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Day 11: Hilton Head, SC to Darien River, GA

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Before we left Annapolis, I adamantly stated to Ann that I will not take the ICW in South Carolina or Georgia. I heard and read too many horror stories about the shallow trouble spots there, and while the ocean can be uncomfortable, it is so much easier than dealing with other boats, shallow areas, logs, barges, bridges, wakes, etc.  So, today we cruised in the ICW in South Carolina and Georgia.  And it was spectacular.  What changed? The ocean is rough and will be bad all week, and we are not prepared to delay our arrival in Stuart by a week. Also, Ann and I spent significant time studying the tide charts and the route, and we determined that with proper planning, this was doable and safe. Not only that, this particular stretch of ICW was special. We saw dolphins all day, and the landscape (waterscape?) was stunning.  We had an exact departure time to time the tides, and it was raining when we pulled off the dock. The upside of the weather was that a dolphin photobombed my rainbow pic
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Day 10: Charleston to Hilton Head, SC

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Our first day off on this trip was in Charleston, and we began our day, of course, at the pickleball courts near our marina. The folks there were unbelievably friendly, and we had some very nice games. Ann about to hit a winner! The convenient store outside the marina had a cleat for tying up your dog while you shop. The seas were rough out, and so despite my reluctance to run in the intercostal waterway (ICW), we studied the tide tables and woke up extremely early yesterday (assisted by the extra hour from falling back), and we were off the dock in the dark at 5:40 a.m. There was this amazing 180 foot sailboat in our marina with cool lights on the mast, and I got this photo just as we were about to pull out. It was very windy, and there was a strong current, as we pulled out, with one boat 8 feet in front of us, and another about 5 feet behind. Needless to say, it was scary, and we were both relieved that nothing was hit and nobody was hurt (my standard for success in boating) as we h
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Day 8: Georgetown Anchorage to Charleston

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I didn't blog yesterday because I was too exhausted, and really nothing too interesting happened, which is great on a boat trip like this. We had an "interesting" experience getting out of Georgetown that I'll get to in a minute. Southport marina as we get ready to leave yesterday At Southport we took the nearby inlet to the ocean for our second ocean leg of about 7 hours. The waves were at our port side bow, not on our beam as had been forecast. We both felt a bit nauseous most of the way, but that ended for me as soon as we were secure. We anchored near a busy channel leading into the ocean. We haven't often used our zero speed stabilizer, but I ran it yesterday, and it did a great job of countering the non-stop wakes as boats went by. As we prepared for bed, there was less traffic, and so I turned off the stabilizer, and we had a quiet night without the generator or air conditioning running. This morning, we saw that the forecast was for slightly worse waves th
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Day 6: Beaufort to Southport

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 It's been a long day. We were off the dock at 6:50 a.m., when there was just enough light to see our way off the dock and down the channel. This picture is misleading. My iPhone made it look bright, but it was almost pitch black when I took this. Within minutes, we were in the ocean. One nice thing about the open sea is that the sunrises and sunsets are unobstructed and awe inspiring.  We saw lots of dolphins today but were not able to catch them in pictures. The waves were around three feet coming from our port side beam at a 5.5 second period. With our stabilizer, that's really not too bad, but something about the constant bobbing made me and Ann both feel a bit nauseous. I rarely get seasick, so this was a bit surprising for me. We spent 6.5 hours in the ocean, and stayed at 11 knots because bumping up to 12 knots more than doubled our fuel burn rate, and we had enough time to still arrive before sunset. You can see our outside path today on the chart. Tomorrow, we have ano
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Day 5: Belhaven to Beaufort

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It's our last day before we sail in the open ocean. Belhaven was beautiful this morning, and we were under way at first light. It's Tuesday, and we can't believe we've been traveling every day since Friday. Sunrise was spectacular, as usual. Today's run was a mixture of narrow rivers and wide open sounds. It seemed the sea gulls had expectations of us that we were unable to meet. They might not be able to distinguish between a recreational boat and a fishing boat. They were all over us for a while today. We got some great news during our trip today. The insurance company approved our request for an exception, and we will be able to go South of Morehead City tomorrow. The plan is to take the ocean route to Wrightsville Beach and continue on in the ICW to Southport. It's our longest day of the entire trip, and if conditions allow, we plan on cruising at 13 knots instead of our usual 9.5.  Our boating days involve five to ten hours of sitting at the helm with very
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Day 4: North River to Belhaven

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This morning, Ann suggested that we switch roles. So she drove the boat out of the anchorage while I washed the anchor down on deck, in the cold, with water splashing back at me, and mud all around. When two people on a boat swap roles to learn each others' jobs, it is called cross training. This morning, I discovered that I'm not a huge fan of cross training. But, Ann was enthusiastic enough that I fear we may have switched these jobs for good.  Of course, it wouldn't be morning on a boat trip without a beautiful sunrise. I took a quick break from anchor washing duty to snap a photo of Ann, pictured at the helm station above staying warm and dry and usurping my job.  The run today consisted of lots of river driving. About 7 hours. But it was mellow and fun, and as my kids would probably call it, chill. We arrived in Belhaven around 3 pm and tied up on their fixed pier. They only get about 6 inches of tide here, so it was easy peasy.  We learned that the last leg of the Int
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