South Carolina at Last... this will take two blog pages

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

South Carolina at Last... this will take two blog pages

Hello from South Carolina

We are approximately 536 NM (as the crow flies) from Norfolk and taking a break, catching some mail, restocking the shelves and planning our next move. Lady’s Island Marina is a pleasant small marina on a small Sea Island. It is connected to Beaufort by a swing bridge.

(The Sea Islands are a chain of tidal and barrier islands on the Southeastern Atlantic Ocean coast of the United States. Numbering over 100, they are located between the mouths of the Santee and St. Johns Rivers along the coast of the US states of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.)

Last night we were swaying side to side in the North Atlantic off the Port Royal Sound inlet. We arrived after sunset, dropped anchor in the dark North Atlantic, still 5 miles from shore. Around 11 PM we had a good soaking rain come through which tamped down the exuberant rolling waves, and I finally drifted off to sleep. Around 1 PM the full Super moon shone through the clouds and my hatch. I went outside and saw an eerie site. The ocean was still, lit in suffused cloud moonlight, silent, horizon merging water and sky. The stillness did not last long 3 AM had us pitching instead of rolling and by 7 AM we were glad to be off the hook and on our way.

***When the moon turns full on Monday, Sept. 8 at 9:38 p.m. EDT, it not only will become the last super moon of the summer, but also this year's Harvest Moon -- which is a full For several nights around the time of the Harvest Moon, the moon rises around the same time that the sun sets, giving the moon a reddened, swollen, pumpkin-like appearance. According to NASA, the name comes from the days before the invention of the light bulb, when moonlight helped farmers reap their crops at this time of year.

On average, the moon usually rises about 50 minutes later than it did the day before, but in the days around the autumnal equinox, that difference decreases to about 30 minutes each night.

9/8--We left Jekyll Island at high tide-- a Full Super Moon exceptionally high tide. Our first challenge was the bridge, all ICW fixed bridges are supposed to have a 65’ clearance but we are finding that is not the case. We have twanged our antenna once and really did not want to knock anything loose. Everyone on the dock watched waiting for us to hit, but we slid on through no problem.

Along with a super high tide there is a low tide and we soon found navigating in the Mackay River a challenge. Where the charts showed 10’ we quickly realized we had 5’. We draw 5’6” so this was a problem. We eventually bumped and bumped hard. We still had 2 hours of low tidebefore it would turn and eventually float us free. Another sailing vessel going south commiserated with us, saying further north he went over a lot of “skinny water”. He rounded a bend we had traversed and was stuck fast. To add misery we had one heck of a storm growling all around us. We finally floated free, moved off in too deep water and dropped anchor. There were no boats, no lights, and no houses anywhere around us….

UNTIL 1 AM a full moon shone through the hatches and a bright light was fast approaching. A tug pushing a big barge. We had no time to react, the barge went on around us…We eventually got back to sleep, waking to find gray skies but good conditions to move outside and not have to deal with the vagaries of the ICW and super tides.

We had a challenge getting out to deep water, motoring well pass the 3 mile limit. A few shrimp boats passed us buy, one good rain shower washed our decks, but there was not enough wind to sail, so we motored the 60+ miles and a glorious sunset.

Finally in SC