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.