We anticipated leaving the boatyard basin around noon today, as that is close to slack tide, and then we can chase slack downriver to Cooper River Marina. First we stopped in the pay our boatyard bill.

It was a little worse than I thought, Sean didn’t technically charge us the minimum dry storage rate, but he was also very generous with the labor hours of both Sandy Man and the guy that took apart our sail drives. We were also charged an environmental fee, which we hadn’t known about, that was such a joke! I hope it does actually go to offsetting the environmental impact, but for better or worse, this boat yard has pretty much no rules. That includes toxic waste disposal.

Our boatyard total was just under $3700. That doesn’t include the $3000 we paid for the grit blast job, or the hundreds we spent on our own supplies for barrier coat and painting. Our initial quote for hauling / bottom painting was about $2400, with us providing the bottom paint (about $800). Needless to say, our budget for the year has pretty much been blown apart completely, and it’s only March.

With that settled, Sean called his guys together to help us move out of the basin. I’ve been stressing about it all morning. Why is it stressful? We have to navigate diagonally between a shrimp boat and a tug boat. Then we have to squeeze between the tug boat and a concrete wall. The basin is about 58’ wide, and the tug is about 32’ wide. That leaves 25’ of width for us to pass through – and we have a 23’ beam. There’s not a lot of room for error there.

We started handing lines off to people on shore. The breeze was a little stiff, but there wasn’t much current in the basin. It was pretty tense, and I’m grateful we had a whole army of people to help keep us from making impact. Sean sent Kyle to the helm as we needed some engine maneuvering. We came seriously close to the concrete wall, neither of us ever made it over to the tug side of the boat but I didn’t see any black marks from the tires, so I think they kept us off the tug as well. There were plenty of near-misses though!

Eventually we got far enough out of the basin that Kyle hit the throttles in reverse and the wind and current helped pull us out of the danger zone. He straightened us out and just like that, we were free!

The only real event of the trip is when there was a dredging operation that appeared to span the whole channel. They didn’t answer our VHF calls so we had to guess which side of them to pass by. As we passed them, the spray of water that had been white suddenly turned black.

Chris and Sarah met us at the dock, the current was nearly slack so we just had the wind to contend with. We slid right into place, I think when we bumped we managed to hit every single fender evenly so we were exactly parallel with the dock when we connected. If that’s not textbook perfection I don’t know what is! It’s so easy to drive with two working engines! We tied up, chatted with Chris and Sarah a bit, then Sarah handed us her car keys so we drove back to Detyen’s to get the Swagon.

The Swagon has been a great little car, Snoopy and Lisa so generously let us borrow it…weeks ago. We’re eager to get it cleaned up and returned to them, I know we’re pushing the limits of even the most generous person. Plus we’re returning it with a brand new dent. So. Major facepalm. Snoopy and Lisa, you are the literal best.

For the rest of the week, we cleaned up the boat, provisioned, smoked some meats, and got ready for an offshore hop. At the boatyard, we’d cleaned up the sides and bottom of the boat. In the meantime, the deck and interior had become a complete disaster zone.

We tried to say some final goodbyes, but after we returned the Swagon we were a little more limited on mobility (although Sarah lent us her car frequently as well, we’re trying to get used to living without again!).

Thursday was our final prep day – the weather offshore looks like we’ll have some winds and a little chop to start, but by the end of the 30 hour trip we should be motoring or motorsailing downwind in calm seas. Next time you hear from us, we should be in Florida!