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December 30 - We woke up a little later than we’d planned, and taking a look at the charts, and at the wind prediction, we made the decision to continue down the ICW rather than jump outside at Winyah and head to Charleston on the coastal route - it is both a shorter route to go the ICW, and the wind prediction had shifted to be much less favorable.  That decided, we hopped off the boat in search of ice, a coffee, and a shower.  We ran into John and Pat coming back to their boat, and after hugs and handshakes they cast off to head down the ICW.  Brian and I walked into Georgetown stopping at a great coffee place on our way, and walked over to the showers at the marina, where we took a quick shower, stopped for ice, and then headed back to the boat to get underway.  We set off at about 9:30 and plotted our course down the ICW.  This stretch is really pretty, much nicer than the approach to Georgetown.  I forgot to mention in the previous post, that there is a paper mill in Georgetown, so when the wind blows the “wrong” way, the smell is really distinct and strong.  Fortunately, we didn’t get too much of that during our stay there, but it was also still noticeable when we got a little ways away and the air lost the acidic tinge that it had in Georgetown.  We made our way at a good clip down the ICW, catching sight of Pat and John off and on as we wound down the ICW.  At about 2:30, as we came around a bend, whoomph, we grounded into the sand right outside of the channel.  We were close enough to in the channel that it was a surprise, but thankfully, we weren’t going along at 7kts as we had been when we grounded in Lockhearts’ Folly, and Brian was very quick to react to the low water alarm.  Unfortunately, the tide was still going out, and we weren’t quite quick enough to get ourselves unstuck.  We tried putting out the Genny, tried backing off, pushing forward, all to no avail.  We were stuck, and we were going to be witing on the tidal change.  Oh well, we sat outside for a little while, and then decided to go below and watch the rest of Wall-E… why not, we weren’t going anywhere!  Brian fell asleep at the end of the movie, and I went upstairs to see how we were doing on the water level.  -0.4 well that was better than the -1.0 we’d been at last time that I checked.  I sat outside and read my book, watching amusedly when a couple of teenagers came by in a little whaler and were making fun of us having gotten stuck (they couldn’t see me from where I was sitting, but I had stood up so I saw them) got themselves stuck in the mud for a good 10 minutes.  They did finally get themselves freed up, but it did make for a little laugh for me.  When the depth indicator started flashing between -0.1 and 0.0, I went downstairs and woke Brian up from his nap, and we fired up the engine and set off to the anchorage we’d ID’d in Skipper Bob’s as the closest anchorage to where we were.  By this point it was getting dark, and by the time we were making the turn off into Awendaw Creek.  We carefully navigated in, and found a spot with about 11′ of depth.  I dropped the anchor, letting out 110′ of rode (chain) and we settled in for the night.  Again, we were the only boat in the anchorage, and it was beautiful and peaceful.  The sky was unbelievably clear, and we were able to watch the meteor shower later that evening.  The only downside to this anchorage, no internet access, and limited cell reception, so we couldn’t take care of some of the parts ordering that we’d hoped to take care of when we arrived in Charleston (which had been our destination for today).
On the bright side… I FINALLY used my new PRESSURE COOKER that Laura and Allison had given us!  Now, I have to admit, every book I have read about cooking on a boat praises the virtues of the pressure cooker right-side up, upside-down and backwards as the most useful piece of cooking equipment you can have on a boat.  I also have to admit that I was a little afraid of this piece of cooking equipment… I mean you hear all of these stories about them exploding and putting pea soup all over the kitchen or what have you, and although I knew I’d brought them with me, I’d misplaced the manuals somewhere in my organizational frenzy.  Well I am here to tell you that the pressure cooker ROCKS!!!! John and Pat had recently acquired a pressure cooker as well, and they had made a pork roast for Christmas dinner that they were raving about when we saw them in Georgetown.  Pat had had a similar view on pressure cookers as I did, although hers was borne from real experience of having had one explode at her grandparents house when she was a child, so like me, she was a little leery.  However, after hearing about their fantastic experience with theirs, I had bought a pork tenderloin when I went to the Piggly Wiggly and was going to get brave and follow Pat and John’s recipe.  NO joke, from start to finish, the entire pork roast, potatoes, carrots and onion dinner took 35 minutes.  That includes the time it took to braise the pork and for the pressure cooker to get up to pressure.  The total cooking time for this dinner (which was by the way FABULOUS) was 25 minutes!  And for those of you who, like me are a little leery of underdone pork, rest assured, this was more than cooked all the way through, it was fully done, succulent, and fork tender.  The veggies were also completely done to the point that I may have even slightly over cooked them.  On pot, one cutting board, one knife wonder dinner!!  Incredible!  I’ve read through the cookbooks and the manuals, and I can’t wait to try some of the other recipes I’ve uncovered!