Captain's Log: Mais Oui!

Duck Creek over the transom after dark. This is just south of Georgetown, SC in one of our favorite anchorages.

​As I sit down to write, Stinkpot is laying at anchor on the Stono River, a mere mile and a half from Elliot Cut/Wappoo Creek, and a half-hour’s cruise from Charleston Harbor, South Carolina.   The solar eclipse is in progress over our heads, though, this far from the path of totality, it’s not amounting to much except about a half hour of poor charging from our solar panels. It has been a mere 11 days since I last hit “post” on this blog, and that feels like an eternity ago.

Our week on a Brunswick, Georgia dock in a scenic location (Two-Way Fish Camp and Marina) was at once relaxing and fruitful. We received Amazon packages, fixed broken stuff, and generally enjoyed not moving for a little while. After 17 months of (almost) not going anywhere by boat, having that time to decompress from the pressures of being underway, as we nudge back toward being "on-the-move" boat nomads again, really felt nice. On Monday, April 1st, I did drop our dinghy, Li’l Stinker, and took a 5-ish mile round trip run through Governors Cut to Darien, GA, where I towed our folding wagon to the hardware store, a weird Family Dollar/Dollar Tree combo store, the local grocery store, and the liquor store to stock up our rapidly depleting ship’s stores. I left Stacey behind to leave room in the boat for loot. The dollar-store trip was to buy a cooler because I forgot to bring an insulated container of any kind for frozen or refrigerated stuff. I bought a small Igloo that is about the right size for a 12-pack of beer, which I believe is the standard of measurement that is used in these cases.

The furthest of the stores from the dock was the dollar store, which was 1.3 miles from Darien’s town dock. The sun was hot, so I looked for fleeting shade on the sidewalks as much as I could find it. With the goods in tow, I made my way back to the dinghy and to Stinkpot. During the trip to Darien, I averaged about 10 knots with the mostly empty boat. The trip back had me more around 5 to 6 knots with all the stuff and the current, and the wind had come up a little, so I did have a few “wet” moments when hitting small waves, but Li’l Stinker got me back without issue.

Your humble scribe, returning from Darien, GA with a boatload of loot.

Wednesday morning, April 3, we got underway and pointed ourselves northard yet again. Winds, again came up out of the southwest about the time we had the anchor down. Now, captain’s mea culpa, I had dyslexically misread the wind direction on the NOAA weather chart I always refer to, and I had it in my mind that the wind would be out of the southeast, so as the wind started up out of the southwest, I was more than a little alarmed since I chose an anchorage with an, albeit minor (and likely only at high tide), southwest exposure on the North Newport River. It was just uncomfortable enough that I made the decision to weigh anchor after only a few minutes and move over to nearby Walberg Creek—a move that put us in a much more comfortable place for getting a night’s sleep, which is exactly what happened.

Stacey, caught immortalizing a gorgeous sunset in Walberg Creek, Georgia.

Thursday morning had us weighing anchor once again and running up to Savannah,  and this one was another “false stop.” We planned to anchor in our usual place on Turner Creek, just beyond the Johnny Mercer Boulevard Bridge, but we arrived at dead low tide, and there was no place with enough water for us to comfortably anchor while leaving sufficient room around us for vessels to safely get by us. The winds were once again building, and I didn’t want to wait for the 8-foot tide to come in to allow me to find “the spot,” as I have in the past, so we spun on our heel and ran up the Herb River where we found excellent shelter from the wind and a very pleasant night at anchor.

The next morning we were expecting to run up to Hilton Head and stay at one of the two places where we have enjoyed free dockage in the past, courtesy of reciprocity with our MTOA “yacht club” membership. With the dawn, we weighed anchor and pointed in that general direction, and Stacey began making the required phone calls to secure the dockage. First she called the South Carolina Yacht Club at Windmill Harbour to ask about their guest dock, and was informed that there was “no room at the inn” so to speak, due to a weekend regatta. Then she tried Wexford Harbour Yacht Club and received the news that their lock was in a state of disrepair, and no boats could come or go, so they waved us off with apologies. She also tried the Beaufort Yacht and Sailing Club, and they too were suffering a regatta. We took the time to run up Broad Creek anyway to take advantage of South Carolina’s cheapest documented fuel price ($3.90) at Palmetto Bay Marina, and then made our way up Mackay Creek to a familiar anchorage behind Pinckney Island to, once again, wait out the wind and catch an evening kip. The wind meant no going ashore for an island stroll. Pinckney Island is a nature preserve with, what we are told, are excellent trails, but we have yet to experience them for whatever reasons, most of which I can’t remember. I do remember the first time that we tried, we couldn’t land our fully-inflatable dinghy because there was no place ashore that was not encrusted with inflatable-eating oyster shells. Li’l Stinker’s fully-aluminum hull obviates that problem, but there is nothing fun about dinghying around in strong winds with the kind of wave action we were seeing. Stinkpot shrugs off those kinds of waves pretty well at anchor, but Li’l Stinker turns such waves into a “shower” for its occupants. Regardless, our perfect record of not going ashore on Pinckney Island is preserved. The winds did eventually lay down, and we had a pleasant evening at anchor.

Stinkpot, preparing to drop anchor by Pinckney Island.

I timed our morning departure from the anchorage with the tidal currents to give us both a good run across Port Royal Sound and a good run up the Beaufort River (that's Bew-fert—not to be confused with Boh-fert, which is in North Carolina). We decided to try anchoring in Factory Creek, which we did, and, as a result, we now have a new reason to stop in Beaufort, SC. It was a nice, short hop for the day. We spent the night aboard, and dropped the dinghy in the morning for a few errands. We loaded ourselves and our wheeled cart into Li’l Stinker and made way to the nearby boat ramp, tied up and walked the mile or so to the hardware store (which lacked what we were seeking) and Food Lion which satisfied our grocery list entirely.

Upon returning to the dock, we found Li’l Stinker “beached” alongside the floating dock on rip-rap from the falling tide. We really didn’t think we were so close to the water’s edge that would be an issue, but score one for an aluminum boat. With my shoes off and pant-legs rolled up, I dragged our steed into deeper water, we loaded our purchases, and off we went to the boat.

After our purchases were properly stowed, I broached the subject of getting underway. We had previously considered staying in Beaufort for two nights since it was such a relaxing spot, but the weather forecast was looking ominous later in the week with rain and high winds (again) forecast. I suggested that we might want to beat feet to get up the Waccamaw River where there would be tall trees and narrow, winding waterways to hide from the gusting. We agreed that might be for the best, and also agreed that knocking the first 15 or 20 miles out immediately would not be a terrible idea. So, up came the anchor, and off we went. Within a couple hours, we had the hook down in an anchorage at the southern end of Bull River where we enjoyed a lovely meal of chicken fajita quesadillas followed by a solid night’s sleep.

Making our grocery run….

Monday morning inevitably arrived, and we got underway with the rising sun. The goal for the day was to burn some miles to get us ever closer to the Waccamaw River where we would shelter from the weather and celebrate my rapidly-approaching birthday. With a day of mostly favorable currents carrying us, we did exactly that, though this was a leg of the journey we will be remembering for a LONG time.

After we got underway, Stacey went below and made us coffee that we both enjoyed in the dawning sun on the flybridge. We were running through some “shortcuts” since the tide was high, and so I had it worked out in my mind that after we got back on the ICW proper, right after we moved through Fenwick Cut, I would give Stacey the con and excuse myself to take a shower. It was the perfect place. The waterway would widen up, the channel markers are obvious, the charts are simple. It was a perfect plan, and it’s exactly what we did. I stood up, Stacey took the big chair, I descended the ladder and walked into the saloon, and was about to walk forward when it occurred to me I should answer nature’s call, which I will often do “over the rail” when we are in remote areas such as this. I turned around to head back to the door and found myself looking at a large motor yacht coming around Fenwick Cut at an impressive speed, throwing a huge wake. We keep a set of cheap walkie talkies for communicating between ourselves on the boat, so I grabbed it and told Stacey to “watch her six,” to which she responded with a plea for me to return to the bridge. While all of this was happening the boat was getting closer and it was AIMING RIGHT FOR US! I somehow grabbed the radio and asked for a “slow pass” while simultaneously hauling the wheel over hard to starboard and running the throttles all the way up to get us out of the line of fire. No sooner had I done that, the offending vessel came to a near stop right behind us, and then, in a seemingly sheepish manner (though that might be my imagination) moved past us slowly, never saying a word on the radio before throttling back up and displaying to us the vessel name and hailing port: Mais Oui, Boothbay Harbor, Maine. We were almost run down by one of our own.

​[Read Stacey's version of this nail-biting moment on our Facebook page.]

Mind you, I don’t believe this was malicious. I think they had auto-pilot enabled and just were not keeping an “adequate watch” (not a good idea). Our presence in this secluded waterway somehow surprised them—at least that’s what I hope happened.

I turned the helm back over to Stacey and returned to both the rail and then the shower, in that order. I was shaking from adrenaline, and I still was when I returned to the helm, scrubbed and freshly dressed. Stacey was still shaken as well. This shared experience somehow monopolized our conversation for quite some time as we continued along, ultimately anchoring in the very spot where I started writing this blog entry—within spitting distance of Elliot Cut/Wappoo Creek, near Buzzards Roost Point, just west of Charleston in plenty of time to observe what we could of the solar eclipse so far from the path of totality. Dinner was leftovers aboard (and they were still delicious).

This morning (Tuesday, April 9), after a good night’s sleep, we rose with the knowledge that we would not be getting underway until around 9:30 to get a good run through Charleston Harbor on a favoring tide, and that’s exactly what we did, and we had a beautifully uneventful cruise all the way to the familiar “Duck Creek” anchorage just before the Estherville Minim Creek Canal. Tomorrow we will make our way through Winyah Bay to the safety of the Waccamaw River where we plan to cruise and frolic until the foul weather moves through. I’m sure there will be more stories to tell soon, and with any luck, they will not involve other yacht-folk trying to run us down.

Gratuitous flybridge shot. Notice the captain's freshly-washed hair.