Offshore passages, especially during the night, add to the stress level. To prepare, we raise our dinghy on to the foredeck and tightly strap it down. We mount the radar reflector, rig jack lines (straps that run along the deck – you hook on to them with a tether whenever you leave the cockpit to avoid accidentally going overboard), and put emergency items such as an EPIRB, bottled water, and an extra GPS and VHF radio, along with personal papers and identification, into our ditch bag. If we should ever have to abandon ship to the liferaft, the ditch bag would go along with us. Timing our entrance into the Masonboro Inlet for daylight requires that we pull anchor around 10 pm. It is a beautiful, calm, starry night so pulling anchor should be easy, but the fishermen have a little surprise for us. A number of motorized skiffs with tall frameworks that allow the skipper to pilot 8 to 10 feet above the water surface are buzzing around the anchorage with no running lights. It is some sort of routine we don’t understand – every so often they flash bright lights into the water, generally to our surprise as we find them consistently in our way. It’s a relief to get into the open water. A passage that was giving us some stress suddenly becomes a very relaxed motor into flat seas. Burt and I each take a four hour watch and the entrance into Masonboro comes surprisingly fast. Also surprising is finding out there are three other boats out there with us – at night on the open ocean small boats just don’t show up that well.
We debate taking a break once we get to the ICW but both of us feel fine so we decide to power on. The waterway is just inside the barrier beaches, and we enjoy the occasional small inlet that allows us vistas of the ocean. We see our first palm trees along the shore. It is a bright sunny day, and a multitude of small power boats are out enjoying the weather, the fishing, and the many uncovered sandbars for beachcombing.
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| Typical shallow inlet from the Atlantic on to the ICW |
We decide to continue on to Myrtle Beach where there is a nice marina on the waterway. All seems to be going according to plan when we hear a broadcast on the VHF radio that a Coast Guard boat is doing some maintenance on the portion of the waterway just this side of our marina. They will have the area closed for an hour until we can pass through. It is getting late, the marina dockhand would like to go home rather than wait on us, and we are tired and looking forward to an onshore shower. After sunset we finally arrive at our destination, dock ourselves where we assume we are to be, find the envelop giving us instructions and gate codes, get a shower, a quick dinner, and collapse into bed.
Our next destination is Georgetown, SC.
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| Home in Myrtle Beach along the waterway |
We get an early start and after passing the many large canal side homes and golf courses of Myrtle Beach, we enter the winding Waccamaw River. This is an isolated area of dense cyprus swamps, moss hung trees, and very few signs of civilization. It’s one of those “I hear banjos playing” places.
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| Cyprus swamps along the Waccamaw River |
Hours later we emerge into Winyah Bay and its principal town, Georgetown. The wind has picked up and the anchorage doesn’t have the world’s best holding, so we decide to take a dock at a small marina in downtown.
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| Fishing boats tied up near the marina in Georgetown |
It works out well as we have discovered that our brand new radar, which worked when tested after installation in Galesville, now is not functional. The manufacturer says we will have to remove it, pack it up, and send it in to their repair facility. That’s not the easiest thing to do when you don’t have a suitable box, packing material, or a car to take it to the UPS Store. Burt goes up the mast in the boson’s chair, the radar and Burt come back down the mast safely, and using my laundry bag and a bike, Burt somehow makes it several miles to the UPS Store while I go an equal distance via bike to a grocery store. Sometime cruising is an adventure; sometimes an ordeal.
The radar fiasco has convinced us to stay an extra day. We take some time to ride bikes through this interesting town with pretty neighborhoods of century homes and a recently renovated waterfront with a board walk along the harbor backed by various restaurants, bars, art galleries, and gift shops.
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| Historical home in Georgetown, SC |
We also want to visit with a sorority sister of mine. She and her husband once owned a Hylas similar to ours and now spend their weekends in Georgetown. As luck would have it, she is back in Ohio visiting family, but her husband joins us for a tour of the boat, glass of wine, and dinner on the town while we reminisce and trade sailing stories. All in all, Georgetown has been a pleasant and worthwhile stop.
The weather gods must have heard about our radar problem as the next day dawns cold and windy with a heavy fog. We slowly work ourselves back into the ICW with virtually no visibility. We can navigate using our chartplotter, and the AIS transmits our location and the location of surrounding boats, but it is still unnerving. We go slowly as do the few other boats out on the waterway, marveling at the sight of dense clouds of fog blowing by in ethereal forms. We hear there are alligators in this area, but any alligator worth his salt will have found a protected hidey-hole in which to spend this miserable morning. By noon the fog has burned off and, with the passage of the front (which incidentally was also responsible for an unusually early snow storm in the Northeast), we have crystal clear blue skies. We are passing just inside the barrier beaches of South Carolina, going through paths carved by winding streams in the tidal swamps of tall golden grasses. Again, as far as one can see, there is no sign of civilization as we gaze over a savannah of swaying grasses with very wet feet. To borrow a term once used to describe a vista in the North Channel, it is achingly beautiful. We pull into a side stream and anchor for the night with several other boats and a number of dolphins for company. It’s going to be a cold night with temperatures down in the 40’s, so an extra blanket will be required.
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| Anchoring out in the low country |
We time our departure the next morning to coincide with the earliest bridge opening available for entering Charleston harbor. We are back in open water with container ships in the background, Fort Sumter to our left, and the new Ravenel suspension bridge, whose support wires looks like two giant sailboats, to our right.
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| Ravenel Bridge at Charlestown Harbor |
Due to the strong tides and currents we get a dock at the Charleston Municipal Marina with it’s oft mentioned “mega-dock”; mega because it is so long, or mega because there are a number of mega yachts tied up to it – we don’t know which. With these neighbors, though, we are definitely in the high rent district.
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| Mini-Burt surveys the Mega dock |
We have time to ride bikes through the beautiful old neighborhoods of Charleston with their pre-Civil War homes and colorful gardens.
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| Always charming Charleston |
Guess what, y’awwwwl, we’re in the deep south. We take the opportunity to eat at a local restaurant and find low country cooking is a bit different than what we are accustomed to in Ohio. We sample boiled peanuts and grits; we pass on the collard greens and mustard greens, both cooked with salt pork. We laugh at a comment our friend from Georgetown made – down here macaroni and cheese is considered a vegetable. Yet, Burt finds the fresh seafood to be outstanding.
The next morning we again time our departure for a bridge opening, finding ourselves lined up with nine other sailboats awaiting the opening. We proceed in a line through winding waterways bordered by unremarkable landscapes. It’s a good thing we aren’t distracted by the scenery as this is a section of the ICW that is not being properly maintained. Many areas need dredging and are shallower than the charts imply. We have gone online to get updated information and know that we will have to pass through certain sections on high tide. Fortunately, tides around here average eight feet. We contend with strong tidal currents that can run over two miles per hour and significantly slow or speed our progress. Timing is everything, and we breathe a sigh of relief after successfully transiting the questionable areas. We anchor along the river shore to await the last few miles into Beaufort, SC tomorrow. Once again, we need to time the passage to maximize depth at one point and to allow us to dock without strong tidal currents once we arrive in Beaufort.
Beaufort is a beautiful southern town. Its antebellum homes are heavily shaded by century old live oaks dripping with moss, and the downtown streets sport restaurants and art galleries.
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| A quiet neighborhood in Beaufort, SC |
We take a bike ride through the area. Our time in Beaufort is busy, though, as Burt does some routine maintenance, we rig our new main sail that was ordered in Annapolis and delivered here, and I get laundry and grocery shopping done with the marina’s courtesy car. We also help another boat that we’ve been seeing along the way. His main sail has a torn seam, and I have a sewing machine on board. We spread his sail out in the park abutting the marina, hook up his portable generator, and try to scrunch the sail though the small opening of the machine. Three of us struggle to get the bulky material through and finally get one row of stitching in which will suffice until he can get it to a professional. We certainly are the center of attention in this small town, though, even warranting a visit by the local newspaper’s photographer. We celebrate happy hour with two couples in Island Packets that will go outside into the ocean with us tomorrow, giving us an opportunity to make final plans for the next passage.
We leave Beaufort at first light – five boats (the two Island Packets, the man with the torn sail, a trawler, and us) in a line heading out the Port Royal Inlet and into the Atlantic. The ICW in Georgia has not been maintained well so there is shoaling in many areas, and it also zig-zags so many times that distance south is hard to come by. We have a small weather window and want to make as much progress as possible. The wind is light and there are some rolly waves, but it isn’t terribly unpleasant. By noon the breeze begins to build so we unfurl sails and motor sail along at a pretty good clip. The Island Packets decide to call it a day at St. Catherine Inlet. The trawler and our boat continue on to St. Simon’s Inlet, a Class A Inlet that can accommodate freighters, knowing that we will have to enter the channel after dark. It’s a beautiful sunset that is enjoyed with a little wine and a simple dinner. The coast of Georgia is very shallow, and we have to stay at least five miles out to be in 30 feet of water. Thus when we turn to enter the inlet we can hardly see the shoreline. What does show up on our electronics, though, is plenty of traffic leaving the inlet and town of Brunswick, GA. The channel is wide by our criteria, but add the two freighters and one cruise ship that we will need to pass, and it gets pretty darn narrow. We communicate by radio to discuss the passings. Both freighters require that we go outside of the buoys marking the channel boundaries. In both cases, there is still some navigatable water to the sides. We scrunch over to be passed at close range by 700 feet of towering steel. In the second instance, we encounter the freighter at a bend in the channel, and for what seems like an interminable time, it is pointed directly at us until its sweeping turn has been completed. We breathe a sigh of relief and enter the wide basin inside the inlet. We have several choices for anchorages. The most promising requires passing by three fishing boat dragging trawls. We finally get across their paths to find that the depths don’t match what is on our charts. It’s time to abort before running aground. We go for Plan B and enter a channel without lit buoys and find the designated anchorage, drop anchor in building winds and a challenging current, and finally crash into our beds by midnight. We have covered 104 nautical miles and when we rejoin the ICW will have clicked off 142 statute miles of the waterway. We do wonder, though, how the last boat is doing out on the ocean; he is singlehanding and is determined to go to St. Mary’s Inlet on the Florida boarder. The wind is building and a front will pass through in early morning. The next day we find out that he, too, came in the St. Simons Inlet., albeit several hours later after the winds and waves had built.
We are now about 25 miles from the Florida boarder, but we will slow down a bit, as we wind through shallow waters on a high tide towards Cumberland Island. It’s howling outside and the Atlantic is kicking up her heels – we will have to stay inside to avoid the almost gale.
