3/21/2017
Neither Clark nor I knew which route we would take today –
the ICW or via the ocean. Knowing that if we decided on the ocean route we
would have a very long day ahead of us, we set the alarm clock for 7:00 a.m. We
had to prep the boat for departure and turn in restroom keys, so we left the
docks at 8:15.
Before heading on our way northward, we stopped at Ocean
Petroleum in Brunswick, GA to add fuel. We called ahead to make sure they were
open for business. When we arrived at their dock, we saw no one. After securing
the boat to the dock, I walked up their in-need-of-repair ramp towards the
office but found the gate on the dock at the top of the ramp closed and
padlocked. I went back to the boat and
told Clark to call them on the phone since I could see them in the office, but
I could not get to them.
Clark spoke to a young woman who said she was just coming
down to assist. When she appeared, I was surprised to see her wearing sandals
with tall heels on them. I asked her about her choice of footwear for climbing
ramps, and she said that she normally just works in the office but they were short two men today. She was very
pleasant and helped us with the fueling. We added 334 gallons to the tanks and
that did not fill them!
We left the fueling station at 9:10 and followed the
waterway to our decision point – ICW or ocean.
Clark decided we would go the ocean path, so we followed the extremely
long channel eastward out into the ocean. He left me at the helm with
instructions to hug the left side of the channel while he went to take care of
some things in the engine room.
As I watched a fishing boat trawling in the channel up ahead
and a freighter clogging up the channel behind the trawling vessel, I hoped
that Clark would hurry back. While I was focused on the busy channel up ahead,
I failed to notice a small boat approaching from the starboard side with a
flashing light until he appeared at the opposite edge of the channel on what
appeared to be a collision course with me.
I should have slowed down and put the boat in neutral if necessary. I was just about to do that since he
came towards the green light on our boat, and he had the right of way. However, I
guess he decided not to “play chicken” with our vessel and abruptly turned in a
circle and went back the direction he came from. As the boat turned away, I
could read “Survey” written on the side. I wonder if I screwed up his
calculations on depth. I imagined him muttering about “women drivers” as he
went about his business.
Clark reappeared before I reached the trawling vessel and
the freighter. We continued to hug the left side of the channel as we passed by
them. At 10:45, about three miles offshore, we finally turned left to a heading
of 22 degrees to follow the coastline in a mostly northerly direction. Due to
following seas, we immediately saw good speeds at our normal 1600 RPM. We stayed
around 9.4 / 9.5 knots and sometimes reached as high as 9.7 knots which
translates into a whopping great 11 mph! Woohoo!
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| Atlantic Ocean off Georgia Coast |
The ride in the ocean was unremarkable, which is a good
thing except Clark and I fought to stay awake due to the tedium of the boring
landscape. We set two waypoints and, with the autopilot keeping us on track, we
had little to do in regards to navigation. The time to the first waypoint
showed around five hours travel time.
As the time remaining slowly decreased, we sat at the helm
and saw nothing but water, sky, and sea gulls. Not even a cloud presented
itself for our entertainment. The only
excitement came whenever we approached an inlet and looked for red markers to
confirm our location. With GPS, however, the likelihood that we were lost at
sea was extremely remote.
After five hours on the ocean, we neared our first waypoint
on our two-waypoint route, and Clark set the navigation system to head for our
second waypoint indicating another two hours of tedium to come. Eventually I
could take no more of the “excitement” and gave in to an hour-long nap. When I
woke, I found that Clark had taken the helm away from the autopilot and was
aggressively steering the boat in the following seas. Although he said
otherwise, I expect that his desire to steer had as much to do with his need to
stay awake as it did with the autopilot’s inability to hold a straight
line on the following seas.
Off in the distance, on the horizon, I could see two tiny
white specks, which I assumed were most likely sailboats. These were the first
signs of human life I had seen since leaving the Brunswick area. Then, as we turned towards the coast, we were
greeted by a container ship coming out of the channel. Since we had plenty of water, we navigated outside the channel and let this big ship have it all to himself.
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| Evergreen Container Ship |
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| Welcome to Hilton Head, South Caroline |
While traveling Clark had called two different marinas about
accommodations for the night. I asked him a couple of times where we were
headed, and he vaguely said something like “… further than Savannah”.
Consequently, I had no idea where we would spend the night.
The two choices turned out to be Skull Creek Marina or
Windmill Harbour Marina. At Skull Creek
we could arrive at any time, even after business hours, and tie up at a dock.
Windmill Harbour, on the other hand, had a strict 7:00 p.m. closing time. We
had to let them both know by 5:00 our decision on where we planned to stay.
When we reached the inlet, Clark did some rough calculations based on our
estimated speed and concluded that we would arrive at Windmill Harbour around
6:45. With fingers crossed that we could make it, we decided to go for it and
made the reservation there.
Exhausted from our long day of travel, we arrived at the
marina at 6:40.
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| Windmill Harbour Marina and Yacht Club |
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| Windmill Harbour Marina and Yacht Club |
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| Windmill Harbour Marina and Yacht Club |
The dock hand gave us literature on the marina and suggested
that we could dine at the yacht club if we so desired. After so many hours, I
only wanted to eat dinner on board and call it a night. I watched some
television – sadly reruns of shows I had already seen – and went to bed around
11:00.
Clark, on the other hand, stayed up to his usual late time.
Just when he planned to come to bed a storm packing high winds and thunder came through the
area. When the boat suddenly slammed against the dock, I woke with a start. Clark
ran around outside retying lines to take out slack, so we would not get slammed
again. When we docked, the dock hand said we would not need two spring lines or
a third fender because of the protected area. After the storm appeared, I was
glad I had ignored that comment and had added both the extra fender and the
second spring line.
Although violent, the storm was short-lived in the Hilton
Head area. The bulk of the storm passed through areas of South Carolina to our
north. We were fortunate!
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