This week started out on the cold side with the chance of rain in the forecast earlier in the week. Our plans to use an inlet to the ocean were postponed until later in the week due to the wind direction and velocity and the threat of thunderstorms. We're continuing to travel 30-50 miles a day and finding a place to anchor at night. The peaceful quiet solitude is really something to experience. On Monday we anchored in front of Hughes Marine in the Shallotte River. Other than a few fishing boats, we saw no other travelers on the water.
By Tuesday morning we were crossing into South Carolina. The view evolved to a more remote wilderness with few or no waterfront properties. We also noticed a sudden change in the foliage from all green to some browns and orange. We're starting to see native (not imported) palm trees mixed into the other types, too. The Waccamaw River provided several twists and turns where an anchor fit nicely. We stayed over a second night here in anticipation of that cold rainy day the local weather expert predicted. As it turned out Wednesday was warm and sunny most of the day and we took the opportunity to work on the boat. It's just like your house or apartment, there's always something that needs to be fixed or cleaned or both. Jim always has maintenance or rigging to attend to and Linda cleans out compartments in an attempt to find more room. The cold front did finally arrive and with it some very gusty wind making our second night a bit noisy.
We had a short hop to Georgetown SC and looked forward to an afternoon on shore before we spent the following day at sea. What's left of the Georgetown waterfront was disappointing. The cruising guides have failed to keep up with the economy here. We found a lot of empty store fronts and no convenience stores. Remember, this is the view of a town from the city docks. We're not seeing the world through a car window or local tour guide. Our experiences are being collected through the eyes and ears of a couple of sailors. We're reading a little bit about the history of the area as well as the more recent marina and provisioning information as we go, but sometimes that information isn't what we find. The basin here did give us the protected anchorage we were looking for so it was still a good place to have stopped. We were about 5 miles from the inlet to be used on Friday for a sail.
Friday finally gets here and we head for the ocean. The winds were light but at least we wouldn't be dodging channel markers and shoals all day long. We made the ride from Georgetown across the Winyah Bay with a nice strong current helping us reach 8.5-9.1 knots of boat speed and we're on our way. Our course will be WSW for the day as we aim for Charleston. The wind? Of course! The wind is from the WSW. Well, we sailed the best we could anyway with the engine running for support. It was a great day out there with small waves and relatively warm air. We arrived in the Charleston harbor at 6:38pm. Oh, by the way, sunset on Friday was at 6:38pm. It was a beautiful sight, but now we have to find our preselected anchorage in the dark. We dropped the hook at 8p and that's all we saw of Charleston. Was it worth it? Yes. But this day would have it's effects on us in the morning.
We decided to stay inside the ICW on Saturday to recover from the long day we just had finding Charleston. We were up and out around 830a. Linda: “I seemed to have lost my internal compass. Am I still on night vision mode? Is this a bad dream? Where am I? Jim come here and help me with the charts.” Jim: “go that way, away from the bridges” Long story short we put the engine in neutral and let it turn a slow 360. It seemed to reset our bearings and off we go. It's 845a and there's a bridge we can make in time for the 9a opening. Using the VHF, Jim hails the bridge operator requesting he hold the bridge if we don't quite make 9a. Well it's Saturday so the bridges open on demand, no problem. Wrong. The problem was Jim's compass hadn't reset yet. He hailed the wrong bridge. lol “Cap't I don't see you yet, when you get closer we'll open 'er up for ya.” Oops, wrong bridge. We then call the right bridge name and apologize to the first one. So the bridge opens and we're off, again. A few minutes later we proceed through Elliott Cut. This very narrow canal has a strong current, and it's against us of course. We knew this was coming as we had read about a few days earlier. We had the motor running at 2000 RPMs and a boat speed of 6.5 knots. Our actual speed over ground (SOG) was 2.7-3.0. It was the longest .3 miles ever! On the other end we spill into the Stono River. Aah? Which way? Right or left? Jim? “The book says go south” . OK, left it is. It took me 4 miles to figure our we were going the wrong way if wanted to stay on the ICW. We did a 180 and motored against the current again arriving back at the cross roads 1.5 hours later. Oh, wait. This gets even better. Have you ever wanted a redo We're finally headed in the right direction and the day settles into a familiar routine. Eventually we talk about where we think we should stop for the day and anchor. We have a bend in the course picked out and it should be fine. The chart shows this spot to be 12-16 feet deep.... you guessed it, it's not. When we suddenly reached 4.5 feet, the boat stops. We read somewhere: There are two kinds of boaters. Those that have run aground, and those that are lying about never having run aground. Our soft landing was no big deal and we were off the sand in a few minutes with the reverse throttle. We found an even better place a few miles later and decided to try to forget this day :)
We're in Beaufort SC now, and we're planning another ocean sail for Monday morning. Georgia is only about 20 miles south, and Florida is just over 100. This will be another exciting week as we celebrate those milestones as well as our 3 months out at sea.
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