December 27 - 7:30 AM Unfortunately, neither of us slept well. For whatever reason, it was too hot, then too cold up in the V-berth, so we’d both had a really restless night. AND the wind had changed. We took a look at the upcoming days. Bah. We looked at the ICW route, and knowing from our conversation with John and Pat that they were a little more than a day ahead of us, we decided we’d head down the ICW, making a stop at Calabash Creek on the first night and then pushing on to Georgetown (with an early morning start) the next day, where we’d catch up with Pat and John. Given that we had ample depth, we pushed off from the town dock, but not before hailing the marinia next door to see about fueling up, replenishing our water and possibly… showers?? The marina directed us as to where to tie up when we pulled in and we headed over to the marina at about 9. We tied up, and began fueling and refilling our water tanks. Unfortunately, the docks in Beaufort had had their water turned off so we weren’t able to top off our tanks, and prior to Don and Brian fixing the bulk of our water issue, we had already gone through one entire 50 gallon tank between Belhaven and Southport. We inquired about showers and were told that since we were filling up, there’d be no charge for us to take a shower in their facilities. A the joy of HOT HOT water and really strong water pressure! Showered and fueled, we thanked the marina attendant and cast off, heading down through what we knew would be a treacherous stretch, both from Skipper Bob’s and from an email from John and Pat warning us of a shallow area in Shallote’s Inlet where the boat behind them had grounded.
We plugged along, taking turns at the helm. As we approached Lockheart’s Folly, an area warned about in Skipper Bob’s we were making good time, and I was at the helm. Forewarned that this area would be tricky, I slowed the boat engine to cut our speed, even though we were still drawing 9 feet below the keel, but we had a strong current still behind us, so even with the engine running practically at idle, we were doing about 6kts. 10′…9′…9.5′…-0.5′ WHOOMPH we were aground. IN THE CHANNEL, and I mean DEAD on IN the channel, and not even at low tide!! We were on the rising cusp of the tide, about an hour into the tide coming up, but we were aground and hard. Thankfully in sand, but still. We went from 6kts to 0kts in a matter of seconds. I tried to ease us backwards off the sandbar, but no luck. Brian came up and took the helm, but we were well and truly stuck. We tried putting out the Genny to see if we could tip ourselves off. I hung my body over the leeward side, holding onto the stays, no luck. We got passed by a couple of power boats, one of whom hailed us as they went by, saying it looked like we weren’t making much progress. Ha ha I thought, and yelled back, “nope but we’re trying!” about 30 seconds later, this same boat turned around and came back to us. Two guys aboard (the driver as it turns out relocated from Burlington, VT about 12 years ago) and they kindly offered to give us a pull off of the sandbar. We quickly threw together some lines to form a tow rope, cast it over to them, and with a couple of really really good tugs, they pulled us free! A little alarming in the process since we were pretty well stuck in, but they got us off and even came back and gave US a beer! Nice people. We didn’t relly get into good water until a couple of markers up, and then we were fine until we got to Shallote’s Inlet depth wise…Unfortunately, the engine wasn’t so happy about our grounding. A few minutes after we hit, we noticed some white smoke coming out of our exhaust. grrrrr. Brian went below and began checking things, the temp, the coolant, etc. We reduced our speed pretty dramatically, and coasted where we could. We killed the engine for a little while and took what advantage we could of the slight breeze off our side by pulling out the Genny. Coming through Shallote’s we were really grateful for Pat and John’s heads up about G81, we stayed slightly to the right side of the channel, honoring ALL markers, and although we had one very slight touch on the ground, we made it through without incedent, although the engine still wasn’t happy and was still producing intermittent puffs of white smoke. All of a sudden, it began to get foggy, and I mean REALLY foggy. We cut our speed, and Brian dug out the Nav rules book to see what we should be doing as far as sound signals to keep ourselves safe. We put on all the lights, Nav, Anchor, and all the interiors to make ourselves as visible as possible, and I set my watch timer to go off every two minutes. We quickly plotted our course below on the nav system, so that we could ensure that we stayed in the channel - since we couldn’t see much beyond the bow of the boat, never mind the markers or the sides of the channel! We started blowing our airhorn the prescribed number of honks, and kept a sharp ear out for any approaching boats. We hailed the Sunset Beach Pontoon Bridge as recommended in Skipper Bob’s and were told that they had changed their schedule and were now only opening on the hour, so we’d have to wait for the 5PM opening. It was 4:10 PM, we were about a half a mile away (not that we could see the bridge) and so we edged over to the right side of the channel, and dropped our hook to wait for the bridge to open. We sat there for about 30 minuts, honking our airhorn every 2 minutes, one long, two short to indicate a sailboat at anchor, and stood by on channel 13 awaiting word from the bridgemaster. at 4:40, we heard Tow Boat US hail the bridge, and almost immediately the bridge hailed us to tell us that we could cross through behind Tow Boat US, so a few minutes early. We hauled up our anchor, restarted our poor engine, and eased behind the towboat and through the bridge… and about 10 minutes later I popped a bottle of champagne we’d been saving for just this occasion, we’d crossed into South Carolina!
About 3 miles up, and having seen a couple of dolphins despite the thick fog, we turned to our right and following the markers, pulled into Calabash Creek where we found, as predicted in Skipper Bob’s, a beautiful anchorage with good depths right off of the channel on the northeast side right behind channel marker R2. We dropped our anchor and cut the engine. Whew, good little Yanmar, still got us to a safe place where we could try to sort out what was going on, despite being overheated! I cooked us up some fajitas, using the delicious steak left over from Christmas dinner, and Brian broke out the Yanmar manual to start his diagnosis. I poured us some of the champagne I’d opened, and we toasted our arrival in SC.
I have never in my life heard as much radio traffic as we did that evening, and though we were well out of the channel, we did hail back several boats who had hailed that they were coming through our way. We put one of the lights that Joe (from Green’s Point Boat Yard) had given us onto the tail end of the boom, just to help light the boat up, and a few times we went out with the huge flood and shone it up the mast, with accompanying airhorn blasts when we had approaching boat traffic. At about 10PM, we decided to call it a night, and with every light except for the ones in the V on, we tucked in for the night. By that point there was pretty much no boat traffic, so we were able to get a good night’s sleep.
