You can monitor my trip at the link: Second Winds Progress Live
Today was a travel day. And again, it was a Cheerios morning. The marina in Charleston has so much current
that one needs to be fairly close to slack water in the tidal cycle to make an
escape. That time didn’t come until
around 10:00 so I literally twiddled my thumbs until about 9:15 when I decided
that I could make it
easily.
 | |
| A beautiful old home on the Ashley River, Charleston SC |
The current was flowing
directly into my stern. The lane in
which the boat was parked is relatively wide so my plan was to back straight
across to the oppositeide of the lane which would leave me plenty of room to
make the turn out before he current bashed me against the boats on the other
side. Four folks from our group arrived
to help me off and I failed to impart my plan with them so as I began backing
out, they took hold of my bow pulpit and at the last moment swung me sideways. I slammed the motor into forward and gunned
it narrowly missing the anchor of the boat in the next slip. Dink ran interference between my boat and the
anchor boat. She got squeezed a bit but she prevented a damaging collision. I
got up enough speed to easily make my exit from there. Luckily the scoring committee was not present
to rate my departure or I would have gotten a fairly low score.
As I have mention, the
tidal current is frequently a problem. The
tide was ebbing as I passed down Charleston Harbor but as I turned up the
Ashley River, the flow was on my nose and my speed was drastically reduced to
about 3 knots. Several miles into the
Waterway, we encounter an extremely narrow patch of water called Elliot’s Cut. Heading
into the cut I was making about 3.5 knots but the current in the Cut was
flowing probably between 4 and 5 knots so with the engine running wide open, I
could only make about 1 to 1.5 knots. Luckily the cut was only about 200 yards
long and I made it without incident.
The rest of the trip to
our anchorage in Steamboat Creek was relatively uneventful although most of the
time the current kept the pace to between 3 and 4 knots. The sky was hazy for what I assume was smoke. I hear no news so I haven’t heard of
fires.
I pulled into Steamboat
Creek at about 4:30 after traveling about 30 miles. I understand that this tidal current will
only get worse as we travel south. We
have a 33 mile trip tomorrow and I think I will be on my way at first light.
As I was getting my
evening meal arranged, Frank, the skipper of the huge catamaran, Let It Be, came up alongside in his
dinghy and invited me to join him and his wife, Mary Grace for a tomato soup
and corn casserole dinner. I quickly
accepted. We enjoyed a wonderful meal
and had great conversation. Their boat
is beautiful and roomy. We dined in elegance
on the back deck. The mast on their boat
is too tall to clear the bridges on the Waterway so they had it shipped to
Florida so that they could make this trip.
They live full time on their boat. They are really fine folks and I
enjoyed the evening immensely.
I left their boat about
8:30 and headed back to Second Wind. I had dropped my anchor in shallow water
quite a distance from the other boats and my little 2.2 Honda had to work a bit
to push me back against the ebbing tide.
I made it back in time to get into bed by curfew.
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