Some places we've been

Here are some photos of a couple of places we have been and things we have seen.

This is one of the red ICW day markers that indicate where the ICW is going. When going north in the ICW the red markers stay on the port(left) side of the boat. That is for the most part. There are some areas that are channels returning from sea where they are on the starboard (right) side. We need to stay on top of where we are all the time. Just outside the markers the depth can get very shallow. The red markers are triangles and the green markers are squares.


This particular red day marker is lighted and has an osprey nest on it.







Here are a couple of dolphins that were following the boat. We saw a lot of dolphins in the ocean. They also come up into the rivers and sounds.






This is the Whittaker Pointe Marina we are staying in at Oriental N.C. It is fairly new and the facilities are great.







Here is the Whittaker Pointe Marina club house. It has really nice bathrooms and showers. They also have a small laundry room, gas grills and a courtesy car.






This is the Charleston City Marina. It is on the Ashley River on the southwest side of Charleston. We stayed here a couple of nights. We were in a slip at the end near the bottom left of the photo.






This is the Bald Head Island Marina. It is located just inside the Cape Fear inlet. It is also a very nice marina. The island doesn't have a lot of services but it was very relaxing being there.

Passage to Pamlico

Well almost Pamlico. We are at Oriental North Carolina which is on the Neuse River at the south end of Pamlico Sound.

We left Bald Head Island on Friday morning after being there a week. We had a great time going to the beach, climbing the light house and just hanging around the marina. We met two couples that also own Island Packet yachts. Both were from Canada. They had been in the Bahamas and were heading home to Nova Scotia. We all got together for happy hour on Tuesday evening, had drinks and hors d'œuvres. We all told of our sailing tales and laughed at them all. It is amazing how many other couples have very similar experiences as we do. I had mentioned my taking evasive action from the moon rising. One of the ladies said she was trying to hail the planet Mars on the VHF radio. She though it was another sailboat that had come close by. As one other sailor we met says, "There is some weird S#@t that goes on our there at night".

From Bald Head Island we went north to Wrightsville Beach. It was only 28 miles so it was a short day. There were a couple of tricky areas on the ICW with lot's of current that made my adrenaline flow. We stayed at the Wrightsville Beach marina for the night. On Saturday we arose early in order to get through the Wrightsville Beach bascule bridge. The bridge only opens on the hour from 7AM to 7PM. We asked for an opening at 6:30 AM and were on our way to Swansboro N.C. This was a long day covering 54 miles. We had 3 other bridges to get through also. One of them only opens on the hour and we arrived just 10 minutes past so we had to hang out for 50 minutes before we could get through. We had quite a bit of current against us in the morning. Once we past Brown's inlet we had the current going with us and saw speeds up to 8.5 knots. This helped get us to Swansboro by 4:00PM. We were pretty tired so we ate leftover spaghetti and went to bed. On Sunday we knew that there was some bad weather moving into the area and had 48 miles to cover to get to Oriental. We again departed at 6:30 AM. There were no bridges to wait for on this leg. We had the current going with us the entire way from Swansboro to Morehead City. At one point just before the Beaufort inlet we saw 9 knots. Once past the inlet we slowed to 4.8 knots. What a let down but we knew it was coming. The rest of the trip up to Oriental was pretty boring. The route wound it's way through Adams Creek to the Neuse River. There were thunderstorms to our south that were building. We could here the thunder. I checked the weather radar and they were moving to the northeast away from us which was a relief. I could see additional rain moving our direction from New Bern to the west. I was hoping to get to the Whittaker Pointe Marina before the rain reached us. It was a close race. It started to rain just as we were pulling into a slip.

There is some really bad weather heading our way and should be here Tuesday thru Thursday. One forecast says there could be winds up to 65 knots. More likely 30-35 though. I think we will stayed tied to the dock until it passes by. We will leave sometime late in the week and continue north. Our destination is Hampton Virginia where we will take a slip for a couple of months. We plan to explore the Chesapeake Bay from there.

Once in Hampton I am going to fly to Mobile Alabama and pick up our Expedition and bring it up to Hampton so we will have ground transportation. There are lot's of nice land trips we can do in that area.

Resting at Bald Head

We made it to Bald Head Island after a 28 hour sail from Charleston. The winds were lighter than forecast which really hurt our speed. However the seas were very calm which made for a pleasant sail. We had every sail configuration you can imagine trying to get power from the wind. Once we were tied up to the dock we both fell sound asleep for about 3 hours. We slept another 11 hours that night. With only two of us on the boat it is difficult to get a long sleep while underway. I had only slept 3 hours in the previous 32 hour period.

When we left Charleston Harbor going out the inlet I saw a Valiant 42 coming in that looked awfully familiar. Sandy looked through the binoculars and sure enough it was Savage Son sailed by Bob and Bev. They were dock neighbors of ours at Lake Texoma. Their boat left Texoma on a truck the day before ours did. They trucked their boat to a marina near Jacksonville Florida and left for the Bahamas in December. With such a huge ocean the odds of meeting up like that are unfathomable.

We are staying at the Bald Head Island marina for a week. When I checked in with the harbormaster I took off my hat and said "I believe I qualify for a discount". His response was "Cute". I didn't get the discount. They call this island the Nantucket of North Carolina because the homes all look like New England style homes. About 95% of the homes are vacation rental homes. People have to come by either private boat or ferry. Also there are no private cars on the island. Everyone uses golf carts. There are miles of Sandy beaches and a beautiful golf course.

So far we have walked on the beach, which is very wide and about 17 miles long. We didn't walk the entire length. We went to the Old Baldy light house and climbed to the top and we rented a golf cart and drove around to see the island and pick up some groceries. And of course we are doing the one thing that all cruisers do when they go into a marina - laundry. Usually the laundry room is the center of socializing. Not here though. The marina is small and there are not very many cruising boats here. This marina is not on the ICW. If the boat didn't come in the Cape Fear inlet they probably would not stop here. However there is one boat here that we had seen at several stops in Florida and also at Beaufort South Carolina.

Our next move will be up the ICW. We will stop in Oriental which is claimed to be the sailing capital of North Carolina. It has 700 residents and 3000 boats. Oriental is about 125 miles from here so it will take us about 4 days or so.

Visiting Charleston

We departed Beaufort S.C. on Monday. We left a little after 9:00 AM and went to the fuel dock to refuel. We had to wait until 10:00 AM for the next swing bridge opening to head up the ICW. Prior to leaving I had talked to several local boaters from around the area and also the TowBoatUS operator about any shoaling we might encounter. They all said the ICW is passable at low tide the entire way. Well they were wrong. Yep, you guessed right how we found out. All was well until we got to our first cut. The ICW in South Carolina between Beaufort and Charleston goes up and down rivers. There are several cuts or canals between the rivers to pass between them. The first one we came to was the Ashepoo-Coosaw cut. This takes you from the Ashepoo river over into the Coosaw river. Except we were going the other way so we went from the Coosaw to the Ashepoo. We just happen to arrive at the cut entrance just after low tide. Several large motor trawlers had passed through before us. Well we hit bottom at a depth of about 4 and a half feet. We draw around 5 feet. There was a large sailing catamaran behind us and he passed us on our starboard side and went through. Obviously they draw less than us. Another sailboat behind us saw us stick in the mud and made a quick U-turn. Once the catamaran was out of the way we were able to back off the bank. The other sailboat, Calypso, and us talked on the radio and made a plan to wait about 30 minutes for the tide to come back in. We both just circled around together. When another large trawler came by, Life's 2 Short, they went through and radioed to us that they saw 7 feet on their depth sounder. We then continued on our way.

That evening we anchored in the South Edisto river around ICW mile marker 504. There wasn't much protection from the wind and there was about 1.5 knots of current. The current causes waves to slap the bow which makes for a noisy night. All together there were 4 boats anchored here. Three sailboats and a trawler.

On Tuesday morning all of the sail boats left about the same time. We were last leaving at 6:45 AM. The next challange we had was another cut called Elliot's cut which goes into the Wappoo Creek. The Wappoo creek is a short stretch between the Stono river and the Ashley river. The Ashley river is on the west side of Charleston. Elliot's cut is very narrow and the current can really flow fast. When we went through we had a current of 4 knots running with us. I barely had any RPM on the engine and we were doing over 8.5 knots. Once through the cut it was just a short distance to get into Charleston where we are staying at the City Marina.

Tomorrow we are leaving here and heading back out into the ocean. We have a good weather window for the next 3 days with winds forecast to be southwest 10-15 knots and seas 2-3 and 2-4 feet. We will head northeast and reenter the ICW at Cape Fear and the Cape Fear river. We have a reservation at the Bald Head Island Marina which is not even all the way up the Cape Fear inlet. Since I resemble the name of the marina I'm thinking about asking for a discount.

Movin' On

We stayed in St. Augustine for a week. This is a great city if you like history, which we do. The city is the oldest continuous settlement in the U.S. While we were there a friend of mine from High School visited. I hadn't seen her in 39 years and we had a great visit. We had communicated through email for a couple of years so when we finally met again it was very relaxed.

We departed a half hour late because of fog. The first thing we had to do was go through the Bridge of Lions and we could hardly see it even though we were in a slip 100 feet away. The bridge only opens on the hour and half hour so we waited. The fog lifted enough by 7:30 for us to get out of the slip and go through. We continued north up the ICW to Fernandina Beach Florida. This will be the last stop in Florida. Just a couple of miles north is the Georgia border. We decided not to do the ICW in Georgia because we had heard that they had not dredged the ICW for at least three years and it has lots of shoaling areas. One boater told us when he came south he went aground twice and bumped bottom many times. And this was with a shallower draft then ours.

We stayed on a mooring just one night in Fernandina Beach because we had a good weather window to go out the St. Mary's inlet for an overnight sail to Port Royal Sound. We left the mooring around 11:15 AM and went over to the fuel dock to refuel for the trip. We left the fuel dock right at noon and headed out. The inlet channel is about 8 mile long so when you finally get out you can hardly see the low lying Amelia and Cumberland Islands that make up the south and north land masses of the inlet. On the way out we saw lots of dolphins and leaping rays. That's right, leaping rays. There were sting rays leaping out of the water. That was a first for us. I had said to Sandy, "Now ya don't see that sitting at home in your living room".

The wind and seas were pretty calm when we finally got out and made our turn northeast. Wind was about 8-10 knots from the southeast and seas around 1 foot. A very comfortable ride. We were moving about 5-5.5 knots. We had planned for an arrival at the Port Royal Sound outer buoy around 7:30-8:00 the next morning. I wanted to enter during daylight. Sometimes they move the entrance buoys from what is on the chart depending on where the current shoaling is.

As the night progressed the wind was forcast to turn to the southwest and freshen to 10-15 knots. The forcasters were right on with this one. Around 8 PM the wind slowed some and by midnight had clocked around to southwest and picked up speed. Unfortunately so did the seas. The waves became 2-3 feet.

During the night we had heard several distress calls to the coast guard. One was a fire onboard a boat. The boat was in one of the sounds and they were able to get the fire out while another boater came to their aide. Another was an overturned boat about 100 mile southeast of Charleston. When you hear those you thank god it isn't yourself that is having an emergency.

We had to cross the entry channel to Tybee Roads which goes into the Savannah River. It was still dark but I could see several objects on radar right in our course path. There was no moon and it was really dark. I first picked up the objects on radar about 16 miles away. As we approached we could make out that they were anchored ships waiting to go into that channel. We slowed down some since it was getting close to 6 AM when there is a little daylight. Once we could clearly see a path through the anchored ships we continued.

We arrived at the Port Royal Sound buoy at 7:55 AM with winds around 20 knots and seas 2-4 feet. With lots of 4's. The current and wind was pushing us east and when entering the channel we had to have a 20 degree crab to the west of course to stay between the buoys. From the outer buoy it is about 28 miles to reach Beaufort S. C. We arrived right at noon and tied up at the Downtown Marina. It was exactly 24 hours and we were tired. We were not able to get much sleep with the seas so lumpy. 2-4 foot waves are not bad except the period between the waves was very short and the direction was confused, meaning they came from several different directions.

We are going to visit here for a couple of days and then head up the ICW to Charleston.

Well, it's Saturday night and you know what they say about sailors. A sailor likes his rum like a diesel likes its oil.