Burning Up in Charleston

Our sail to Charleston was one of the most mixed bags of sailing we have encountered and ended up with us rushing into the marina in fear of setting on fire......

We left Beaufort under the 8.30am bridge on Sunday morning, it was cold but the perfect conditions- north wind about force 3 or 4. We set the sails for a downwind sail poling out the genoa for the first time since we arrived in the US. The trip was about 200 miles so should be overnight arriving Monday afternoon.

We were sailing along nicely and the spotted a US warship about 5 miles away - no AIS of course but we could clearly make out the profile, then it came a bit closer and we saw aircraft take off from the deck. There was three in total buzzing around us, they were Ospreys which look like huge drones as they take off vertically. A pretty cool experience to see these state of the art aircraft in action.

Osprey buzzing overhead

Unknown US Warship

The wind strengthen and came around  to the north east so we put the main away and ran just with the genoa on the pole for a bit. Then at 2am it totally died and we were on the foredeck in the middle of the night bringing the pole in - oh joy! The wind came back from a south easterly direction and we sailed closed hauled for a couple of hours before it went strengthen again and we tacked over for a lovely fast reach in northerly wind as we approached Charleston just after mid-day. It was a pretty full on sail but all good practice and we were super excited to arrive in Charleston Harbour.

Charleston Harbour Marina

The current was running really strongly, we had booked into a marina as we had heard a lot of horror stories about boats losing their anchors  in this harbour which has a lot of debris from the last few hurricanes. The marina advised we wait until about 4pm at slack tide so we ventured up river and anchored for a couple of hours and relaxed - we didn't dare set our anchor properly for fear of getting it snagged and I was so relieved when it came up clean - that kind of thing really stresses me!

Then we were heading towards the marina when we noticed a horrendous burning smell coming from the engine room. Temperature looked fine, I quickly emptied out our wet hanging locker and checked fluid levels and looked for smoke or fire. Nothing but this awful smell and thick air in the engine room, then Andrew noticed the house batteries were not charging meaning our secondary alternator wasn't working. We called the marina and demanded an immediate berth allocation and he somehow calmly docked Askari and quickly shut everything down. Once we had cooled everything down Andrew found a loose connection and a bit of play in the belt but otherwise all fine - we started the engine and got charge - yay that was a win! (or so we thought).

The Charleston Harbour Marina is one of the most expensive marinas we have visited, it is however very nice and the staff are great. You get to pay for and use all the resort facilities including the shuttle to town. Our first night we ran into our friends Scott & Kitty from Stamford, who kindly invited us for a drink - perfect as Askari was still a mess. We went off for dinner and then called into the marina bar for a drink and spotted Kim, Simon & Sienna - Vloggers who have an Oyster 56 called Britican. We have mutual friends so said Hi and shared a drink - what a great family!

We had dinner at Poogan's Porch - like being in someone house - excellent

Charleston After Dark

Lovely streets in Charleston

We had sundowners in a roof top bar - stunning

The next day we went into Charleston to explore and check out some of the famous bars and restaurants. Charleston is a really old city and it's narrow cobblestone streets and lovely buildings especially around the french quarter make it a great place to stroll around and shop. King's street is packed with stunning boutiques and antique stores. Tourism is huge and cruise ship passengers offload to be driven around town in horse drawn carriages.


We had another reason to be in Charleston - Selden USA is headquartered here. Remember back in January we had our furler repaired in St Lucia Blog post st-lucia-continued. As the job wasn't carried out exactly to our liking Oyster arranged for the work to be inspected. Jonas arrived and allowed us to  provide feedback and then he had a good look over our rig and furling system, Thankfully he gave it his approval but was disappointed to hear Selden hadn't met our expectations so dropped off a spare tack assembly should we ever have a similar issue - what great service!

Our gift from Selden which I hope we never need

 Time for once last trip into Charleston for a fabulous lunch at Cru Cafe and a bit of shopping.... ;-)

Christmas Tree in Charleston

Customs House Charleston

Lovely streets in Charleston - the trees are so cool!

Our last night and we invited all our friends in Charleston Harbour Marina for drinks - we had such a fun night with double circumnavigators and long term live aboard sailors all exchanging stories. The most bizarre thing however was that Andrew and Simon from Britican discovered they went to school together - just one year apart.... what a small world. Kim featured this in her latest video for the nearly 10,000 You Tube subscribers  https://sailingbritican.com/soon-to-be-sailing-away/

Simon and Andrew just learn they went to the same school while Sienna enjoys Wifi...

With Scott & Kitty - double circumnavigators from Tamure

Michael, Kim and me

Slack tide the next morning was 6.30am - so we got up early and slipped out of the marina to start our passage to Saint Augustine. First job before we left the harbour was to check the alternator.... nope not working and the burning smell had returned. We found a shallow spot to anchor up while Andrew disconnected the alternator - we would look at that again in Saint Augustine!

It wasn't a problem for this trip as we have a parallel link switch to allow the engine alternator to run the house batteries. We could also run our generator - both part of the redundancy Andrew specified when Askari was built.

Manuals out on passage

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