ay 217: Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Port to Port: Bull Creek to Beet Island
Underway: 7:00 am Motor Off: 5:00 pm Miles Traveled: 49 Stayed At: Anchor
First Things First: First time getting stuck on the bottom. Really stuck; snuck under a 30’ (at high tide) bridge as the tide was going down and cleared with 2’ to spare – phew! (we would have had to wait for a half hour for the next opening if this hadn’t worked).
Mile 565 to Mile 516: No, we didn’t see a rocket launch. We were exploring a little river where we thought there was a good anchorage and I guessed wrong when the depth sounder starting beeping. Shoals are ever changing and it is impossible to keep the charts updated. We have kissed the bottom several times but never gotten completely stuck. We could have just waited for the tide to raise us up but we decided to kedge our way off by throwing out an anchor and trying to drag the boat into deeper water. After 20 minutes of futzing, we came loose and soon found a good, quiet spot to anchor for the night.
Today was another good travel day. We got up early to catch the tidal boost – we were going 6.9 mph for a while. We sailed most of the day again – mostly on a beam reach. We had a great sail across St Helena Sound towards the end of the day. The sounds (large bodies of water that are open to the ocean somewhere) can be nasty if the wind driven waves are going against the tide and then you mix in rollers from the ocean. Today they were mostly flat with a nice warm breeze off land and almost no boat traffic.
After we anchored and cleaned up, a small powerboat came back into our little cove and we chatted with the guy for a few minutes. Believe it or not, he was originally from Wayzata and has lived in South Carolina for a long time now. Keep in mind, we are in the middle of no-where surrounded by swamp grass, water and some trees off in the distance. The only manmade objects we can see are airplanes and cell phone towers. The world is a tiny place.
We are going to anchor out one more night and then head into a marina in Charleston, South Carolina for a couple nights to relax, restock, finish some boat projects and do some sight seeing. We can’t wait.
In Passing: Hilton Head, Last End Point, Skull Creek, Honeyhorn Plantation, Beaufort, Distant Island, Brickyard Point, Coosaw Island.
