Slow Boat

"I'm quite sure that, with just a few modifications, this copter would fit perfectly on the deck of SlowBoat."

We're still in Charleston. The new flex coupler has been installed and the propellor turns without a wobble!  Thanks, Mid-Lakes!

Cap still needs to re-install the electric motor. But we dragged him out of the engine room long enough to tour the aircraft carrier Yorktown.

The experience just made Cap hideously jealous, since the Yorktown (which, like us, is a large, steel-hulled vessel) has its very own helicopter.

On the other hand, Cap notes, he has more navigational capability in his i-Phone than the Yorktown could muster during its entire tour of operations during World War II.  So Cap wasn't completely crushed by the carrier's superior copter capacity. (More copter photos--and a picture of the gleaming new flex coupler-- HERE.) 

SlowBoat has been in the news this week: 

1. We send monthly trip reports to our hometown paper, the Centre Daily Times.  Read the latest installment HERE. 

2. The voyage of the Dragonfly was recently featured on the website "SolarChargedDriving."  As the name suggests, the site is all about vehicles that run on the sun.

A transportation system as revolutionary as an Eisenhower-era freeway!

If you're a regular visitor to this page, you know Dragonfly is a canal boat, and her home port is the Erie Canal.  We've gotten quite interested in canals.  In fact, one of our mottos (right after "High Five! We didn't sink the boat today!") is: "We never miss a canal."

We're still in Charleston, and Wednesday we took a little side trip (by rental car) about 30 miles north of the city, to see a canal that's EVEN OLDER than the Erie Canal.

It's called the Santee Canal, and though it no longer operates, a segment of the original "ditch" is protected in a charming park. We roamed the overgrown banks  in the sunshine, imagining canal boats laden with cotton slipping past the alligators and spotted turtles.  (Check out more PHOTOS HERE).

Historians call the Santee "America's first summit canal." Oh, those historians. There's always a qualifier.  Some canals merely take your boat on a detour around rapids or a dam.  A true "summit canal" connects two rivers . . .  which by definition are in different watersheds . . .  which means the canal must take you up and over the "summit" that separates the watersheds.  (The actual summit may consist of quite a small change in elevation).

The route for the Santee Canal was surveyed in 1773, before America was officially a nation!  No less a personage than George Washington was a fan, saying, "it gives me great pleasure to find a spirit of inland navigation prevailing so generously."

Green in name and in fact

On Wednesday, the crew pried the Cap'n free from the engine room to explore Charleston a bit.

Our visit to a green shopping center, back in Savannah, made us want to know more about green building technologies.  So we arranged for a tour of the "Green House Learning Center," a facility run by Charleston's Sustainability Institute.

The Green House IS a house. It's painted pale green. And at first glance it looks quite unexceptional--just one more little box in a neighborhood full of similar modest one-story houses.  Then Jay Bell starts pointing out the features. Rain barrels that collect water to flush the toilet.  Spray-foam insulation in the roof that reduces air conditioning costs in the hot summer months.  Energy-efficient LED lights throughout.

Good deed for the day: Cap helped the crew on the sail boat next  to us install their bowsprit. MORE PHOTOS HERE!

We're in Charleston, South Carolina this week, working on the engine . . . and taking your questions about SlowBoatCruising. (Meanwhile, YOU can take our new poll, at right).

Miles Johnson writes:

"What have been your top five places so far, and why?"

Whew.  Do we have to pick a mere five?

I'm going take that question and twist the answer a tiny bit. Here are some (just some) of the crew's favorite experiences so far:

Piloting the boat through downtown Chicago in the early morning sunlight, goggling at the skyscrapers and waving to the commuters.  Sure, you can make the same trip on a tour boat.  But doing it on our own seemed particularly magical.

No award-nominated films on THIS screen, alas