Our Strategy for Navigating Shallow Water
Sunday 22nd November 2020
Some sections of the Intra Coastal Waterway in South Carolina and Georgia are particularly challenging because of strong currents, constant shoaling and marginal water depth. We are scheduled to spend three nights on a dock in Charleston over Thanksgiving and so we have four days to cover about sixty miles of rivers and canals that contain some of these difficult sections. Our strategy is to do short passages making use of a rising tide to provide extra depth and to use the down-time when we aren't traveling to enjoy hanging out in the wild and beautiful marshes that make up this part of South Carolina.
There are some helpful resources that we can use to help locate the problem areas and figure out how to deal with them. “Active Captain” is a free-access website now owned by Garmin that has information about anchorages, marinas, hazards to navigation etc, with postings made by the boating community (#1). “Skipper Bob – Anchorages along the Intra Coastal Waterway” has for many years been the guide of choice for people heading down the ICW. It was originally an independent publication but has now been bought out be “Waterway Guides”. We have a hard copy from our 2012 trip, but we splashed out $17 to buy the latest online addition. One big advantage of this new version is that it has links to further navigational information on the “Waterway Guides” website (#2). Along with detailed descriptions and recommendations there are sometimes even pictures of the latest Army Corp of Engineer hydrographic surveys (#3).
Today we left Georgetown shortly after noon for the first leg on this section, aiming for an anchorage in the South Santee River. High tide was around 3pm and in the range of 4-5 feet depending on location. So we had an extra 2-5 feet depth above mean low water. One notorious section that we covered today was the traverse of Minim Creek and the North Santee River. However, we read on “Waterway Guides” (#2, #3) that this section has recently been dredged and is currently quite straight forward. The lowest depth we saw was 10-feet which is fine, but we might have had problems had we tackled this at low tide. In any event, it was a pleasant motor and we arrived in the South Santee River just before 3pm. The river itself is tidal and has significant current, but the holding is good and it’s a beautiful location amidst the south Carolina marshes.
The rest of the afternoon has been spent cooking, eating (Buccatine all’ Amatriciana followed by cherry bread pudding) and watching the Patriots lose to the Texans! We did take a few moments to enjoy a spectacular sunset.
Mike
33 09.102 N, 79 19.431 W
#1 https://activecaptain.garmin.com/en-US/pois/40268
#3 https://www.waterwayguide.com/nav-alert/4-8134/sc-esterville-minim-creek-mm-415
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