32:47.06N 076:54.608W

When we left Oriental - Tom and Sabrina were getting coffee in the cafe opposite our berth so we said a quick goodbye to them, they hadn’t looked at the weather earlier but decided to head out also so they will be about an hour behind us by the time they get back to Honey Ryder and leave. 

The rain and wind had caused the water level to be high and the river to Beaufort was strewn with debris - the biggest being this broken up dock .

We were concerned that the water was too high to get under the bridge at Beaufort but a boat we had met in Deltaville was ahead of us and called on the radio so I asked them to let us know the height when they went through, with that knowledge and looking at the height board on previous occasions we have gone through we were happy to proceed - the board read just over 63 1/2 ft 😬 we have measured our air draught to be 64ft but didn't touch the bridge with our antenna so all good. Once through we turned and put our mainsail up and then proceeded to out with a nice 3knots of current helping us, soon we were sailing with lovely calm sea, 13kn of wind from NW and dolphins.  There was a max exodus from Beaufort with some boats going down the coast while others like us were heading around Frying pan shoal  at Cape fear so needed to head 20+miles off shore, we had a fantastic sail until about 3 the following morning when the wind died to 8knots from aft of the beam and the sails were flogging so we motorsailed the rest of the way. it was a little disappointing as the forecast had let us hope we could sail for more of the trip but we were happy to be moving and getting south. We were treated to more dolphins along the way some played at our bow and others went about their business and ignored us and a very red sunset 

We arrived in Charleston and anchored at Patriot point, some friends had been here for almost a week and recommended the anchorage although when we got here there wasn’t anyone else anchored. We had a very peaceful night although steve was woken a couple of times by the wake of ships coming or leaving Charleston. 

The following day we set about trying to sort a couple of problems we had had on passage, firstly the alternator had been overcharging the engine batteries so Steve took it off and changed the regulator and rewired one of the wires he had moved when he changed the system to lithium batteries, that seems to have sorted the over charging out, next we looked at the water maker - we had decided to make water on passage, we hadn’t used it since we pickled it before we flew back to UK and for some reason it hadn’t been pumping water - we had hoped it was an airlock which often occurs when we reinstate it after period if not being used, however after some trouble shooting we decided it was the high pressure pump not pumping, so that will need to be taken to pieces. 

Another peaceful night - this time with another boat that joined us in the anchorage, but the anchorage is very exposed to any wind and with some SW wind forecast tomorrow we decided to move to a different spot.