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wrote in
oups.com:

I did visit Charleston briefly once (by land unfortunately) and liked
your coastline. Your coast is sorta like the FL. Big Bend Gulf coast,
salt marshes everywhere but you have deep water too. I gotta get up
thataways. Maybe after I manage to go south around FL and thence to
the Bahamas I'll do it.

There's 3200 miles of navigable waterways (not including the ocean) within
50 miles of my keyboard....

Some Canadian friends came in a 32' sloop and I asked them if they'd like
to go up into the lake, through our free lock. There are no obstructions
so the mast doesn't have to come down. They said it was one of the most
pleasant trips they'd ever taken. We motored up the Cooper River which
becomes the Tailrace Canal to the old 1930's power plant at the dam. The
lock has a floating dock inside to tie up to. The lockmaster was quite
pleased to lock up something he rarely sees, the Canadian Maple Leaf.
Mostly hoard of small boats from the river go through the lock. The lift
is about 78'. From a 16' jetboat, the long lower doors look enormous
coming down as it drains. All that's required is the name of your boat and
where it's from for their log. Santee-Cooper, our state-owned electric
utility, owns it all. The lower end of the lake and the central channel
are fine for a 32' sailboat. Sailing on the lake was great fun. We
anchored off a small, uninhabited island for the night and dingy'd ashore
for a campfire. The trip back to salt water the next day included a
docking at The Dock, a great seafood restaurant built over the Tailrace
Canal in Moncks Corner just below the lock in a no-wake zone. The Cooper
River is now marked for a few years to keep boaters from becoming lost in
the old rice paddies of the old rice plantations. Mepkin Abbey, a
sprawling lawn down to the waters edge of the channel run by monks who also
have a huge egg operation called "The Egg and I" to support it, is a
wonderful place along the way. As if I had planned it, a huge bald eagle
swooped down out of the trees, caught lunch swimming on the surface, and as
we motored by her perch was feeding her young the noon meal. Every power
line pole anywhere near the River has a HUGE Osprey nest with chicks all
summer....so many the power companies have to erect "decoy nesting poles"
to keep the birds off the high voltage in many places where they've given
up trying to run them off. There's a big nest at the first bridge you come
to turning South out of Charleston Harbor into Wappoo Cut down the ICW,
that's been very successful at chick raising...in spite of a thousand boats
a day buzzing by.

Well, when you get crowded, come see us. We don't bite, often.

--
Larry