Day 105 – N 31° 09.991’ W 81° 24.874’ St. Simon’s Island, GA

So, here we are once more in St. Simon’s Island, where we spent 5 days on the northbound leg of this cruise trapped by stormy weather.  I’m happy to report that we are not trapped by stormy weather.  Instead it is the tides that have stalled us here.  It is a bit of a long story, so I’ll start at the beginning.

8-foot tides in Georgia - low tide

After leaving Thunderbolt Marina in Savannah as planned, we motored along the ICW at our usual average speed of a little over 5 knots.  Hell’s Gate proved to be no challenge at near high tide (the tides are nearly 8 feet here in Georgia, as you can see in Lyn’s photo), and we planned this part of our trip to coincide with the rising tide in Hell’s Gate.  We were making good speed until we entered Sapelo Sound at around 15:00, and then everything changed.  Our radio, which normally beeps and provides weather alerts as soon as they are issued by the Weather Service, did not warn us of the front and associated high winds that we encountered at Sapelo Sound.  (We later discovered that we had inadvertently disabled the alert feature.)

Low tide - normally poles like this emerge from the water

As soon as we came around the bend in the last river leading into Sapelo Sound, the wind suddenly started increasing and we were getting over 35 knots of wind, directly in front of us.  Sapelo Sound is about 5 miles long, and when strong winds travel across a long fetch of water like that, they build up large, steep waves very quickly.  So as we started to cross Sapelo Sound, we began crashing into these 4 to 5 foot waves, plus the resistance of such high winds, and we soon found ourselves slowed down to around 1 knot maximum speed and unable to control the direction of the boat.  We quickly decided to find an alternative place to anchor.  It was certain that we would be unable to cross Sapelo Sound in such wind conditions.

While we were in Port Royal, we had discussed our return plans with Bill Mote, and he had suggested Thunderbolt Marina, and after that an anchorage in a small river called Wahoo River.  At that time I told him that I preferred the one in Doboy Sound, because it was 3 to 4 hours closer to Jekyll Island, and I wanted to catch the end of the rising tide as we passed through Jekyll Creek.  Lyn had noticed as we approached Sapelo Sound that we were passing Wahoo River, where Bill had recommended the anchorage.  So, as we encountered the stormy conditions of Sapelo Sound and decided to turn around, Lyn said that we were at Wahoo River, so why not seek shelter there?  The adage, “any port in a storm” comes to mind.  But in fact we found excellent shelter from this vicious storm there, plus great holding for our anchor.  We stood an anchor watch for several hours of the remaining daylight, and Kite’s position was unwaveringly the same.  By dusk, the front had passed and the winds abated to 10 to 15 knots with gust to about 20 knots.  We felt safe going to bed, the anchor having been tested in much stronger winds earlier. 

We decided against running the noisy generator so that we would be awakened by the sound of any strengthening of the winds during the night.  We didn’t get a lot of sleep that night because it was a little warm – around 80°F – and we were apprehensive about the strong wind returning.  We had decided to get up at 06:00 so that we could be leaving before 06:30, about 2 hours before low tide in Wahoo River, which Peter had noted on the way in would leave us about 6 feet of water depth to pass through as we exited.  We also realized that with the extra 20 miles to Jekyll Island, we would not be able to make it before high tide, and we would not risk passing through Jekyll Creek after high tide.  So we decided that we would have to settle for St. Simon’s Island, about 5 miles north of Jekyll Creek, and then choose our time to leave based on the tides.

Meanwhile, we have an appointment in Jacksonville on Monday afternoon, so we’ve decided to stay here in St. Simon’s Island until Tuesday, renting a car for the day on Monday to make our appointment in Jacksonville and return to Kite later in the day.  Then we’ll leave on Tuesday, weather permitting, so that we enter Jekyll Creek at 2 hours before high tide, which looks to be 15:30. We’ll leave here at 14:30 and plan to stay at Jekyll Harbor Marina , on the south end of Jekyll Creek, and then continue our return to Jacksonville on Wednesday.

Day 102, N 32° 01.505’ W 81° 02.829’ Thunderbolt, GA

We spent two days in Port Royal, SC visiting with our friends Bill and Cheryl Mote.  Bill was much recovered and looking and feeling like his normal self compared to when we visited him near the beginning of our trip, but Cheryl was now sporting an arm sling due to having recently had rotator cuff surgery. Nevertheless, it was a pleasant visit and we also got to meet their grandson Dillon who cheerfully went along with us old folks to eat at a new Mexican restaurant in Port Royal. The weather was hot and punctuated with late afternoon thunderstorms. On our last evening there we ate dinner together aboard kite and decided we preferred inside the boat to being out in the cockpit with all that lightening.We said goodbye and prepared for an early start the next morning.

Lyn, Cheryl and Bill aboard Kite

We were ready to make a push to get home, and a phone call that requested us to make an appointment for Monday afternoon just cemented those plans.  The weather forecast for strong winds from the south and southwest helped us make the decision to stay in the ICW. Peter did some planning about the currents and tides to ensure that we would would approach a very shallow area in Georgia known as Hells Gate on a nearly full tide. Our destination was Thunderbolt Marina where we could tie up for the night and continue in the morning to reach Hells Gate at the optimum time. We were able to raise the head sail a few times to boost our motoring speed, but since we were mostly headed straight into the wind, we had to use just the motor most of the day.  While we were doing some tacking in Calibogue sound, we were treated to the sight of quite a few boats giving parasail rides, but other than that, the day was rather uneventful. It was another hot day (a high of 92°), but fortunately there were no storms until we were safely tied up at the marina.

Parasailers in Calibogue Sound

 Tomorrow's forecast is much the same as today's and we hope to get an early start and make it to an anchorage behind Doboy Island by evening.

Day 100 – N 32° 23.706’ W 80° 40.670’ Port Royal, SC

Instead of staying at the Charleston City Marina as we did in our previous visits to Charleston, this time we tried a less expensive marina recommended by a fellow cruiser. The Charleston Maritime Center is close to the historic downtown area, and it even has free laundry machines, however the waves from the strong southerly winds kept of us rocking most of the night. We spent the next morning walking around parts of the historic district's shopping streets, treating ourselves to ice cream cones, French pastries and Starbucks coffee in that order as we came across the shops. Lyn liked the beautifully arranged flower boxes outside many of the historic residences. She photographed lots of them to help her remember the plants that grew well on the north side of the buildings so that she could copy those arrangements for our own house when we return. The afternoon was very hot, and we returned to the boat for showers, laundry and naps.  The next day we would spend motoring through the ICW toward Beaufort, SC.

I am starting to feel like this trip will soon be ended.  We are now within reach of home with a single overnight sail through the ocean.  But what really brings on this feeling is being with old friends.  After motoring all day through the ICW to Beaufort, SC, we docked in a marina at Port Royal where our friends Bill and Cheryl Mote live aboard their sailboat, Eclipse.  We arrived late, nearly 20:00, and they were out on the dock to greet us and help with our dock lines.  We last saw Bill and Cheryl in late March.  As we were travelling north, we stopped in for a few days, and we promised to return on the way back.  Bill wasn’t feeling well when we saw him in March, and I am pleased to report that he looks and feels much better now.  Cheryl just had some shoulder surgery, so she had her arm in a sling and this time, it was she that was not feeling too well.  Aging is not for the weak hearted.

We left Charleston a little late in the day, because there is a bridge just as we leave Charleston that will not open (due to rush hour auto traffic) during 06:30 to 09:00.   We left the marina a little before 08:00 and slowly motored the 4 to 5 miles around to the bridge, arriving about 10 minutes early.  We called when we arrived and were notified that the bridge would be lifted for us at 09:00, and sure enough at exactly 09:00 the bridge let us through.  This was one of two bridges we would have to cope with, the second being at the other end of the day, in Beaufort.  It would be a long day, because we had to travel 65 nautical miles through rivers and canals with a mix of favorable and unfavorable currents.  Under such conditions, we estimate our average speed to be 5 knots.  We encountered several periods of light rain, and a couple of brief thunderstorms during the day, but these were welcomed because they cooled the air on a hot day.

As mid-afternoon arrived we were coursing through some canals that pass between large rivers and as we entered the last of these, Peter noted that it was exactly low tide, and because we just had a supermoon, the tide was running 1 foot lower than normal.  We could see this in the depth of the water, and Peter was careful to stay in the middle of the channel, where it is deepest.  But the depth kept falling until we were at 4.5 feet, the depth of our keel.  We turned left, then right, but the water didn’t get deeper, it just kept getting shallower, down to 3.8 feet!  Apparently the bottom was soft mud, because at 3.8 feet we were still “floating”, able to make headway, although very slowly due to the resistance of the mud.  We figured that there was nothing to lose by pushing forward until we either stopped or broke free into deeper water.  The tidal change in this area is around 8 feet, so if we were forced to stop, we would float free in an hour anyway, but if we could keep moving, why not?  As luck would have it, after plowing through about ¼ mile of mud, we finally reached the end of the canal and as we got into the river it connects to, the depth started to increase and we were free at last.

Lady's Island Swing Bridge in Beaufort, SC

We enjoyed a nice motor-sail through the Coosaw River with favorable current for an hour or two, and then we entered the Beaufort River in which was our destination – two hours away.  This end of the Beaufort River is quite narrow, and the channel is narrower still.  We had furled the jib before entering the river, and were motoring along with favorable current, when BUMP.  We had grounded on something more solid than mud.  Peter tried forward and reverse at full throttle, but we weren’t moving.  So Lyn got on the radio to call TowboatUS, but they were not responding.  So she went below to get their phone number.  Five minutes after the BUMP, we still hadn’t reached TowboatUS and Peter tried the motor again.  This time the boat started to move, and it slowly slid off the lump of clay bottom and started floating again.  Peter found deeper water toward the left edge of the channel and we were again on our way.  After a mile of narrow channel, the river got wider and deeper and we started breathing again.

By the time we reached the Lady’s Island Bridge, rush hour restrictions were over and all we had to do was request an opening and the bridge complied.  Thirty minutes later we were safely tied up at the Port Royal Landing marina, and enjoying the company of our friends and their grandson, Dillon.

Day 97 – N 32° 47.346’ W 79° 55.464’ Charleston, SC

When you depend on the weather, as we do, plans have to be flexible.  Thursday morning, as we prepared to sail out the Cape Fear River into the ocean for our passage to Charleston, we re-checked the weather forecast and it had changed for the worse, as it frequently does.  Instead of northeast winds 10 to 15 knots, they were forecasting northeast winds 15 to 20 knots with gusts to 25 knots, and showers and t’storms to sweeten the pot.  Friday and Saturday’s forecast seemed better, with northeast winds 10 to 15 knots, with a chance of showers and t’storms, so we decided to delay our departure by 1 day.  We used the day to remove the “moustache” from Kite’s bow section using Lyn’s secret recipe, followed by a coating of liquid wax.  The moustache is a rust colored stain that covers a triangular area at the bow near the waterline.  It is caused by the bow wake passing over the white hull surface as we moved through the brown, tannin-rich waters of the ICW in North and South Carolina.  Kite is now her beautiful, gleaming white self.

Dinghy tries to surf past Kite

On Friday morning, we checked the weather forecast and it had changed, again for the worse, but we decided it was as good as we would get and we could handle the “gusts to 20 knots” that were added into the latest forecast.  So we said “goodbye” to the Wrightsville Beach – Southport area, after a full week there, and departed out the Cape Fear River a little before noon.  Peter had calculated that the 126-nautical mile passage to Charleston could be done in as little as 21 hours (if we averaged 6 knots) or as much as 25 hours (if we averaged 5 knots).  So we didn’t want to leave too early, or we would be possibly entering busy Charleston harbor before sunrise, while it was still dark and too early to get into a marina.  We were ready for the 3 to 5 foot seas, but the winds were stronger than forecast as we got close to 20 miles out to sea, the farthest from shore that our point-to-point route would take us.  We were traveling southwest, so the northeast wind was directly behind us, and in the large, following seas, we didn’t want to risk a gybe of the main sail, so we put out the jib only.  That alone was sufficient to propel us at more than 6 knots while the wind was blowing 15 to 20 with gusts over 25 knots.  We were towing our dinghy behind, and in the large following seas, it was surfing the waves trying to pass us. 

Dinner!

Peter took the helm during the day until 19:00, when the wind was the strongest and the waves were the largest.  It took a lot of concentration to keep the boat on course while 5-foot and 6-foot waves were sneaking up behind and trying to turn the boat sideways.  Lyn made the best of her down time by putting out our “meat line” – a cedar plug with a large hook out the back connected to heavy duty 400-pound test fishing line, and tied off on a cleat on the stern of Kite with a short buffer of shock cord.  Before the afternoon was over, it had produced a nice Spanish Mackerel for our dinner table upon arrival in Charleston.

At 19:00 we secured the meat line without catching anything else, and went onto our 3-hour watch schedule, starting with Lyn at 19:00, then Peter at 22:00, and Lyn at 01:00 and finally Peter at 04:00.  The wind started to subside around 17:00 and by 18:00 it was too light to sustain a boat speed of 4 knots, so we furled the jib, started the engine and unfurled the main and sheeted it in tight to stabilize the boat in the large seas.  The seas gradually subsided, so that about an hour into Lyn’s first watch, she was able to turn the steering over to “Otto”, as we call our automatic pilot, greatly reducing the strain on the helmsman. 

Moon showing us the way ahead

Just before sundown, we were pleased to see a nearly full moon rising into the sky.  It would illuminate the inky black night, giving us something to look at during our 3-hour watches, as the motor droned on, pushing the boat through the windless night.

Otto kept us on course, and our route took us through currents that were favorable, so we were making good time.  We arrived at the busy Charleston shipping channel at about 07:30.  From the picture that Lyn took, you can understand why we did not want to navigate this channel at night – these large ships come and go at all hours.  Peter, as is his custom, had rested but not slept during his off-watch times, so was feeling a little punchy as we entered the shipping channel.  Lyn had made up a Thermos of coffee before we left for just that occasion and served bagels and cream cheese with coffee for breakfast.  And for instant energy, Peter ate his chocolate almond bar that he purchased in Southport for just this sort of emergency.  Sufficiently revived, he navigated Kite up the shipping channel and into the harbor where we arrived at the Charleston Maritime Center marina at a little before 10:00.

Huge container ship in the channel leaving Charleston harbor