So it was smooth sailing all the way to Beaufort South Carolina…
This is a beautiful town with a lot of old history. They have a day dock that you can grab a spot and stay from six am to one in the morning but no overnight stays. I was really glad because we didn’t have to dingy in to do anything and the dock was free.
This was a good stop for us we were able to use all of the marina facilities and were able to get groceries. We walked to the store but had to get a cab back we had to much to carry. I wish I had known the cab was so cheap we would not have walked in the first place but in retrospect it was a good walk we saw so much history in this area it was cool.
So we did some laundry and a few other needed chores and stayed a couple days, we even managed to do some motor work – we adjusted the carburetor, the oil pressure and installed a direct read oil pressure gauge on the motor. We managed to work it out that the gauge in the cockpit would still work too. It’s nice to have a direct gauge because electronic gauges can fool you. We also put an rpm and dwell meter on the motor and set the timing it was a few degrees off and so was the rpm gauge. Gotta love it – zero RPMs is five hundred and five hundred is really thirteen hundred, now that we have that figured out it makes sense why the sweet spot on the motor was so low.
We left just before it was light this morning, about an hour early, but the channel was well lit with markers. It was a hard call whether to leave or not because it was raining. I watched the weather radar and kept looking at the charts and figured if we could get down the river and to the Port Royal Sound early it would stop raining and we would have wind and maybe a hint of sunshine. My calculations were almost right we were soaked by the time we got to the Sound but I guess that’s why we have foul weather gear. We got to Port Royal Sound and the rain stopped as I thought it would but they called for light winds… Wrong, it was blowing strong and we sailed with just a small jib sale and were moving along nicely.
We now know why most people skip Georgia it is very tight, skinny, and shallow. We went across many shallow spots that many sailboats would not be able to make it through at time it was only four foot and we draw four foot three inches, I swear I think we hopped across a few spots with just a bit of luck. We were told not to count on making the draw bridge at Causton Bluff before Herb creek and would have to stop for the night and wait for it to open in the morning but we made record time and arrived at one thirty pm and was able to head south and go up Turner creek to get some ice and a few gallons of fuel and still had time to backtrack a mile or so to a nice spot to anchor in called Herb river.
The best part of the day was all the dolphins that were with us a good portion of the day, we even got a bump from one on the starboard bow, I think he was playing with the boat at least I want to believe this… LOL
So dinner and a sunset one more night and we start again in the morning headed toward Florida via the ICW in Georgia the state that seems to have plenty of wild life.
Wolfbernz