Seeing old friends and stormy stuff

We pull anchor head through Watts Cut at mid tide we make it through the channel have a few more shallow spots but we are with the tide, heading for Charleston.  We are meeting up with our friends from Chesterfield Missouri, Denny and Shara Taylor.  They are on the east coast searching for a boat and happen to be in Charleston South Carolina to look at some boats.  We go have BBQ the first night they come and pick us up we have a nice evening visiting.  Next morning we get picked up at St. Johns Island Marina, wonderful place to anchor and they have beautiful facilities complete with restaurant and pool.  We go to another marina where we look at a Beneteau with the Taylors. Then we head over to the ferry landing and we buy tickets to go out to Fort Sumter, where the civil war began.  We board the ferry and get the tour and history of the Fort, it was worth the tour.  It is extremely hot and we are all done in and hungry when we get back to the van. The four of us head back to St. Johns Marina and have dinner at the restaurant there.  We say good bye to the Taylors they are leaving for Annapolis the next morning in search for their dream boat.  We hang out in Charleston the next day and take care of some business.  Next morning we head in to get fuel, water and ice.  Head out to Charleston Harbor put up the jib as our main is ripped beyond repair.  Yes we have to buy a new main sail it will be a huge expense.  Sailing across Charleston Harbor we run across a youth sailing school in their opti's.  It is blowing 12 to 17 and these little kids are out there having a ball.  We are looking to make the 6:00 opening on the bridge we are headed for then anchor for night.  Well we make it to bridge around 4:30 and we have to wait on the bridge meanwhile we anchor and wait as 6:00 approaches the skies start getting darker from the east and we hear rumbles of thunder.  We approach the bridge and the bridge master informs us that bad storms are approaching and that he will not open the bridge due to the storm that is about to hit.  Wind gusts of up to 40 we found out soon enough.  We turn back up the channel and it starts to rain hard we try to get farther but the storm is so bad by now that we can hardly see and the winds have piped up to gusts of 40 torrential rains.    We finally get an anchor down but we are in too shallow of water and the storm pushes us up on a sand bar.  Joe was smart enough to leave the motor running and in gear with the wheel hard over so we do not get pushed ashore.  I was hoping we do not have to call Tow Boat.  We are hammered by the storm for about 30 minutes then it starts to clear.  Bridge Master calls us and says he will open anytime we are ready.  We inform him that we are aground and we will be a while till we figure how to get off.  It took some doing and Joe crawled out on the boom, we pushed it all the way out and he was bounced up and down on it and he heard a pop.  He popped a rib out of place.  I could tell he was hurting but he kept working to get us ungrounded.  We finally got off the sand bar and we went through the bridge anchored just other side of bridge for the night in a very quiet place.  It has been a very interesting week.