Skip to main content

Into South Carolina

Livin on the road my friend, was gonna keep you free and clean.

Now you wear your skin like iron, your breath's hard as kerosene. -Pancho and Lefty, by Townes Van Zandt


Plenty of extra time this morning since we had to wait until about 7:30 for the tide to turn and start coming in. With the Savannah River in sight from our anchorage, we headed through the Elba Island Cut and forded the mighty Savannah with heads swinging side to side to check for approaching freighters. All was quiet and still without another boat in sight as we entered the Fields Cut north of the river and into South Carolina. Star was standing up on the bow with Chief on a leash, since he hadn't done his morning...duty before leaving and was acting restless. Beep,beep,beep!!! The depth sounder yelled at me. Our 10 feet of water had dropped to 7, and then back up to 8. I just had time to clear the alarm on the screen of the chartplotter when Beep,beep,beep!!!Bam! We came to a sudden lurching stop and Star & Chief surged forward into the bow rail. It finally happened, we had run aground.


We were only travelling 6mph, so this isn't like crashing in a car, but it's still heart pumping adrenaline action. Luckily, it was just a thin ridge of mud across the channel, and our momentum pushed us right through it, still continuing on at 1 mph with the engine in neutral as we watched the depth increase again. We had 1.8 feet of tide above low at the time, so it was a definite 4 foot spot.


We continued on unperturbed and passed beautiful Hilton Head Island where as we expected the normally relentless horseflies succumbed to the will of the wealthy, who simply would not tolerate a biting fly on their island. The dark clouds began to gather over our shoulder as we sailed out into the Port Royal Sound. With full jib out and Smokey the Engine running hard, we just skirted the edge of one thunderstorm and turned up the Beaufort River only to run smack into another. Just a little rain and no major winds as we passed Paris Island, the roots to many a Jarhead's fond memories. With the sky brightening and the dense haze of a spring shower still in the air, we pulled up to the fuel dock of the Downtown Marina here in Beaufort, SC. We're still trying to sort out how long we will stay here. We only want to spend about 10 days and then get moving again, but they have a ridiculous pricing structure here. The weekly dockage rate is $1.45 a foot per night. The monthly rate is $15 a foot. So 10 nights at the weekly rate costs the same as one month. For the same price, we'll use their services and courtesy car for a month.

Dinner after arriving was an Indian Treat, courtesy of Sono and Andy in Gainesville, of Chicken Malabar with a side of white rice. Mmmmm!


The sweet smell of the South, of camellias and azaleas, clings to Beaufort's ancient and historic buildings. Around America, Walter Cronkite

Comments

Post a Comment

Hope you enjoy the blog, please feel free to leave comments!

Popular posts from this blog

Pine Island to Fernandina

Sunday was spent idling around the boat taking care of small projects, both of us moving a little slowly after a great time Saturday night with Fred and the acrobatic Rick from 'Freedom'. Pine Island has such a snug little anchorage it was a great place to hang out and avoid the Sunday boat traffic and we were able to scrape the waterline of 4 inch long grass and miniature barnacles that have accumulated already. Star made good on her promise of making my favorite dish after we crossed north of our starting point in St. Augustine. Lapin a la moutarde . For those like me who don't ' parlez vous ' very well, that's Rabbit in mustard sauce. Today we were underway at 7:15 heading north with a couple of stopping options available, but we were staying flexible and had no certain destination. We crossed the St. Johns River and transited the Sister's Creek area at low tide and were on a just barely rising tide for the notoriously shoaling Nassau Sound area. To say ...
5 comments
Read more

The Surreptitious Crab Pot

You can not teach a crab to walk straight . -Aristophanes 450-385 BC Travelling the waterway from South Florida up to South Carolina has taught us a lot of different things, but one of the more surprising is the art of crabbing. Having grown up on the Chesapeake, I thought I knew a thing or two about catching crabs, but apparently I didn't understand the stealth involved. You see, the crabs down here have incredible eyesight, a requirement for surviving in the murky brown waters. The local crabbers have needed to develop some especially crafty techniques for working around the blue crab and stone crab's defense mechanisms. One of the first things that a boater notices when watching these crabmen is that the proper color of the float buoy attached to the pot is critical. Bright orange or yellow are out, the crab would see those from down below in his muddy lair in an instant, and avoid the baited pot like a Congressman avoiding his conscience. Likewise red, chartreuse, or any o...
4 comments
Read more

Melbourne-Titusville-Daytona

Yesterday we sailed up to Titusville , a short 15 miles and were able to anchor by lunch. This is one of the cruisers prime Intracoastal Waterway stops . A fairly well protected anchorage right outside the Titusville Municipal Marina with a public dinghy dock, and walking distance to West Marine, Napa , grocery store, KFC , and Burger King. We took advantage of the Napa and I went ashore to fetch a gallon of anti-freeze because I had used up our onboard supply with the coolant leak . The evenings sunset entertainment was provided by the Bagpipe Guy, who seren aded the anchorage at sunset with an incredible performance. I wish I could name the tune because it was so familiar, but then a lot of bagpipe music sounds the same to my tone deaf ear. That's always one of the great pleasures of cruising, there is such an eclectic group of misfits out here all searching for their own piece of paradise. Today, we got an early jump and were underway at 7:00 under main and iron- genoa . We...
4 comments
Read more