After 2 days and three nights at Minim Creek, we were up
before dawn, ready to move north. Peter
spent a restless night thinking of how to deal with what could go wrong to
delay our 06:30 departure. The most
likely one, that of freeing up an anchor that had been wedged into something in
2 days of strong winds, was not really possible to be dealt with by thinking of
solutions. It was a question whether, if worst came to
worst, he would wait until after sunrise and put on his wetsuit and dive down
the anchor chain to see what needed to be done.
The other choice was to stay warm and dry and cut the anchor chain,
sacrificing the anchor and 20 feet of chain, but saving a lot of time. He fell asleep after deciding to see how he
felt about the question in the morning, if it actually became a problem. Fortunately, it did not and weighing anchor
was a routine matter of lifting up the chain with the windlass until the anchor
appeared at the surface.
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| Smoke on the water... |
So we were underway as scheduled in a chilly, (45°F) nearly
windless, starlit morning, with the eastern sky just starting to brighten with
the rising sun. There was “sea smoke”
coming off the water, caused by the effect of cold air over warmer water. Peter noted with satisfaction that the early
departure meant that we would be travelling with the tidal current, and when we
entered Winyah Bay 40 minutes after weighing anchor, the tide was still a
little favorable as expected. Passing
through Winyah Bay on a slack tide was a big part of the plan to make 60 miles
today, because the currents in this bay are usually more than 2 knots. Kite motors along at 5.5 knots in still
water, so if fighting a current of 2 knots, she would be making only 3.5 knots
over the ground, but still burning fuel as if doing 5.5 knots. The sun rose as we entered Winyah Bay and the
bay was calm with only small ripples.
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| Beautiful Waccamaw River |
With no wind we felt warm and were cheered by the warmth of
the sun on our skin as we passed out of Winyah Bay into the scenic Waccamaw
River, in which we would travel for the next 5 hours. This river started out more than a mile wide
and when we left its headwaters we were in a river in which 2 boats could
hardly pass each other safely. The banks
of the river were lined with cypress trees draped in Spanish moss, and it
seemed as if ospreys had made nests on top of every navigation marker, as well
as in several of the trees. We’re
expecting a “boom” of osprey babies this year.
Although, being Saturday and a beautiful day, there were many pleasure
boaters out on the water, we never felt like it was too much. The natural beauty was more than enough to go
around, I guess.
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| Cypress tree "skeleton" along Waccamaw |
Our goal was to put South Carolina behind us, but we knew it
was too far to make it into North Carolina.
North Myrtle Beach is the last bit of SC, so we are set up to make a big
penetration into North Carolina tomorrow.
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