Last night was our first opportunity to spend a night anchored out
on Division Belle. We are about 20 miles south of Charleston in a beautiful anchorage called "Church Creek". The Waterway Guide says that the name derived from the practice of going to church on the flood tide and returning home on the ebb. The tidal currents here are certainly strong enough to require travel to be carefully timed.
The area we traversed yesterday and our anchorage are stunningly beautiful, and match every description of the marshes ever written. It is hard to capture in a photograph, but the vast grasses are greening for summer close to the water and still a delightful straw color behind. The currents and many shallow areas of the Intracoastal Waterway made some of the going very tough yesterday. We departed Beaufort at slack tide around
7:30 am, and had the current with us much of the day. But at one point approaching low tide we were literally touching bottom in the middle of the channel, meaning depths at low tide were right at six feet.
We stopped here at 1:45 pm yesterday. We could have made it to Charleston, but our slip is reserved for the month of June begining today, and we also wanted to be able to arrive at the Charleston Maritime Center at slack tide this afternoon, to make docking easiest.
A cold front passed through yesterday, bringing late afternoon severe storms that passed north of us and caused some damage in Charleston, and late evening huge storms that fortunately passed to our south. The storms and strong current led to a fitful night of sleep, checking the holding power of a new anchor and watching the location of strong storms.
We enjoyed a fine dinner on the aft deck prepared by the Lovely Laura Lee. We will take our time this morning departing to arrive in Charleston just after lunch time. This is pretty much what it is all about.
Update: We departed Church Creek at 10 am and arrived safely at The Charleston Maritime Center at 1:45 pm. While the marina here is exposed to wind and wakes, we are tucked into the best spot it has, and the only one that will accommodate our boat. We will get our sea legs quickly and be prepared to rock and roll for most of a month.
After a long journey, and many repairs in many boatyards, Division Belle is finally docked just a block from our home at The Ford Plantation. We left Hilton Head just after noon today, timed to arrive at Ford close to high tide this evening. Unfortunately, that meant a departure near low tide at Hilton Head. So, rather than risk shallow water at low tide in the Intracoastal Waterway, we went out the Calibogue Sound channel at the south end of Hilton Head and joined the Savannah ship channel to come up the Savannah River and join the waterway later in the day. While it was a rough day out in the ocean, we only had a mild chop going out a couple of miles and back inland via the Savannah ship channel. Our timing worked perfectly, and we arrived at Ford at 8 pm. High tide here was at approximately 8:30, so we had good deep water and the current behind us all the way home.
The trip covered 55 nautical miles which took eight hours, at an average of about 6.875 knots. It's a slow boat, but an extremely comfortable one. It was a great weekend and a great day, but we are very, very tired tonight. Next steps are to get the boat cleaned up after seven weeks in a boatyard, get the varnish redone, and make plans to start enjoying it this summer.
A word about tides, boat draft, and boat speed is in order here. The difference between high and low tide in this area is normally about six feet. Our boat has a six-foot draft. The tide not only affects where we can go at certain times, but also what kinds of currents will be helping or hurting our progress. With the current behind us, our eight-knot boat sometimes travels at up to 10 or 11 knots. We planned for today working backwards from a high tide at Ford at around 8:30 pm this evening. This meant we wanted to start coming upriver on the Little Ogeechee at around 6-ish, with the tide helping our progress and giving us plenty of deep water through the sometimes treacherously shallow low country waterways. This schedule dictated leaving Harbour Town Marina at around noon, at dead low tide. Given that, it made little sense to start out immediately joining the ICW through a shallow area named "Field's Cut" at low tide. Thus, we headed out to sea from the south end of Hilton Head, turned up the usually 50-foot-deep ship channel with the current behind us, and rejoined the waterway at around 3 pm, or mid-tide. The plan worked beautifully, and we arrived on schedule and unscathed by shallow waters and opposing currents.
It is good to be home. As with all boats, there is always much work to be done. But what could be more fun?