We left St. Augustine at 7 am. We and Riverdance had checked the weather and the conditions looked good. We pulled up our anchor and made our way back to the inlet along with Riverdance. We passed by the barge working in the inlet and have to say he’s doing a great job. The water was about 30’ deep instead of the 12’ we saw coming down. It looked like a different inlet.
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| Dregde in the St. Augustine Inlet |
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| Looking out the inlet |
When we came down with Rocking B in the fall, it was rough with big rolling waves crashing on the beach. This time out it was calm, no waves no surf, just calm. So… the dredge is going a great job, moving all that sand from the inlet to the beach. We turned left as we got to the sea buoy and set a course for the sea buoy at Charleston. We had a beautiful sunrise.
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| Riverdance in full sail |
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| What was this little boat doing 30 miles away from land? |
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| Beautiful calm water. If only it had lasted |
We had a great day, gentle waves and calm wind. The only thing that bothered us was flies. Now, we are probably 30 miles out in the ocean and away from land. How do flies get that far out? Do they jump off a cruise ship? Do they blow out from land? We don’t know but we were covered up with them. We had a fly massacre.
We heard something jump up beside the boat and saw dolphins race to our boat. These dolphins are different than the ones we usually see. These are longer, slimmer, with a lighter color and grey spots. They are fast. They love to play with my boat. We kept seeing them for hours. We also saw lots of big sea turtles. They swim on top of the water eating the seaweed that is floating on top. They would stay up until we’d get close then they would swim away.
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| I know it's not a great picture, but this is a big sea turtle |
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| Dolphins playing beside Escape |
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| See, they love the boat |
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We saw a beautiful sunset with Riverdance along side us. |
Later while I was napping, I heard Shay and John talking about a distress call they had heard. A sailboat had been taking on water for a while and the pump had stopped working. The guy was alone on the boat and he was exhausted since he had been pumping out the water and trying to drive. He called USCG and told them he needed help; he couldn’t drive and man the pump at the same time any longer. A tug pulling a barge said he was near and could be there in an hour or so. John called in and told the Coast Guard that we were on a course that would take us to him but we were several miles away also. The Coast Guard told him they would send a helicopter out with a pump. When the helicopter got there it dropped the pump beside the boat and the man said he was too tired to try and get the pump, so they put someone into the water and he got the pump going. Shay and John could see the helicopter ahead of them. By the time we got to the location it was all over. Happy ending.
I had been dozing on and off….yes I was feeling bad again. I think I got too hot again, we were going with the wind and the water was calm. I heard Shay telling me about more dolphins, and then he told me he was getting ready to take a picture of Riverdance in the sunset. I heard them talking about the sailboat and its rescue. I heard them talking around the wind quickly getting stronger and then just a quickly dropping off.
Every time I’d make a comment he’d tell me to go to sleep, I’d have to drive sooner or later. Anyway Shay woke me up around 3 am and said he needed to sleep. I got up and heard the dolphins and looked off the side of the boat and could see them in the moonlight. It was the perfect night, calm water and waves. Little did I know what was to happen next. Shay laid down and then the excitement started. I noticed the boat rocking and bouncing more. Connie from Riverdance was taking her turn at the helm and radioed me asking if I thought the waves were rougher. I told her yes. She checked the radar and said she didn’t see bad weather so we settled down. When the boat rocked so hard it almost threw Shay off of the daybed, he asked what was going on. I told him the waves had gotten up. He rolled over and went back to sleep. Then the moonset and it was pitch dark, cause it was cloudy and we didn’t even have any starlight.
So I held on, watched the miles go down, and watched the hours go down until we would make our next turn. We did not expect the night to be like this, but the weathermen don’t always get it right. We got a call on the VHF radio from a guy on a sailboat that was about 7 miles ahead of us. He said the conditions were the same in front of us so we knew it would be a rough time. Connie looked on the radar and thought she was some storm cells off to our starboard (that’s right for you landlubbers) and some lightning in the distance too. I was hoping the storm could stay away from us. Lots of times when you hear a weatherman talk he will say a front “headed harmlessly out to sea”. Well, we were “out to sea” and we didn’t want to be in it.
Shay went down to do an engine check to make sure everything was ok and found water had come in the front hatches. I had not completely closed the latches and water was sloshing back and forth on the shelf. He cleaned it up and when he got upstairs he was sick. He laid back down and tried to sleep it off.
The guy on the sailboat radioed us that the inlet was rough and there were container ships coming in which made things more difficult. We hoped the container ships would be into port before we got in.
I woke Shay up when we got to the buoy at Charleston. We were in really rough water and we were rocking from side to side and bouncing up and down. Once we made a turn to the port (that’s left for you landlubbers) it got calmer, since the waves were behind us and actually pushing us in instead of pushing against us. Thank goodness. We were all tired of that action.
We got into the harbor at 12:10 and turned north into the ICW and all was calm. I started taking stuff downstairs to put away. We had brought up jackets, sleeping bag, a bag of crackers and snack food, and the usual charts and camera and phone and chartbooks. Once I got that up away I started straightening up and even vacuumed. It was so nice to be able to stand and walk without the floor rocking and rolling.
We anchored in Dewees Creek around 2 pm. We brought the rest of our stuff down and decided to take a nap. We were exhausted from lack of sleep and having to hold on in the rough water.
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| Riverdance in Dewees Creek |
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| Chartbook showing Dewees Creek. |
The red line shows the ICW which is our "road". You can see how narrow the channel is. If you get out of the channel, you run aground. As you can see, we left the ICW at Dewees Creek and took the first right. We actually went past the yellow mark to shallower water. The numbers show how deep the water is and we want to be in shallower water. I know that may not make sense, but we prefer 6-8 foot water to anchor in. That way we can put our about 75 feet of chain and have a good hold. Of course, we need room enough to "swing around" in a circle since we will move with wind and current.
You can tell how confusing piloting a boat can be. You have to pay attention to the markers and stay on the correct side of them. In the area above, we have greens on our right and reds on the left. But in certain areas, it would be the opposite. The general rule is "red right returning". Which means when you are returning from the ocean, you keep the red markers on your right. When you are in the ICW traveling clockwise that is considered returning. Right now we are traveling counter-clockwise, so we are doing the opposite.
Shay plots a course for every trip and makes sure his marks is following the correct line. Sometimes its very confusing. You may have markers for several channels near each other and it can be confusing which marker is the one you should follow. That's why it's so important to have a route and make sure you follow it exactly. Now sometimes the water outside the channel is still deep enough for our boat. Other times is may be very shallow or it may be rocky. Eithter its better to be safe than sorry. If you get out of the channel sometimes nothing happens, sometimes you do a gentle or not so gently "bump" or sometimes you go hard aground or sometimes you end up being beaten against the rocks.
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| We have talked about "driving" the boat using the "red right returning" rule, but what in the world are you supposed to do when you see something like this? Don't worry, Shay knows what to do. |
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| Leaving Dewees Creek |
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| When we went by these boats last year I said they were "pitiful" and they are more so now. |
We napped for about an hour then up to prepare dinner and do some trip planning for tomorrow. We were hungry since we had not eaten a lot during the outside passage. You don’t want to fill up your belly if you might get sick. After dinner we were ready to go to bed and get some rest.
We left at 6:45 heading to Bull’s Creek. We have stayed here before and think it is a great place to anchor. Riverdance will be stopping earlier at Butler Island. We enjoyed most of the trip with them and we hope to travel with them again. As John said, the last ¼ of our trip was not good, but at least the whole trip was not that bad.
We are passing thru a very rural area with few houses along the way. Guess who came to visit? BIG MAN AND WOMAN EATING HORSE FLIES! Lots of them. We only saw a few at first and them they swarmed us. We were swatting and hitting at them as fast as we could and we were still loosing, so we came inside. Now if you have kept up our blog, you know we hardly ever drive from inside. We like being up higher so we can see things better, so outside is good. But these horseflies were eating us alive. We were in the Waccamaw River so we were ok driving from the salon. When we got to Georgetown, the flies seemed to disappear. Maybe they liked the smelly paper plant better than us. At least they are gone. We talked about stopping at Georgetown for a day but decided to go on a little farther.
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| Georgetown, SC maybe next time? |
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| These birds followed us to eat what we churned up from the bottom. |
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| Our scenery has certainly changed in the past few weeks |
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| Captain Shay inside |
Guess what happened next? More flies. These are mayflies. They have triangle shaped wings and bite. What is wrong with our boat?? Why do we attract flies? I was downstairs cooking dinner so they didn’t bother me, but they got Shay. We had closed the doors and turned on fans when we came inside from the horse flies so we didn’t have any inside. By the time we got to Bull Creek, we didn’t have too many, but they still got us while we were anchoring.
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| You have to be careful when in the Waccamaw River, there's lots of stuff floating in the water |
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| Yes, I finally got my alligator picture. He was just sunning on the log. Shay turned around so I could get some good pictures, since I've been trying to get a good picture since last year. We blew the horn, trying to get an action shot, but he just laid there. |
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| Turtles, you'd better be careful, or you'll be an appetizer for the 'gator. |
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| Beautiful scenery |
We got anchored, ate dinner, took showers and settled down for the night watching a movie.
Today is my birthday. Happy birthday to me. No, I’m not telling you how old I am. Billy, my brother called at 6 am to wish me happy birthday. Some girls I used to work with sent a phone text telling me happy birthday. My dad called and sang happy birthday to me. Holly, my daughter-in-law called and wished me happy birthday. Susan a dear friend from Mt. Airy called and sang to me too. I have lots of people wishing me a happy day. Of course Shay told me happy birthday too. But what happened to my ungreatful kids and my sister? None of them called!
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