Not wanting to waste a good weather forecast, we departed Fernandina Beach the next morning, April 7th, around 9:30am bound for Charleston, South Carolina. This would be another overnight passage. As with the Florida coast, we were passing up several shorter-distance navigable inlets as stopping points on the Georgia and South Carolina coasts in favor of making more distance to ensure arrival back in the Chesapeake around May 1st. Charleston was an area we both wanted to spend some more time in and we knew the northbound weather window was slamming shut on the 9th with the passage of another cold front.

The daylight portion of the passage to Charleston was very pleasant and we made good time and intentionally sped ahead of schedule, knowing the wind would drop and slow us overnight . And drop it did. We spent the night dead down wind in light air, going slow but permitting us to take turns getting some peaceful sleep. We arrived in Charleston around noon on the 8th, anchoring off the big City Marina on the west side of town, where we knew we had access to a dinghy dock for visiting the city.

We planned on spending about a week in Charleston and expected to depart in the afternoon of the 16th for Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina. This would be the first weather window for moving north since we arrived in Charleston. Charleston is a beautiful town with much history and sightseeing. We have walked everywhere from the marina, reaching the historic section of town within 20-30 minutes walk. We visited the Saturday Farmer’s Market, toured the Charleston Aquarium and the adjacent Ft. Sumter Museum, meandered along the Market Streets, followed an AAA self-guided tour map of the original "Walled City", and gawked at the numerous, gorgeous old homes that seem to be on every street . Coincidently, friends Paul and Linda from Norfolk came to Charleston for the weekend to celebrate their 20th anniversary and we had the opportunity to meet up with them at their B&B for tea and later dinner in town.

The Navy Blue Angels would be in town for an airshow on the weekend and were having “practice” runs in the harbor on Thursday and Friday, with Friday’s being timed around our departure so once again we expected a “front row” view of the action. We pulled anchor at 2 PM on Friday, April 16 with winds favorable for sailing out of the harbor (itself a 1-1/2 hour run from where we were located). Unfortunately, 45 minutes into our sail through the harbor we lost the functionality of our auto pilot. With an overnight passage ahead, we knew we didn’t want to hand-steer the whole route if we could avoid it, so we decided to turn around and drop our anchor nearby for Dave to attempt some trouble-shooting. There were some issues he was already familiar with related to the auto pilot and we did have some potentially useful spare parts aboard . While Dave proceeded troubleshooting, Donna took the camera out on deck to watch the Blue Angels practice run. Their aerobatics are always fun to watch and a couple of them quite buzzed Pas de Deux.

When Dave had no luck resolving the issue with the auto pilot and anticipating the need to call place a service call for eventual remedy, we returned to our anchorage. En route, Donna phoned Raymarine headquarters to get contact names and numbers for servicing the unit in Charleston. Armed with three options, we reached one of them who happened to be at the neighboring marina and could come to the boat shortly. Dave picked him up from shore in the dinghy. He was aboard from about 6:15 PM for an hour, which included some time changing out the motherboard with a spare that Dave had inherited from the previous owner of the boat. Unfortunately, the problem remained unresolved. He ended up taking our two autopilot control heads back with him to his office to bench test them, having tested everything else at the boat. We will await a further verdict. If any parts need to be ordered, that won’t happen until Monday anyway. Since we lost this departure weather window, we will not have favorable winds for departure until Wednesday or Thursday next week anyway, so we have settled back in at Charleston for the time being. A visit to the local library with wifi has given us an opportunity to update our Travel Blog!