2018: Hilton Head SC to Doboy Island GA

11/4/2018

Depart: Windmill Harbour, Hilton Head Island 7:55

Arrive: Doboy Island, Black River Anchorage 3:00

Distance: 67 nm

Locks: 1

Unfortunately, we did get held hostage by the lock this morning. Having gotten up with the alarm at 5:30 to catch as much daylight for today’s travel as possible, we found it disappointing that we ended up having to wait until the lock started operation at 8:00 a.m. We had the VHF radio tuned to channel 14, and as soon as we heard lock activity, we got ourselves in the queue to exit the marina. While we waited for action, Clark watched the sun rise and I read my book to pass the time.

Sunrise at Windmill Harbour Marina

Even going with Clark’s fall-back travel plan, today’s trip took us back out onto the ocean. We had beam seas, i.e. waves hitting us on the port side, as we made our way along the inlet into the Atlantic. It was a bit of a wilder ride than anticipated. Although Clark anticipated 2-3’ seas, we saw waves more in the vicinity of 4-5’ with some even larger. The stabilizers tried to do their job, but Clark explained to me, as we experienced a somewhat nerve-wracking rolling motion, that sometimes the stabilizers were “caught by surprise”.

Choppy Waters on the Atlantic today

Clark promised that the ride would improve once we turned because the seas would be hitting us on the port, stern quarter. After we turned, the ride definitely changed. With “following seas” the autopilot struggled to keep us on our designated route. While the boat was being pushed around by waves that lifted us up from behind, the autopilot continuously fought to correct the resultant cross-track error. Consequently, it often felt to me like the boat rose up out of the water, floated in the air, swiveled back and forth for an extended period of time, and then set itself back down in the water again.

The amazing part of today’s ride was the speed we accomplished first with the outgoing tide while exiting the inlet and later with the boost of the following seas. We normally travel around 8.5 to 9 knots. Leaving the inlet, we easily saw 11.4 knots, and as we traveled along the coast, about 4 nm off shore, we averaged around 10.5 knots.

Towards the end of our ocean journey, with a rainstorm in progress, visibility was severely diminished. As we approached Sapelo Sound inlet, we searched for the red-white marker noting the entrance to that inlet. When we finally saw the marker, we noted that the visibility was only 1.25 nm.

For more than 4 hours, we swirled around on the waves. As we did so, we noticed that no other boats kept us company out there. Unlike other days, we did not even see boats off in the distance via the AIS. Finally, as we reached Doboy Inlet, where we planned to exit the ocean, we saw a fishing boat on the horizon.

We had some “skinny” water to navigate coming into Doboy Inlet. We could see breakers off to our starboard side. I stood to get a better view out the front panel to look for the markers of the channel. Because it was still raining, everything got quite wet on the flybridge including me. It took about an hour to make our way back inside and to our chosen anchorage on Back River for the night. The rain still fell as we dropped our anchor.

In between rain storms, the sun came out for a few minutes in the late afternoon. Clark ran to look for a rainbow but could not find one. After that we just relaxed for the night.