Charleston

Tags: Charleston, sailing, South Carolina, USA

Date: June 3, 2017

From St. Augustine we sailed non-stop for about 35 hours to Charleston in South Carolina. We stayed at a marina on Mount Pleasant on the opposite side of the Cooper River from Charleston but there was a water-taxi service from the marina to town. The marina had quite an interesting bird life. Here is a brown pelican:

And a heron catching fish:

Downtown Charleston is a really charming place, full of old wooden or brick houses and also some lovely wooded foot paths running between the rows of houses, through church yards and graveyards:

The foot path is looked after by Garden Club of Charleston which every year selects one of the prominent ladies of the town as its president. They do a excellent job keeping it green and well tended:

The path runs through the park-like back yard of the local art museum:

Then past the circular church, home of the Circular Congregational Church of Charleston:

Then between rows of houses with beautiful gardens:

Some examples of the houses in Charleston:

At the Battery - the southernmost point of Charleston downtown - in White Point Gardens are several monuments commemorating important moments in the history of Charleston. This one under the great oak commemorates the American Revolution:

This other one, looking almost like a monument out of the Soviet Union, was erected in 1932 to commemorate the confederate defense of Charleston during the American Civil War:

Real southern style wooden house with a porch and an old car:

Another example of southern architecture:

We had lunch at McCrady's Tavern in a very stylish old building. Félicie had a fancy shrimp sandwich with foie gras while Bjarne had a tasty but uncharacteristically small steak and fries:

The Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge spanning the Cooper River was built in 2005 as the longest cable-stayed bridge in the Western Hemisphere:

At Mount Pleasant opposite Charleston is Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum, its most prominent and certainly its largest attraction being the USS Yorktown, a World War II era aircraft carrier. Here it is in the background of all the little sails from the participants in the 2017 College Sailing National Championship taking place around the marina we were staying in:

The naval museum also features a submarine, the USS Clamagore, serving from 1945 to 1975:

Félicie in front of boards the results of the bombings by of the different air groups on USS Yorktown :

The deck of USS Yorktown had a display of many different airplanes. Here is Félicie in front of an F-14 tomcat:

View of the deck with the bridge in the background:

Several planes were exhibited inside the aircraft carrier as well:

Picture from the engine room:

Bunks for the crew:

Next to USS Yorktown lies the destroyer USS Laffey, which Bjarne insisted we should also see:

And a good thing we did, because it was very interesting. It had a whole room containing a Mark 1 computer:

On 16 April 1942 USS Laffey was almost totally destroyed by a Japanese attack, but despite being hit by four bombs and six kamikaze crashes, the captain, Captain Becton, refused to abandon ship and managed to save it. For this the ship earned the name "The Ship That Would Not Die"

Leaving Charleston we passed by Fort Sumter, which is the place the American Civil War started on April 12, 1861 when Confederate artillery fired on the Union garrison stationed at the fort:

Brown pelicans relaxing on a green channel marker:

Notice the current visible as disturbances in the water around the buoy. There is often a lot of current near the inlets to the harbors in this area.