The storms blew over us all night in Charleston Harbor. The large catamaran beat us off anchor by leaving in the dark. When I weighed anchor it came up muddy and with wooden debris possibly from an old sunken dock or similar?
We cleared the debris and pulled out behind MV Gratitude but quickly fell behind her. She was moving at about 8 knots and we had the current against us and were ok to simply keep up 7 knots.
We would be making way through Southern South Carolina’s ICW and it’s all about the tide in this area. Unfortunately, we were running into low tide.
You can see 7-8′ tides in these creeks and we were coming up to Watt’s Cut an infamous shallow cut. As we approached we saw a sailboat stalled out in Watts Cut. They were trying to find the deepest water in which to travel.
We hailed them to pass and wanted to offer that they simply follow us but they only answered our hail enough to pass then must have been too busy finding the deep.
As we passed we both said, Is that boat that orange?
We had to move over in Watt’s cut to get past the dredge that was in operation. We saw 5.8′ of depth just enough to slip through.
After getting by the dredge called “Tenacious” you can here my 6′ shallow water alarm going off. We had passed a SV Knee Deep who happily let us go first and requested that we hail them if we saw 6′ or less of water.
We ran at a fast cruise of 8 knots trying to make Beaufort SC before Downtown Marina closed at 5PM. The currents were with us and we arrived with plenty of time to fuel up before they closed.
This lovely 55′ Fleming trawler pulled in after us.
We got to watch as one of the sailors attempted to row his dinghy down current to chase his boat fender that was quickly getting away from him. Another sailor jumped in his motorized dinghy and quickly came to his rescue. There was no way once he retrieved his runaway fender that he was going to be able to row against the current in the Beaufort River. It was comical as they tried to make their way back. It took them a minute to figure out that both of them should be in the motorized dinghy and simply tow a lightweight dingy behind them.
We crashed through the back door of Plums restaurant for some burgers and IPA.
The next day we found our way to Q’s on Bay which had a larger selection of Craft Brew IPA.
The crew was all smiles
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Capt Mahty -
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1st Mate Kelly
We awoke the next AM and the loaner car was out so we grabbed some more ice, dumped the trash, filled the water tanks, and made some breakfast.
Our leg from Charleston, SC to Beaufort, SC looked something like this.. Not really as I did not take the time to figure out how to draw a finger line while staying on the ICW which snakes it’s way through many different creeks in these parts. But I think you’ll get the general direction.
MV Simple Life 