Isle of Palms, SC (Thursday, January 16, 2014)

We just made it down to the Isle of Palms today at noon. We are bringing the boat down to Charleston to see if some better mechanics can figure out why there are still issues. The engine person said our original mechanic did not put in the coupling that he had recommended. It is either the coupling or the prop shaft. If the mechanics at the new boatyard can’t figure it out in the water, we may have to have the boat hauled out to examine the prop shaft.

We moved back onto the boat in the rain on Tuesday. It didn’t clear until the afternoon so we decided to leave Wednesday morning. We were able to use the space heater on the boat Tuesday night, which helped, but Matt and I still didn’t get much sleep. We were both anxious about going again after so many weeks off the boat. Anxiety which, it turned out, was somewhat warranted as we had our least graceful docking to date (in McClellandville) last night (as evidence, Malachi turned to Matt and asked, “Aren’t those really bad words?”). The area near the marina was very shallow and it was low tide so we just used the dock of one of the mansions along the ICW. Since we are already doing the nautical equivalent of limping, we were prepared to beg forgiveness from the owners. It seemed like the house was empty so we had a free but chilly night (the space heater draws so much power that we can only use it when we are on shore power at a marina). The plan is to get the Charleston boatyard tomorrow and take it from there. We shall see ….