Charleston - Santee River, May 2

Well, we’re finally underway again. What a good feeling. It’s hard to believe we have been in Charleston since April 8.

Last night a large container ship had a little problem and got quite close to our marina dock. 2 tugs hurried over to help get it straightened out. One tug was pushing starboard aft and the other port forward to get it away from the dock and pointed towards the channel. It got very close to the large sailboat on the outer dock – only 4 boats from us. It was actually closer, but by the time we got the camera out they had started to move the ship. A third tug came, but didn’t have to help.

About noon today we discovered that our inverter stopped working. Beth took the helm while Darrell tried to find out what was wrong. After much checking and many phone calls to the Manufacturer (because Darrell kept losing phone signal) it was determined the inverter can’t be fixed. Darrell is quite sure the inverter was damaged when the shore power voltage dropped very low for a few minutes last week. A boat next to ours had their Inverter/Charger fail.

Anyway, that leaves us with some interesting problems. When we are not at a dock with electric hook-up we normally use the inverter to power the computer, coffee maker, microwave, washer/dryer, ice maker, toaster, TV and anything else which needs to be plugged in, like ac fans. The other option is running our big (relatively noisy) generator. We have a small inverter than can run the PC or a fan but the larger appliances require the big inverter or the generator. We will run the generator in the morning to make coffee, toast etc. We will get by on the small inverter during the day time and at night.


The inverter is under warranty, but they couldn’t guarantee a replacement would get out today. And if it didn’t make it out today, it wouldn’t be sent until Monday. We have to have it shipped to a marina and not knowing for sure when it would be shipped made it difficult for us to determine where we would be.

We have decided to wait until Monday to order the replacement. We will be able to better determine where we will be next Wednesday when it would be delivered.

Along the way today we saw many dolphin, one surfing alongside our boat for a time.

Low Tide!