We had a weather front come through Friday Night. See if you can spot the subtle difference. Before:
After:
Several spots in South Carolina still have issues with flooding including broken draw bridges. The combination of bridge issues and weather issues made Saturday a hold day. We were in a remote anchorage with strong currents and strong wind that gave us a really tough time anchoring. Normally you pick a spot with swing room, set the anchor into the wind with 5 or 6 times the water depth in anchor line. The wind pushes you backward and you use the engine to back down harder and you are set. Here the tide range is 4 to 5 feet making selection of line length and anchor location more difficult and the current is so strong, the boat moves on some weird combination of wind and current that is constantly changing. We wound up resetting the anchor 4 times for reasons including swinging into the shrimp boat channel, dragging anchor, and going aground. Fortunately, we got a good set around 11 PM that held for the strong overnight winds. What a terrible anchorage! The next day we stayed in the same place and by evening it was a perfect, calm spot to spend the evening. Now we know why the reviews of various spots can be wildly divergent.
To get around the bridge issue and a few other trouble spots (the rock pile), we decided to make a short hop "outside" in the Ocean. We planned well and had great conditions - 2 to 4 foot following seas and 10 to 15 knots of wind plus a current boost at both the outbound and inbound inlets.
We even picked up a very tired hitch hiker several miles out and gave him a ride back to shore.
Now we are back in the canals of South Carolina hoping to make Charleston tomorrow where we may go ashore for the first time in three days.
420 seen (except for the little section we skipped) 824 to see.
Awesome trip! You missed my virtual hitchiking. Have fun in Charleston.
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