Day 68 - Oct. 22
Always so relaxing to be on a dock....ah, if only we were rich.... After a pleasant evening, we took off again on the ICW, heading for Little River Inlet. As we approach our first bridge, I can see a barge on the other side that appears to be anchored, so I continue on my way. As I get closer I see that the barge is actually moving but not a problem, as he looks to be moving slowly. I've pretty much committed myself to getting through the bridge when I see that he is closer then I thought. I put the throttle full ahead and said a silent prayer. I squeaked through as he was entering. I think I noticed one of the bolts on the barge was loose by half a turn. Huh... Distance can be so deceiving on the water.
Along the way, Greg reconsidered our options and we decided to pull into Calabash Creek, and maybe spend two more days on the ICW until Georgetown. I was a little unsure of the directions to get into the creek so I asked Greg to ask a couple of fisherman as we passed by. While he's talking to them I head north of the red buoy like I think I'm supposed to. As I am doing this he is leisurely making his way back from the bow. As I'm getting the boat stuck in the sand he tells me I should take the buoy from the other side. Hmmmm... Maybe a quicker heads up the next time!!! No problem though. A quick full reverse pulled us out and then around my mark and into the oxbow to drop anchor. After about an hour, it looks like we're getting closer to the one and only other boat here and the crab buoy that was off the aft quarter was now off the bow. I get the engine going while Greg gets to the anchor. We move further up the creek and put out some more chain; I give the boat a good shove in reverse and it looks like we should be set for the night (I hope).
Today -29 nm and we are just inside the border to South Carolina.
Day 69 - Oct. 23
55 nm today in 9 hours for an average speed of 6 kts. So glad our engine is happy again.
We dropped anchor in Georgetown but it's a pretty crowded area. A lot of derilect boats anchored here and very shallow. I scrapped bottom as we were coming in thinking it was okay to pull off the channel to anchor. The depths aren't on the chart so we were working by feel. We finally found a spot but may swing out into the channel. Greg called Towboat US to ask for advise. The guy came over to take a look and said we should be fine, no problem with the swing. We asked about the holding and he said it was terrible. Those are words to give a person a restless night. We thought we might stay two days, but after getting here and seeing the conditions......
We still think we may head out to sea when we leave here. I've hit bottom three times now, and even though scrapping sand doesn't cause any damage, I'm constantly worrying about it, and spend all my day concentrating on staying in the channel and watching my depth so I'm not getting to enjoy the ride. I think by going off the ICW, we can take time to enjoy some sailing, and then pull into the places we want to see and spend a few days of down time. We'll see how that goes.
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