All Hands On Deck   Adventures on land and at sea

It’s Santa’s feet!

Without an intense schedule of passage making, Lee and I have settled into a routine not unlike that of teenagers in their first days of vacation. At least we don’t stay up till the wee hours of the morning or drive to the mall to hang out with our friends. We have been sleeping in a bit and then taking it easy for the better part of the day.

Reveling in the luxuries of docked life is nice but I don’t think I could do it for very long. Lee and I spend way too much time in front of our computers when we’re not sailing. It doesn’t help that it’s been cold and rainy for most of our week in Charleston. Most days start with a run around part of the old military base, either before or after a leisurely breakfast. The marina has fabulous showers to warm us up after our run. By the time we’ve showered it’s usually almost lunchtime. Afternoons are either spent holed up in the boat with our computers or out exploring Charleston. I’ve made dinner on the boat every night but one and we’ve been watching TV or a DVD most evenings. We went out to one movie, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest (good but not nearly as good as the book).

Charleston is an interesting place. Downtown, the colonial architecture combined with palm (or palmetto) tree-lined streets evokes the quintessential Old South of my imagination. People are indeed friendly and there is a lot of fried food around. I’ve also noticed a higher incidence of extra e’s on the ends of certain words since we crossed into the Carolinas. Shoppe, towne, ye olde…all those silly spellings are all over the storefronts. I know I saw Ye Olde Towne Shoppe somewhere.

Because the marina where we’re staying is a ways away from everything, renting a car made the most sense for transportation. Our little rental Yaris has been very handy for getting to the grocery store, procuring frozen yogurt, and making hardware store runs. Lee has been working on a few projects that necessitated such errands. The propane for the stove stopped working one night and Lee ended up taking the stove apart after ruling out other potential problem sources. It turned out there was nothing wrong with the stove but disassembling it led to some broken screws. That resulted in broken drill bits, minor puncture wounds, and a couple days without 3 functional stove burners. We blamed the propane valve but, in the end, that wasn’t the problem either. The electronic switch that turns the propane on and off wasn’t sending it’s signal to the valve. Such is life on a boat.

Tomorrow our lazy days in Charleston come to an end. Lee and I are flying to Seattle, another cold, rainy climate. I can’t wait to celebrate Christmas with my mom in her new home! Pirat will be safe in the hands of the dedicated Cooper River Marina employees and I know we’ll be anxious to get going when we get back from Seattle.