12/11/15 Breakfast Creek, Georgia ICW
Position 31 56.195N, 80 40.673W
Posted by Bill

We left Beaufort/Port Royal at 6:35 and made it through the first set of Georgia shoal areas with no issue…thank goodness! Here is what we saw along the way…

Sunrise on the Beaufort River:

Some pelicans hanging out on a river buoy:

A shrimping boat heading out for a day’s work:

The Harbor Town light house at Hilton Head…I just can’t take enough pictures of this:

Some cool boats like this one:

Rescue squad at Dufauski Island. They were all over this tug boat trying to get someone off of the boat. I hope it ended up well:

Close to the end of the day we passed Moon River, the inspiration for the song made famous in 1961 in the movie, Breakfast At Tiffany’s. I remember the Andy Williams version that my Mom had the album for…pretty much dates my ass. Part of the lyrics are “wider than a mile”, but it isn’t. It might be a half mile at most, but more like a quarter mile. Replace that for the last sentence in the lyrics…it’s a hoot. Here is what it looks like:

It was a LOOOONGGGGG day. We got the anchor down in one of our favorite anchorages in Georgia, Breakfast Creek:

We are here with one other boat and it is as peaceful as it gets! This is what I love about cruising. We watched the sun set and schools of dolphins feeding in the anchorage. Cocktails of course!

Tomorrow we are going to try to make the other 2 major shoal areas of Georgia in 1 day. Wish us luck!!

11/11/15
Port Royal Landing Marina, Beaufort, SC
Position: 32 23.698N, 80 40.673W
Posted by Bill

We left Charleston on the 10th and took the ICW to Bass Creek just north of Beaufort, SC. We were debating to go offshore for a 30 hour trip from Charleston to Fernandina Beach, FL. We had an almost perfect forecast of winds around 10 knots and seas 2-3 feet until you hit the southern part of Georgie, and there was a potential of seas of 6 -8 feet. That was a clue to go the ICW route instead of offshore. You have to be willing to deal with 2 times the forecasted waves and wind in an offshore situation. We have taken offshore routes with the best of forecasts only to have our asses kicked.

I was really kicking myself after the decision to go “inside” because the forecast was so good, and we could be in Fernandina in 1 day versus 4 or 5 using the ICW. Plus we could avoid all of the shoaling and tide planning associated with the ICW. Friends of ours took at outside run from Hilton Head, SC to Brunswick, GA, just north of Fernandina that same night and got their asses kicked. The forecast fell apart and they had a really rough passage. Glad we took the route we did!!

In Bass Creek I did some planning, both offshore and ICW to get the rest of the way to Fernandina, and was leaning toward ICW passage skipping Beaufort and saving a day of travel. It was going to involve 4 days of anchoring. Then, in the morning, the hose that we use to wash down the anchor chain as we bring it up broke at the base that connects into the deck. I figured no big deal, just use one of our garden hoses…except it doesn’t fit onto the threads of the deck fitting. Plan B…I remember a spare deck fitting in our spares inventory. It came with the boat but we never really checked it out. Sure enough, a standard garden hose fitting will screw into it. So I try it and the deck fitting leaks…damn! After several other random trials, we have nothing that will work for an anchor wash down. This is not good, because any mud, sand, crap that we pull up with the anchor ends up in our bilge. Not only does it make a mess, but it smells bad after a few days.

So…I pull up my plan B, which involves stopping in Beaufort and pushing the schedule back one day. If we go to Port Royal Landing Marina, where we stayed for a month last year, we know we can use the courtesy car and shop a solution for our anchor wash down dilemma. All of the other tide schedules can work through Georgia, which is full of shoal areas.

We pull into the marina, get the car, go to the hardware store first. With their help, we determine that the threads on the wash down fitting are metric and will not match anything in their store. We also buy larger and tighter O-rings for the spare wash down fitting that leaked, hoping that this may make this one a viable solution. We also buy a new hose. We then stock up on liquor because South Carolina has much cheaper liquor than any other state on the southeast coast. A quick stop at the grocery store and we are on our way. Then we go to West Marine and engineer a fix to the old wash down fitting with hose adapters, a piece of hose, and hose clamps…just in case the other solution doesn’t work. So, after 5 hours and $40, we have 2 potential solutions.

Back at the boat…we find the 2nd set of O-rings does the trick for the spare wash down fitting and we are back in business! Time for a beer!! Then time for dinner! Now we can anchor on!

The plan is to leave first light in the morning tomorrow, around 6:30. Hoping currents allow us to make our shoal areas at the right tide level and that we can make Fernandina Beach in 4 days. Another typical day in the life of cruising.

For more about Beaufort and Port Royal Landing Marina, search the blog with the search box above. We stayed a month here last year and there are many posts and pictures.

11/8/15
Charleston Maritime Center, Charleston SC
Position: 32 47.344N, 79 55.459W
Posted by Bill

We made it to Charleston, one of our favorite cities. Yesterday, we needed to time the tide to get from Isle of Palms to here, and that meant we couldn’t leave until 1:30 PM. It was an absolutely beautiful day and we enjoyed watching all of the boat traffic going in and out of the marina and surrounding area. I also snapped some pictures.

Island Bound at dock in Isle of Palms Marina:

The view at the marina:


There were a lot of people coming in and out of the restaurant and marina store and we saw some strange vehicles park in the 60 minute visitors parking area, including this John Deere tractor!:

I was shocked to see this parked here. First of all, Isle of Palms is a posh resort and beach area. There are no farms here. There are some eccentric residents, so that might be it…not sure.

The passage from Isle of Palms to Charleston is the worst shoal area in the ICW, with low tide depths under 3 feet. We need 5 1/2 feet to float, so we had to time the tides. We pulled in to the Charleston Maritime Center around 4 PM and went out for a pizza at D’Allesandro’s. It was outstanding. Last night around 2 AM the expected weather front moved in and the winds were howling. The wind was making one of the lines on the mast slap the mast at rapid fashion, sounding like a machine gun. Can’t sleep through that racket so I get up and try to adjust the tension, stick a foam noodle between it and the mast, and fend it off with bungee chords. After an hour or so of messing with it I got it to shut up. If I got it too loose, it would slap. If I got it too tight, it would make a loud hum. Finally pushed the noodle up the mast with a boat hook and got back to bed around 3 AM. We will be here until Tuesday. The weather may stifle our usual exploration of the city…we shall see.

If you are interested in Charleston, here are some of our older posts when we were here. Lots of pictures:
Chillin’ in Charleston
Chillin’ in Charleston part deux
Chastown…one of our favorites

11/6/15
Isle of Palms SC, ICW
Position: 32 48.381N, 79 45.592W
Posted by Bill

Morning at Mimim Creek where we anchored last night:

After we got the anchor down last night, the bugs swarmed us. This morning, parts of the boat were covered with these black bugs:

Those who know me know that I am a bug phobe, and I don’t know if it is a coincidence, but they love ME. Glad we were able to go inside to the protection from this stuff!!

Today we left at 9 AM. We got to sleep in because we were transiting a notoriously bad shoal area at McClellanville, and we needed to hit that no earlier than 12 noon. Leaving at 9 would put us there based on our average speed. We arrived a little earlier due to a favorable tidal current, but we made it through the shoal area without incident!! Yay!

Then we made the push to Isle of Palms, a beach area of Charleston. If you remember from last year, we have friends Terry and Cassandra that live there, and we had a great time with them on our trip down last fall. We hooked up with them for dinner and drinks and had a great time again!!

Along the ICW, we saw our first alligator:

And our first dolphins in quite a while:

It was a long day again!

There is a pretty strong front coming in on Sunday and Monday, so we need to get to Charleston to wait it out. Charleston provides provisioning and entertainment while we wait out the weather and we will move on tomorrow to Charleston Maritime Center.

11/5/15
Minim Creek, SC
Position: 33 11.502N, 79 16.367W
Posted by Bill

Just like yesterday’s trip, we did the same trip today as we did exactly one year ago…well, same destination anyway. We left the dock in North Myrtle Beach at 6:36. We were trying to time the arrival at the Socastee Swing Bridge so that we would arrive on the hour because the bridge was broken down and they restricted the opening to every hour on the hour. Not knowing for sure how the tide was going to affect us, we needed some slack in the schedule. When we pulled out of the marina there was no one in front of us and there was no wind, so the water looked like glass. It created some interesting illusions along the shore line:

We made it to the crippled bridge with about 25 minutes to spare so we had to wait. On the other side we stopped in at Osprey Marina to take advantage of $2/gallon diesel fuel prices and fueled up. Between the delays for the bridge (including going very slow part of the way so we didn’t have to wait longer at the bridge) and getting fuel, we lost over an hour of transit time, so I revved the engine up to 2300 RPM and got us going faster than we now normally travel. It was a LONG day, but we made it to Minim Creek by 4:30 PM and dropped the hook in the same place as last year. It wouldn’t set, so we moved over a bit and got it to set finally. Good thing, because the no-see-ums were already swarming. No wind in the middle of a marsh is a bad situation around dusk!!

Tomorrow, we need to transit McClellanville, which is really shoaled over and pretty much impassable at low tide. Our false start the other day has pushed us into a challenging tide schedule where we need to transit this area close to low tide in order to make our destination tomorrow by dark. Well, what fun would it be if it was easy?!!

For more pics and information about traveling between Myrtle Beach and Minim Creek, see last year’s blog by clicking here.

11/4/15
North Myrtle Beach, SC
Position: 33 48.102N, 78 44.816W
Posted by Bill

Well…we finally got moving again. After an emotional (for me) send off from our friends Matt and Shirley from Sofia Jeanne, and Kurt and Sharon from Byrd Ketcher, we got off the dock at 7:03 this morning, destination: North Myrtle Beach. Amazingly…this is the same trip we took last year on this date! Everything was pretty much the same, except the tides were close to low when we left and when we traversed Lockwoods Folley Inlet west of Southport. Just out of the marina we saw this sailboat aground at a creek known locally as “Wildlife”. This poor guy didn’t have the local knowledge that he was going on to a sand bar at the entrance to the creek:

Unfortunately for him, he was a good hour to two hours away from enough tide to lift him off. He obviously put his head sail up to help him get off, which probably only pulled him higher on the bar.

We did a white knuckled transit through Lockwoods Folley, which has been grounding vessels for weeks at low tide, but we made it with room to spare! Shortly thereafter, we ran into a tug boat pushing a double-wide barge that took up most of the channel. I diverted to port (left), almost out of the channel to avoid him, nearly running aground myself. Ass Captain award to that jack-leg! The rest of the trip was very similar to last year, so I won’t bore you with a duplicate entry and will let you click to last year’s post. We arrived around 2:30 and went to one of our favorite places to have a great dinner.

It was really nice to get back on the water again, but it is a MAJOR bummer to not be traveling with our friends. We are going to miss them very much until we see them again SOON! Good first day, but a long day tomorrow. By the way…tortuga is spanish for turtle…we move at about 5-6 miles per hour!

10/31/15
Southport NC
Posted by Bill

We crewed our friend Ben’s boat in the Stede Bonnet race and finished in the middle of the pack. One of the requirements for the race is that everyone has to dress like pirates, so we went into town and shopped for some costume pieces at the local thrift store. $10 later and some accessories from Matt and Shirley, and we were pirates! A great time was had by all!!

Here we are underway during the race:

Shirley and Tricia, pirate wenches:

After the race we went down to the waterfront and went to Provision Company. It was the last day of the season for them and they were giving away food. They also had a good band, so we ate and drank our fill and enjoyed the music.

The next day, we finally finished the teak on the outside of the boat:




It was weeks of work. Kudos to Tricia, who did most of the staining. Also thanks to our friend John for all of his help. Now we can get ready to head south!!

10/26/15
Southport NC
Posted by Bill

We are 1 week from departure and have been working hard to get the final work done on the boat. We were taking advantage of a week of wonderful weather conditions and finishing the teak. Once we finished sanding and stripping the wood, we used a two part teak cleaner called Snappy Teak. One part brings up the dirt, and the second part neutralizes the first part while brightening the wood. Here is a sample of sanded and clean, ready for stain.

Here is the first coat going on:

We are doing three coats of Sikkens Cetol Maine – Natural, and two coats of Sikkens Cetol Marine – Gloss. I’ll post some pics of the finished product in a few days. The third coat is almost done of the Natural, but we’ll have to wait through a few days of rain to put the Gloss on.

Kurt and Sharon from Byrd Ketcher rolled into town on Wednesday, and we have been having fun at night reuniting, which means even more partying than we normally do (which I didn’t think was possible). Over the next two rainy days we will go to Wilmington to provision, then get dinghy fuel, then pump out the holding tank, and we should be ready to rock. We also have the Stead Bonnet race this Saturday, so I imagine we will leave Monday. The weather looks like it will be cooperating.

Yesterday, Kurt, Matt and I went oyster hunting. We borrowed our dock neighbors skiff and went down the waterway about an hour, up a river to an oyster bed. We picked enough oysters and clams to fill a cooler and had a great feast last night. Plenty more for today as well.

Also yesterday, our dock neighbors (John and Mary Ann), and our other D dock friends Tony, Priscilla, and their daughter Tommi, went fishing and caught three wahoo and a dolphin fish. Everyone was excited. Tonight we will have oysters and fresh fish!!

Today is overcast and blowing like stink (sailors term for windy as shit). The wind is somewhat welcome as the no-see-ums have been absolutely horrible this last week due to the calm winds and cooler temps.

Stay tuned…as we get moving, I’ll keep the blog updated more frequently.

10/4/15
Southport NC
Posted by Bill

First, thoughts and prayers go out to the people in Bahamas who were impacted by hurricane Joaquin, and also to the people impacted by the devastating flooding in South Carolina and southeastern North Carolina. What a mess!

Today, the stream of heavy rain that caused the flooding south and west of us has started to move north. On top of that, the winds picked up significantly. We have had steady moderate rain all day, with periods of violent downpours. I can’t imagine what it was like to have that kind of rain for as long as the people had south and west of us. For us, the system will move through in the course of a day…or so they say, and the intense rain won’t be as long in duration as it was for them. We have had winds mostly in the mid to high teens (knots) and some periods of sustained winds in the low to mid 30s (knots), with gusts to almost 40 knots. Needless to say, we have been confined to the boat, mostly reading and relaxing.

Our friends Matt and Shirley on Sofia Jeanne were out in their car and snapped these photos of the Yacht Basin along the waterfront in Southport. They are of the same places that I posted yesterday and were taken an hour after high tide, and the water is higher than high tide yesterday. It is now 3 hours after high tide and the water in the marina has not subsided any noticeable amount since, so I’ll bet it is still a mess down there.

These kind of days are not fun on a 42 foot boat all cooped up, but at least we are tied to a dock and have cable TV!