Monday, April 17th (Day 16)
Clear and sunny. NW winds 10-15 gusts to 20. Air temp 56. Water temp 66
82.5nm today (618 trip total)
Our off-shore forecast for today showed winds out of the NW (from shore) at 10-15 knots and seas 1.6 foot - 7 second period. That should be pretty nice. My plan was to head down the ICW for a few miles then take the Savannah River out to sea and maybe come in later this afternoon around St. Pierre Creek to anchor for the night. Once again, the tidal currents would be helping us out in the morning then back in this afternoon.
We were off the dock at Thunderbolt Marina at 7:15am. We had to wait a few minutes because a 100' sailboat was maneuvering into the lift at the boatyard and took up the entire basin. It was quite a sight.
Laura took this picture of the pretty sunrise as we were leaving the marina basin.
About 1/2 hour later we approached the Causton Bluff Bridge. This is a Bascule (lift) bridge that has been (almost) replaced by a high-rise bridge. The old bridge is still there in the mostly up position. Oh boy. They sure made it interesting navigating a 61' mast through those bridges. Here's Laura's video of our passage through the bridge. Are we gonna make it?
It was a quiet ride through the rest of the ICW to the Savannah River. The ebb (outgoing) current was really moving and it helped us average over 9 knots from the ICW out to sea. We had reefed main and jib helping us zoom down the river. At one point we hit over 10 knots SOG. Our speed is the second display from the left.
As we turned north (actually NE) once the currents brought us to deeper water, winds were about 70 degrees off our bow (close reach) and the boat was heeling about 15 degrees but the seas were just a 1-2 foot wind-chop on the port side. It took us a little while to get used to the ride and relax under sail - it has been a while. At this point we were running with single reefed jib and double reefed main (we had some of our sails pulled in because the high wind gusts were making the ride uncomfortable). Later in the day we took out the reefs when the wind died a little.
We had our engine off for 5 1/2 hours and it was pleasant except for the hour or so for us to sail around the Port Royal Sound channel. There must have been lots of current there kicking up the waves and we bounced around a lot. But, after that, we were able to work our way closer to shore and the ride was much better. Laura took a nice video of our sailing today.
We actually made better time than I had planned so we kept going past St. Pierre Creek and came in the North Santee River - about 10 miles farther. There was an anchorage there not too far from the ocean so we could pop back out in the morning.
Later in the day, I saw the forecast for tomorrow had changed a bit to north winds 10-15 in the morning before clocking SE in the afternoon. North winds would not be great for us off-shore tomorrow, We changed plans a little and continued up the North Santee River to a great anchorage we've stayed at before - Church Creek.
It was a long day and, with the helping flood currents, we made it to Church Creek just before sunset. Holy cow! There were 4 boats already anchored there. Where did they come from?
I did my typical "Dog going around in circles looking for a spot to lay down" before anchoring. I don't like anchoring between two other boats because it bugs me when others to that. I anchor far enough away from the boat in front of me to feel comfortable. Many times I've had another boat come and anchor between us. But, this time there was no choice and there seemed to be plenty of room. We anchored at 7:45 pm, watched a little TV and hit the sack early.
It was a long day for us and lots of work managing the boat in the changing winds plus, most importantly, keeping us safe. But, we both understood that this off-shore run would get us around ALL the shallow spots in the ICW between Savannah and Charleston. Plus this was during a time period when the low tide was in the afternoon so we probably would have had to stop early each day when we got to a shallow spot near the low tide.
Planning ahead, I saw that the low tide tomorrow was around 1pm. In the past, we've needed at least 2 feet of tide to get through the shallows north of the Ben Sawyer Bridge plus a notorious ICW shallow area was around McClennanville a few hours later. But the area around McClennanville had been dredged a couple years ago and should / might be OK. That meant we'd need to get through the Ben Sawyer by around 11am and that was 25 miles from our anchorage. Oh boy. We needed an early start again so I set the alarm for 6am. I was starting to hate that alarm....
Tuesday, April 18th (Day 17)
Partly cloudy and cooler. Winds N at 10-15 in the morning - clocking to SE in the afternoon. Air temp 45. Sea temp 66
78nm today (697 total trip miles)
Neither of us wanted to get out of a warm bed into the cold morning. Weather.com said it was 45 degrees outside but our boat thermometer said 54. Still chilly. It was our first day of sweatshirts....
We were underway at 6:45am. No movement on the other 4 boats anchored near us. Maybe they were the smart ones... Our colorful sunrise a little later.
We had helping currents for the first couple hours so I thought we could make the Ben Sawyer Bridge by 11am. First we had to navigate the sometimes tricky Elliott Cut then, just down the waterway, the Wappoo Creek Bridge.
I checked the current prediction through the cut and it showed we'd have helping currents. We've seen the currents in this cut over 5 knots which seems crazy on a 6 knot boat. Once the houses along the cut were passing us until I went to full throttle on the engine. That won't be needed today.
Hmmm... The Wappoo Creek Bridge schedule had changed. They now had a 7am to 9:30am lockout for rush-hour traffic (they wouldn't open during this time except for commercial traffic) and only opened once an hour on the 1/2 hour after that. So... we needed to get there for the 9:30am opening.
We made great time and approached the Elliott Cut just after 9am. It was just about the calmest I've seen it.
Just 1 mile later we approached the Wappoo Creek Bridge. I call the operator on the radio and we motored slowly around for 10 minutes until the bridge opened at 9:30am.
Currents pushed us out the creek and down the Charleston Harbor. Nice!
While motor-sailing through the harbor, I could see that the predicted north winds were very light - maybe 5-6 knots. How about another off-shore run today for the 3rd day in a row (with a day in the marina between them).
With the ebb tide pushing us out the harbor, we would turn NE toward Winyah Bay around 10:30am Then we had 45nm to travel between the two inlets. At 6 knots that was 7 (and a little more) hours. We should be in Winyah Bay around 6pm then anchored by 7:30pm in a nice spot where we've been before. Laura approved the plan and we headed out to sea again.
I wouldn't normally estimate our off-shore speed at 6 knots because we could have currents against us or slow down from motoring into waves. But, with the SE winds this afternoon, we should get help from the sails at least for a couple hours.
We motored out onto a very calm Atlantic (MUCH calmer than yesterday) and turned northeast around the shallows toward Winyah Bay entrance. It was beautiful.
Around from 11am to 1pm the winds gradually clocked from north to southeast. When the apparent wind was 40 degrees off the bow we rolled out the mainsail which added about 1/2 knot to our speed. As the winds clocked passed 50 degrees we were able to roll out the jib and our speed picked up into the 7s. I lowered the engine RPM to keep our speed around 7 knots. The winds were only in the 6-8 knot range so not enough to get us there before dark without help from the engine.
Later in the afternoon the winds picked up to 10-15 and the seas increased accordingly. As we turned into the Winyah Bay channel at 6pm we were doing over 7 knots with just the mainsail and motor at low RPM. We zoomed into the bay with the boat bouncing around a little on the 2-3 foot wind-driven waves.
The ride was much calmer and quieter as we motor-sailed up the bay and turned west toward the ICW. We anchored about 1 mile before the ICW on a lovely tree-lined spot in the Waccamaw River at 6:45pm.
Laura heated up leftover chicken enchiladas and we ate dinner in the cockpit watching a pretty sunset.
One problem we had today was our inverter quit. This device supplies 110v house current to the boat from our batteries when we are not plugged into shore-power or don't have the generator running. It just quit working.
I did a little troubleshooting after we anchored. It was getting power from the batteries and didn't have a blown fuse. But, it was totally dead and wouldn't turn on from the front panel or the remote we have installed at the nav desk. Bummer. This was purchased a little over 2 years ago to help charge the Lithium batteries. It should not have died this quick.
One contributing factor might be our starlink. Because starlink requires 110v, we've kept the inverter on almost constantly since leaving Marathon. But still.... This inverter should be able to run 24 / 7 without issues. That is what it's made for.
Laura wanted to run her mixer and I figured we'd run the Honda generator for starlink and TV tonight. After dinner I started up the generator. Bing! The inverter came to life and started charging the batteries. I tried turning off the generator - the inverter kept running and supplying 110v to the boat like it's supposed to. We watched TV off the inverter and it's still running fine the next day.
I opened a case on the inverter with the manufacturer - Xantrex. We'll see what they say about it. I'm worried that it might be 2 months over the 2 year warranty and we'll have to spend another $1,300 to replace it. If that's the case, we won't be buying another Xantrex.
Wednesday, April 19th (Day 18)
Clear skies and light SW winds. 58 degrees this morning. Water temp 67
20nm today (716 total trip miles)
We decided it was time to relax and have some fun after all the hard work we did to get around GA and southern SC. Plan was to motor only about 20 miles to Throughfare Creek and anchor early in the afternoon for some dinghy exploring.
Just after 11am we dropped our anchor in Throughfare Creek. FLIES! Even before shutting down the engine I was being bombarded. Little triangle-wing flies that didn't seem to bite but left scratchy welts. Maybe we should have stayed in Florida a few more days? That wouldn't have made any difference.
We closed up the boat and relaxed down below a while. After a nice lunch, we went back out on the deck, lowered the dinghy and put the outboard back on. We're getting pretty good at this after maybe 200 times and, even with the high currents trying to pull the dinghy away, we had the motor on and running in about 15 minutes.
There is a nice beach just 1/4 mile in front of the boat where we ran the dinghy ashore and went for a short walk. I wasn't comfortable leaving the dinghy there for a long walk so we just hiked around for a short while then launched the dinghy again and went for a ride up the creek.
This creek runs into the Great Pee Dee River after several miles. We had a nice ride up there on a beautiful day. After looking at the charts, I realized that our Throughfare Creek is one of the few places to get between the Great Pee Dee and Waccamaw Rivers. That's why there is a lot of boat traffic around our anchored boat - even on a Wednesday.
The bass-boats go flying by and don't rock us at all. But the larger (17-25') boats seem to slow down to the speed where they create the most wake and we go flying. I've watched them go by and I'm pretty sure they are trying to be nice by slowing down. They just don't look behind them and see us jumping up and down with their wake.
Here are a few pictures we took on our dinghy ride.
An hour or so later we were back at the boat. I decided to take the outboard off the dinghy in case we go offshore from Little River Inlet to Cape Fear in a couple days. The dinghy would be fine with the motor on cruising up the ICW but I don't like the extra 95 pounds swinging around back there when we are in the ocean.
Plans, plans, plans... We have reservations for Myrtle Beach Yacht Club for tomorrow night. It's only about 40 miles from here so we should be able to make it there early and spend some time with our friend Sandy who lives nearby. Saturday is supposed to be rain and storms so we have reservations for Friday and Saturday on a mooring in Carolina Beach. That should give us some time to go into town for the Celtic Creamery homemade ice cream between the raindrops. Yumm.
I think it's time for muchies and a cocktail. Later.....
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