Charleston, South Carolina – 1 mile by dinghy, 6 kilometres walked
By 9am we had finally reached Charleston, South Carolina and dropped anchor. The last hours of the trip were a killer as the wind had shifted north-east, directly in our face, which stripped a couple of knots from our cruising speed and made progress painfully slow. I was happy the passage was over.
After a morning nap, I awoke feeling much better and almost fully refreshed. Ana had received a text from our friends Wayne and Gwen (check out Gwayne Sailing, their YouTube channel), who we had hung out with back in Annapolis, and had met way back on the Erie Canal, the same day we met Kate and Ben from Waddington. Gwayne (their stylish combo-name) had upgraded from their monohull to a big, beautiful 45-foot Lagoon catamaran and had been in Charleston for nearly three months getting her all ready for their travels into the Bahamas. We took them up on their dinner offer and they picked us up at the dinghy dock at 4 pm. It was great seeing them again after so many months and miles.
Gwayne are experts in scoping out local places for eats and drinks, especially the ones with bombastic happy hours or food specials. And they had done so once again here, taking us to this weird yet awesome little indoor/outdoor pub hidden away in the recesses of a strip mall. And the reason they brought us here was for half price sushi night!
Well, the sushi was incredible, the IPAs were hoppy, the guitar troubadour was a speed picker, the conversation was excellent, and the bill was cheap. It was great seeing Gwen and Wayne again – they are funny, kind, have great stories, and seem to have friends in every city of the USA, including one here in Charleston who had loaned them his fancy truck. On the way out of the restaurant Ana whispered in my ear that she had made a fascinating discovery in the women’s toilet.
“I was sitting down to pee and saw a little bag on the floor,” she said.
“Okay,” I said, waiting for the punchline.
“So I picked it up and looked inside. I pulled out a small straw then two baggies of cocaine.”
“What?? Cocaine? How do you know it was cocaine?” I erupted.
“What else would it be? Look, I lived in Toronto for twelve years, I know what cocaine looks like.”
“Where is it?”
“I threw it in the garbage?”
“You what??”
“I threw it in the garbage,” she repeated, all cool like.
“Why didn’t you keep it? We could have partied and done disco with Gwayne tonight or sold it to one of the dock kids or fed it to the shore pelicans and watched them get all wide eyed and crazy!”
“Don’t be dumb. Unless you want to go pick it out of the garbage, it’s gone. And I wouldn’t recommend sticking your hand in the bin – there was some nasty stuff in there.”
Gwayne drove us back to their new boat for a sundowner and tour, and our prospective coke-snorting disco party was instead a pleasant evening fueled by regular old alcohol and nicotine in the form of beers, wine, and two lovely cigars Wayne and I smoked. Their new boat is massive, with four large cabins with walk around beds and their own individual heads and showers, two additional small cabins for crew (as this is a European ex-charter boat), a fly-bridge helm, large array of solar panels with more coming, massive covered cockpit area, two large trampolines at the bow, plus a comfy seating area, and a luxurious indoor galley and lounge area. It is a magnificent boat and a hulk of a beast with a 75 foot mast, meaning a no-go for the 65 foot bridge limit on the ICW, so Gwayne will have many offshore runs in their future. The highlight of the tour was when Wayne pulled out a plastic Tupperware container, full of excited, crawly, muck-covered bait crabs. Ana immediately started naming each of them and as I fell into a horrible vision of us walking out of there with a pocket full of new pets. Fortunately, Wayne replaced the cover of the habitat and hid it away in the cupboard before Ana could adopt them.
After our excellent visit, Gwayne gave us a lift back to the dinghy dock and after a moderately sketchy midnight ride across the bay, we were safely back in SeaLight after a most interesting day.
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