This post covers two legs of travel, staging us to get through a couple of tricky spots when the tides and currents were in our favor.
Thursday, November 29 – to St. John’s Yacht Harbor
Distance traveled: 14 nautical miles
Travel time: 2 hours, 10 minutes
This was a really short day, designed to get us through a couple of tricky spots. Just after leaving Isle of Palms, there was a short stretch of the ICW known to have some shoaling. C’est la Vie got caught there for a short time while waiting for the tide to rise. We draw two feet less than they do, so we figured that if we went through there about an hour before high tide, we’d have no problem.
This stretch also includes two draw bridges that Sabrina can clear, but most sailboats and many trawlers cannot. This means that we can go through pretty much when we want to, as long as we’re not behind several boats waiting for an imminent opening. The first bridge was shortly after the shoal, and a little over an hour we were into Charleston Harbor.
Since we’re on a tight schedule, we didn’t stop at Charleston. The city was an impressive sight from the harbor, though, and Charleston will be on our list for some “shore leave” in the spring.
Leaving Charleston Harbor took us through Elliott Cut, known for its swift current when the tide is flowing in or out. After passing through another draw bridge (during a scheduled opening), we hit the narrow and swift part of the Cut. Even though we were still just after high tide, the current added 3 knots to Sabrina’s usual cruising speed of 7.
Thursday night we were at St. John’s Yacht Harbor, an impressive marina on the Stono River. We used their courtesy car to pick up a few groceries and medicines since we are both fighting a cold.
Friday, November 30 – to Beaufort, SC
Distance traveled: 55 nautical miles
Travel time: 8 hours, 20 minutes
Thursday’s short day was followed by a long one – to the historic town of Beaufort. It’s a favorite of cruisers, with a convenient municipal marina and a short walk to some really good restaurants.
We needed to cover some distance on this leg, as there really aren’t any stops between St. John’s and Beaufort. Needing most of the day’s light to cover this distance, there wasn’t much opportunity to manage our departure time to use tides and currents to our advantage. Accordingly, we spent much of the early part of the day with current slowing us down.
Brief digression – in Southport, NC one of the marinas conducts a daily briefing for cruisers to alert them to trouble spots on the way south. This briefing includes about 50 slides, each addressing a spot where there is shoaling, low clearances (not a problem for Sabrina), and potential errors in the paper charts that could lead deep-draft boats to be grounded. We couldn’t atttend the briefing, but we did get hold of the slide deck. Anyway, today’s stretch included about 20 of those slides. Most weren’t a problem given Sabrina’s shallow draft, but we did hit one of the locales at dead low tide, as we went through we saw about 2 feet below our hull and probably inches below our keel.
We arrived in Beaufort at about 4;30 pm. As often happens, we were joined at the dock by several other boats and crews that we encountered and spoke to along the way. Always good to put a face to a voice. The last vessel into the dock after us was a 90-foot Coast Guard cutter – the Ridley. I found it odd that a large coast guard vessel would dock overnight at a public marina, and this morning we learned why. They purchased over $4,000 of diesel fuel, which is over 1,300 gallons. This would have taken hours and probably a big bite out of the marina’s fuel supply, as well as caused angst for any other docked boats who wanted to buy diesel. Luckily the weather was bad – I doubt if too many other boats left today anyway.
Friday evening we had dinner with Bruce and Dorsey Beard on Esmeralde, at a nice little Italian restaurant a short walk from the marina. Their signature dish? Shrimp and grits, which is to South Carolina what crawfish etoufee is to Louisiana. Kitty belatedly realized that she is on a shrimp and grits tour…on the trip back I think she will post photos and reviews.
Today was a dreary day with some rain. We did our laundry (along with several other people – laundry is a normal rainy-day activity for cruisers), then walked around downtown and had some lunch. Weather tomorrow and Monday is iffy – if the morning looks rain free we might try to go the 20 miles to Hilton Head. If it doesn’t, we will probably be here until Tuesday.
MV Sabrina goes ... 