wanted to get away from the engine noise, so I set up camp on the foredeck. Not used to drinking alcohol so early in the day, I fell asleep up there. Rick put the autopilot on just long enough to take some unflattering pictures. Thanks dear.

We ended up anchoring at around mile 45 or so. Not bad for our first day out. Only another 1,018 miles to go!

Into the Unknown

We are in uncharted waters. Quite literally, since our chart plotter went kablooey. But let me back-track a bit…

After three months in the north, we returned triumphantly to our home and hailing port – Baltimore! What a pleasure it was to sail in under the Key Bridge after being so long away. We spent a couple of days on anchor in the harbor, then rented a slip at the Anchorage Marina in Canton. This was an extravagance we don’t usually allow ourselves; slip fees can cost quite a bit for transients, whereas anchoring is free. Plus, being in a slip means being surrounded by a dense thicket of other boats, akin to living in a white plastic RV park. But we had an enormous “to do” list for this week, and having easy access to shore, stores and a car would make things a great deal easier.

First things first...

...and plenty of it!

One of the big tasks on our list was to swap out our beloved Trinka for her uglier but more practical inflatable brother. Yes, we’ve decided to give her up for our trip south. As beautiful as Yalma is, she is extremely tippy. We’ve gotten used to her over these past months, and never feel in danger of accidently going overboard any more. But we plan to do a lot of snorkeling in the Caribbean, and we will do it mostly from our dinghy. Getting in and out of the Trinka from the water would be very difficult, and for me, with my lack of upper body strength and hurt shoulder, pretty near impossible. But we’re not abandoning her entirely – she’s going to winter in our garage, awaiting future northern trips. We had originally thought we would sell the inflatable, but then when we kept vacillating between the two dinghy options, we decided to keep them both.

To make the dinghy switch, we enlisted the help of Rick’s nephew Trevor, who delivered the new Achilles from Rick’s brother’s house in Annapolis. He also brought the new outboard that we think will be powerful enough for the inflatable, yet lightweight enough for our stern rail. We loaded up Trevor's truck with the Trinka, along with all of her gear – oars, sails, mast, etc. – and small outboard. Then we took her to our house where we unloaded the whole shebang into the garage. Goodbye Yalma.

Yalma 

The Achilles (sigh... Not very poetic.)

The rest of the week was a whirlwind of shopping, laundry washing, errand running, doctor visiting, and boat fixing. We had a number of people out on the boat, including my son Dewey and Rick’s grandson Jack, and also friends and neighbors. I would love to have hosted the whole BSO out on our tiny boat too, but that being entirely impractical, I went to a symphony concert instead. The orchestra sounded fabulous (Don Quixote!), and it was wonderful to see all of my friends afterward. I’ve been on disability for two years now, and especially since I don’t know when –or if – I’ll be back playing again, it was somewhat bittersweet to hear such wonderful musicians playing one of my favorite pieces without me. This orchestra has been the center of my creative life for the past twenty-six years, and the players have become like family. I miss them all terribly.

 

Friends Michael and Dyer

Leaving Baltimore this time means that we are moving into unfamiliar territory. Rick has made the trip up to Maine and back eleven times, including this past summer, and he knows the northern waters very well. When I first started joining him on his summer trips a few years ago, I had complete faith in his judgment and sailing ability, and he has never given me any reason to doubt him. I always let him look at the weather, study the charts and tide schedules, and make a decision about where to go next and when to take off. And I loved it that way! Now, we are heading south where neither one of us has ever sailed, and we are in a totally new ball game. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still going to let Rick do all the real work (I’m no dummy), but the outcomes from his decisions may be less successful from here on out. Rick’s general sailing experience will keep us safe I am quite sure. What may get dicey will be finding places with dinghy docks, grocery stores within walking distance, opportunities for showers, laundry, etc.. I am now going to have to participate in some of the research. Darn.

 

Boat Shelf in Annapolis

For the actual sailing part of navigation, we have a chart plotter. This is a terrific modern improvement on sextants and paper charts. A chart plotter is basically a GPS unit that locates your boat on the preloaded charts, and tells you exactly where you are along with the depths at low tide, and a number of other functions. Our chart plotter is mounted on the steering pedestal in the cockpit, and displays everything on a nifty little TV screen that can be read equally well at night and in bright sunlight. It’s satellite driven, and will work even when way offshore, out of cellphone range.

So what happens if the chart plotter poops out? Rick bought an iPad just for this reason and loaded in a chart plotter for a back-up. AND we also have paper charts in case of an all out electrical failure. So we’re good, right?

 

The West River, just south of Annapolis

Just as we left Baltimore, the chart plotter started to freak out. Rick fussed and fiddled with it, and discovered that a large rectangular area of the charts, about twenty by sixty miles (that’s 1200 square miles, plenty of space to get lost in) appeared to be simply blank on the plotter. We don’t know if this was a recent injury to the software, or if it’s always been that way. Never having ventured down this far, we never knew.

We managed to get the boat to Solomons Island, roughly forty miles south of Annapolis. We used Rick’s iPad, and it worked just fine, except for the fact that you couldn’t read it very well in the sunlight, and it’s not strapped to the console so you have to turn your head away from the action in order to see where you are. My neck is not happy. On the one hand, I’m grateful that we have the iPad as a back-up. But on the other hand, I sure wouldn’t want to use that as our main navigation tool all the way down to the Bahamas and back.

 

Cold Morning in Solomons

Neither of us is particularly well versed in computers. We just want to plug something in, turn it on, and have it work, easy peasy. Rick, somewhere along the line, has gotten the impression that I understand computery things. For example, he thinks I’m a genius because I have figured out how to stream movies on our television set at home. But that’s about the extent of my knowledge. I finally joined Facebook a year ago, and went for months with zero friends because I couldn’t figure anything out. But I’ll admit, as bad as I am, Rick is even more hopeless. He even takes a certain pride in it, as though his ignorance of computers links him to a nobler, pre-digital past. So imagine our chagrin at learning that you are supposed to upgrade your chart plotters periodically. The unit is from 2008 or so and came with the boat when we bought it six years ago. We’ve never upgraded it. Doh.

The new chart cards we need are too big (too much memory) for our old, out-moded chart plotter. In order to upgrade the old charts instead, we need to upgrade the unit itself. Different vendors tell us different things, nothing seems to work, more and more money keeps being spent - around and around we go.  And we’re working with cell phones as our internet source, on a boat, without a car.

I’m not sure how this is all going to turn out. We may be spending the winter here in Solomon’s Island. Not my idea of a great adventure. We’ve had software overnighted from Washington state, talked to a gazillion different people, even had one terrific tech lady hold Rick’s hand over the phone while he downloaded upgrades to a CF chip from his computer. See how educated we’re becoming? But still… It.  Doesn’t.  Work.

And now it’s even worse because the whole rest of the coastline – the part that DID work – has been erased from the original chip, which can’t be bought anywhere any more. I have offered to buy us a brand spanking new chart plotter, but Rick says we would be set back at least two weeks if we decided to go that direction. First of all, there are a mind-blowing number of different chart plotters for sale online. Deciding which one to buy is at least a week long project. Then there is a great deal of work involved in setting it up, like connecting the wiring to the radar, and other things like that. Not to mention, waiting for the thing to arrive. Marine electronics repair people could do the work, for a hefty fee of course, but are difficult to come by at this time of year; all the boats going south are looking for the same repairs.

Rick finally figured out that the online upgrades he learned to do are just too big for our system to handle. He kept shrinking the map for the upgrade, each time taking about thirty minutes to reprogram the chip.  We’ve been doing this for hours. We are currently down to a map that gets us from where we are now down to about Charleston and that’s it; we’ll have to reprogram that chip every time we go to a new place. But it works!

If this seems like a temporary fix to you, well you’re right. We will need to get a new chart plotter eventually, probably sooner rather than later. But we think we can limp through the rest of our trip with the one we’ve got, and worry about getting a new one after we return to Baltimore next year. In the meantime, the various staff people at three different West Marine stores – the people who should know about chart plotters – have sold us over four hundred dollars worth of useless upgrade chips that couldn’t possibly have worked with our ancient unit. So, computer literate or not, the blame is not entirely ours.

The one upside to this whole fiasco is that we successfully used an Uber for the first time. We are indeed in uncharted territory.