Revisiting scenes from the past
Saturday 28 November 2020
When the alarm went off at 5:15 am, I didn’t exactly spring from my bunk full of enthusiasm to get underway. I dragged on a few layers of clothing and gratefully accepted the coffee Mike had warmed up. Walking along the dock to the bathroom, I noted that the current was almost undetectable. (Typically in Charlestown what you see is debris moving very swiftly past the docks.) It did seem like this would be a good time to leave the slip. The small problem was how extraordinarily dark it still was at 6 am. We decided to depart at 6:15. Once we were out into the harbor you could see some light in the eastern sky. It took a fair while before details started to emerge from the dark.
The first obstacle was a high clearance fixed bridge. We have negotiated many of these on the trip so far. In the dark though, it’s quite disorienting. The lights that we worry about hitting on the day transits are lighted green at night and the fenders around the bridge pilings are picked out in red lights. It takes a while to figure out what you are seeing. Shortly after the high bridge came the Wappoo Creek Bridge. We had to call and request an opening of this drawbridge. Luckily on Saturday, the bridge opens on request all day. Wappoo Creek Bridge seemed to be a forest of red lights as we approached. Once the draw was fully opened to lights on the opening sections turned to green signaling that it was safe to proceed.
One mile further on we came to Elliott Cut, a short section connecting the Stono River with the Ashley River. We both remember this section very well from the 2012 trip. Someone had advised us that the current here could flow strongly. We dutifully checked the current for the day we planned to leave Charleston and timed our departure accordingly. However, we were misreading the current information and found ourselves making minimal progress with the cut a raging torrent. Today, we were catching the last of the flood tide and moved through without difficulty. That’s the way to do it!
After about four hours we turned off the ICW into Tom Point Creek. The tide was now falling and we have notoriously shallow sections ahead. This is an anchorage we used in 2012. I couldn’t really remember it but once we were approaching the area, I did recall this section. As we were picking our anchoring spot, we saw dolphins in the creek. We are anchored in the creek and have already swung around on the current once. Our memory of this spot is that we spent the night “heeled over” with wind pushing us one way and current another.
New birds spotted today: White Pelicans, Little Blue Heron and Horned Grebe
Gloria
32 38.767 N, 80 16.556 W
No comments:
Post a Comment