And We're Off!

The last two days have been busy, eventful and fun! Here's a quick summary:

Thursday, January 12

We left the dock in Church Creek early in the morning, excited to get underway but also wary of getting through the maze of uncharted bars that the delivery captain, who owns the dock we were using, had been warning us about for the past week. GPS is useless in the creek (it showed us going over dry land) and the water is too murky to see any structure, so all we had to help us navigate were a few recent aerial photos of the creek from the local county, and some instructions scribbled on a sketch of the creek that the delivery captain gave me. After making it through the first few bars on the rising tide without any problems, we managed to bump on the end of the last bar. But after 5 minutes, we were floating free and on our way. To paraphrase Nigel Calder, if you're not touching bottom, you're likely to be missing some excellent gunkholing possiblities. That's certainly the case with the upper end of Church Creek.

The rest of the day was excellent, with Betsy and I navigating through miles and miles of the incredibly beautiful but desolate lowlands of South Carolina. It felt great to be heading South. Throughout the day, we saw loads of ducks, merganser, pellicans and shorebirds, and pod after pod of bottlenose dolphin. Quite a few of them followed alongside the boat and our zodiac (which we were towing) and put on a show for the kids. I'll try to post some photos or a video. Eventually, we came to our first bridge. Like many bridges along the ICW, this bridge was a "fixed" bridge with a height of 65', the minimum fixed bridge height in the ditch, as the ICW is fondly known. Our mast is 59' tall, which gives us a few feet off wiggle-room. But I have to say that my heart was in my throat as I watched the masthead pass under the span.

After weaving through a few shallow "cuts" that connect different creek systems, we passed close by a marine base north of Beaufort, SC that is home to seven squadrons of FA-18 Super Hornets. About 10-15 put on a private airshow for us, with a few swinging overhead really, really low. Darn those things are loud. Soon after, we came to the Ladies Island Bridge, which is a swing bridge in downtown Beaufort, SC. The kids had a blast watching the bridge swing open and waving to the bridge keeper as we passed by. 10 minutes later we were tied up at the Port Royal marina, where we rode out a nastly blow last night. I saw the anemometer hit close to 40 knots at one point. After toasting our first day over a great dinner, we all crawled into our bunks and fell asleep despite the noise in the rigging. A great start to our trip.

Friday, January 13

What a difference a day makes. When we went to bed, it was about 60 degrees; when we woke up, it was about 30 degrees. With the stiff W wind, it felt even colder. Over our morning coffee,

Betsy and I figured out where we were going to head next, and when. We checked the weather, tides and charts and decided to keep moving south through Georgia in the ICW, as opposed to heading out to the ocean and making an outside run. The stretch of the ICW through Georgia is known for its shoaling and shallow cuts, and to make sure that we hit the next series of cuts at the right tide (rising), we needed to be about 20 miles further down the ICW by the afternoon. So after Betsy finished up morning school with the kids and I finished a few projects on the boat, we cast off the lines and caught the outgoing tide down to Paris Island, and then up Port Royal Sound to Skull Creek. After poking around one anchorage and deciding that it wouldn't work, we tied up at Skull Creek Marina on Hilton Head Island. We then went for a walk down to Fort Mitchell, which is a civil war fort that the Union built to prevent Confederate troop and ships -- especially the ironclad CSS Atlanta -- from heading from Savannah to Port Royal Sound. Pretty cool. Back to the boat for dinner and some facetime chatting with friends back home, and then we're off to bed. Our plan is to head down to either Thunderbolt or Isle of Hope tomorrow. And if at all possible, we'll try to catch some of the Pats/Broncos game, somewhere. Go Pats!