Day 8: Georgetown Anchorage to Charleston

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 than yesterday, so we opted for an early start. I went up front to release the anchor in the dark, and Ann assisted me with a flashlight. Unfortunately, the anchor came up twisted around its joint at the base of the crown, where the shank meets the fluke. 

We had several considerations. The boat was now free, and so we had to keep an eye on our surroundings. The depth was good, and there were no other boats around, but we could not see much because it was dark. I pulled out my phone and opened up the Aquamaps chart so we could make sure to stay in deep water.

At the same time, Ann retrieved some dock lines which I then lassoed around the anchor. It was dangling a few feet below the top of the bow. This took a few tried because it was dark and because I'm not a cowboy. Once I got it, we ran the line back to a cleat on the boat, but the trick did not work. So I lassoed another line from the other side, tightened it up against a cleat, checked that we were still in good water, checked that no other boats were around, and then lowered the anchor. This time it came loose. Good thing this was not our first rodeo. Our lines then got stuck, but using the boat hook, I was able to retrieve them.

One other thing was happening while I was doing this leaning over the edge of the boat, in the dark, not knowing if I was going to free the anchor successfully or not. There were these huge moth-type bugs flying around us. They were about 3-4 times the size of moths, and they were aggressively flying into us. They did not seem scared, the way moths are. One of them hit me hard in the ear, and it really smacked me. I don't know if it hurt or there was just a huge ick factor, but I was not happy, and I also did not want to fall off the boat because of these stupid things. Ann suggested later that perhaps they were little bats. I'm glad she mentioned that later and not at the time.

Anyway, as we secured the anchor, our surroundings became visible with the dawn. We lost around 20 minutes. Then, Ann gleefully reminded me that I was anchor boy, and she went up to drive the boat while I cleaned up the deck and washed down the anchor and chain, which had come up surprisingly clean this time. I don't like being anchor boy, but I'm afraid that's my new job.

As we pulled away, I snapped this photo of the sun rising from the side of the boat.

We were treated to some great views of the sunrise this morning.

Under way, Ann noticed some shadows on our ceiling in the helm station, and so we pulled up the shade and observed several sea gulls perched on the roof. We were excited until they started pooping. Now I can't unsee that.

As we approached Charleston, the waters really calmed down.

Here we are tied up at the "mega-dock" in Charlestown. It's an awesome feeling to be secured after a day at sea. Less awesome was having to wash the salt off the boat, but that's part of the routine.

We walked around Charleston and saw the beautiful sites of this cool place.

Tomorrow is our first day off from travel since we left home a week ago today. We plan on playing pickleball at a local park in the morning. Then I have some boat stuff to attend to, cleaning the AC strainer, switching some valves in the engine room and switching to the AC fresh water tank from the DC one, which I do at the first of every month. I also need to oil the joint on the anchor crown, and a few other minor tasks. I think we really need this day off, and we'll enjoy it.

Unfortunately, the forecasted seas do not look so great on Sunday. So, we are going to run inside the ICW. We are timing it to hit a couple of trouble spots at high tide. With 7 feet of tide, that should give us plenty of water under the boat. Once we get to Hilton Head, we'll figure out how to proceed from there.