Low country New Year

Happy New Year, everyone. On this first day of 2025 we are offshore, southbound in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Georgia. We should be in Florida by day's end. As a side note, yesterday marked the tenth anniversary of us becoming Floridians.

Thursday we ended the day at a familiar anchorage at Inlet Creek (map), just east of the Ben Sawyer drawbridge. There is a notorious shoal just east of there and we wanted to be past it on the high tide at the end of the day; on this occasion we actually detoured around it on a bypass that has been sounded out by others. The baypass was great, but there is now dredge pipe running down one side; it looks like they are starting to dredge the trouble spot.

Vector's lights are no match for those of the South Carolina Yacht Club.

Friday morning we weighed anchor with enough tide to get across the last trouble spot between Inlet Creek and the bridge, pushed mostly uphill through Charleston Harbor in the morning, and arrived to Elliott Cut just ahead of the turn of the tide, so we had a bit against us. That timing put us at the other notoriously shallow spots on a high tide late afternoon, and we pushed through the last and worst of them, the Ashepoo-Coosaw cutoff, right at dusk, anchoring in the same spot we used the last time we did this exact thing, where the Combahee empties into the Coosaw (map).

Saturday morning we weighed anchor and continued south toward Beaufort, soon finding ourselves in heavy fog. I drove on instruments for a good part of the day, much of it with the foghorn running, including right through Beaufort. There we found a sailboat anchored dead center of the channel; he had heard my Securite calls and reached out before we arrived, and we also saw him on radar and AIS, but I was just 300 yards away when I finally saw his anchor light. I told him he was in a bad spot and needed to move.

This line of red buoys marks submerged dredge pipe. We are in the bypass here.

Knowing we might end the day in the vicinity of Hilton Head, we reached out to friends Ted and Patti who live on the island, and arranged to meet them at Windmill Harbour. We have a reciprocal yacht club here, the South Carolina Yacht Club, which has been closed or otherwise inaccessible to us almost every time we pass by; this time would be the charm. The club manager was out but Ted tracked down another officer and secured our place at the courtesy dock for the night.

The yacht club is within the Windmill Harbour Marina complex, which is a protected basin separated from Calibogue Sound by a private lock. We arrived with just enough tide to clear the silted area on the lock approach, plowing the silt just a little, and entered the smallest lock chamber we've ever used, with just 18" on either side of us. Ted met us at the lock, and then walked around to the club as we spun around and came alongside the dock (map). We agreed to meet at 5 to head off to dinner.

Daylight view, Vector at the SCYC courtesy dock.

Louise and I had a nice walk around the marina basin just to stretch our legs before dinner. Ted and Patti picked us up at 5 and we headed over to Hudson's Seafood for dinner, familiar to us because we've tendered there for dinner from the Skull Creek anchorage more than once. While Ted and I have interacted online for several years, we only just met them in person early last year in the Bahamas, on their sailboat Little Wing. It was a five-minute meet-and-greet as they were taking their dog ashore, and so it was great to finally spend a full evening together.

The yacht club has a nice brunch on Sunday, and we were sorely tempted to partake. But it did not start until 11:30, and if we were not through the lock by noon latest, we'd be stuck in the harbor until the tide came up. We opted to save it for another time, and so we again missed having a meal at this club. We did walk through, though, and it was very nicely decorated for the holidays both inside and out.

Louise at the tree in the South Carolina Yacht Club.

In addition to the dropping tide, we were also motivated to be well clear of the lock before a storm front came through. This is the same storm that killed two on the gulf coast and then smashed its way across the country; we were expecting gale force winds and I wanted to be in protected but relatively clear water with the stabilizers working before it hit. The rain had already started ahead of the front and we had to wait for a lull to drop lines and lock through.

The front hit with a vengeance while we were passing Dafuskie Island in a wide, deep stretch, which was perfect. Our anemometer registered gusts of 50mph, but it was all done and gone by the time we got to the narrow tricky sections starting at Ramshorn Creek.  In due time we crossed the Savannah River and crossed into Georgia, and through our old stomping grounds of Thunderbolt. We had an easy cruise through the low country, passed through Hell Gate at mid tide rising, and anchored in a familiar spot at Cane Patch Creek, off the Florida Passage (map).

I snapped this pre-sunset view as I was navigating Hell Gate.

Monday morning we weighed anchor on the turn of the tide, and briefly considered the option of going off shore at St. Catherines for the outside run to St. Simons Sound. We had the weather and a favorable tide at both ends, but it would make for a very long day but save us no distance. In the end the ability to break the trip into two shorter but busier days won out over a very long day offshore on autopilot, and we continues south on the ICW.

That would put us in St. Simons Sound on New Year's Eve, and I spent a good part of the day's cruise scoping out our options for a nice NYE dinner. Brunswick had several places open for dinner, and was also doing a shindig in the park including a "shrimp drop" at a family-friendly hour rather than midnight. (Fernandina Beach, one inlet south, also drops a shrimp on New Years Eve). But Brunswick is a detour of several miles off either of our routes, and there is no good place to land a tender, with the marina actively hostile to anchored boats.

I had to wash these by hand, and I hung them over the edge of the washer to dry in the hot engine room. Louise brushed up against them and they lept off, then clung to the side by the magnets in their hands. It cracked us both up.

Jekyll Island would have been a perfect stopping point, with at least one place still available for dinner, but the tide was unfavorable for us to reach the anchorage by dinner time. That left St. Simons Island, where there is at least a free dinghy dock and numerous dining choices. I made a dinner reservation to be sure we were covered.

The second half of Monday's cruise was on a falling tide, which meant we'd have to find a place to stop before the Little Mud River, which has shoaled to just 4' deep. We set our sights on the last anchorage before the shoaling, but not before we had to do-si-do with the cruise ship American Liberty in another narrow section at near dead low tide. I ended up station-keeping so we could meet in a straightaway with enough width for both of us.

American Liberty approaching. This photo makes it look like there is more room than there is; I'm right on the edge of the channel and you can see the channel marker off my starboard bow.

We turned off the ICW at the South River, adjacent to Wolf Island and the eponymous national wildlife refuge, and dropped the hook (map). It was dark, quiet, and still, with a distant view of the Sapelo Island Lighthouse over the top of Queens Island.

Stopping here let us tackle the Little Mud River at a high tide of 7.6' first thing in the morning. At that tide level I can drive over anything that's not dry land on the chart, and I did a little weaving around to see if there was a better way through at lower tide levels than the track we've been using. I think I found an improvement of just a few inches in one small section.

A view of our one-whistle pass out the pilothouse window.

Clearing through there at the morning high had us arriving to our chosen anchorage between Lanier and St. Simons Islands right at lunch time, and we dropped the hook in a spot 3/4 of a mile from the free dock (map). We have dear friends who live here, but they were out of town for the holiday. We splashed the tender in the warmth of mid-afternoon and I went to the landing at Gascoigne Bluff Park stag to refresh my memory of the walk to town.

The shortest route to town involves walking in the soft grass along a very busy road for a quarter mile before the sidewalk begins. The paved route involves a detour that adds a quarter mile to the trip. Either one of those would ace us out of walking even one direction, so I walked over to the nearby marina to ask if we could tie up for dinner, which cuts that quarter mile back off the paved route, and they agreed.

Sunset over Wolf Island.

We headed back ashore together at 4 for a 5pm reservation and were able to walk the whole way to our reservation at the Wolf Island Oyster Company (we did see plenty of oysters when we were at Wolf Island). We did have to take shortcuts through the grounds of the Frederica Academy and the parking lots of the Hampton Inn and the B.Lush spa. Dinner was good and the place had an upbeat vibe with the Carolina game on in the bar. Afterward we walked to the Winn-Dixie for provisions before Ubering back to the marina.

Lots of things in the maritime world operate on UTC, often called Greenwich Mean Time, and there is no shame in us having our own little celebration at home at "boater's midnight" or 9pm. I was still up at actual midnight, but in deference to Louise, already asleep, and the two sailboats anchored nearby, I refrained from sounding the Kahlenbergs. Instead I stepped out on deck to take in the distant fieworks going off all around us.

These were the closest, on the ocean side of St. Simons. Not much of a view.

This morning we had a relaxing morning aboard, with the tide at St. Marys inlet unfavorable for a departure earlier than 11:15 or so. We weighed anchor right around then and zipped down the river and out the inlet on a strong ebb. As I type the plotter is projecting an arrival at St. Mary's inlet around 4:10, which is a bit early as the flood does not start until 4:30. The later we arrive the less ebb we will have to fight; we should be in Fernandina Beach about an hour later, right at sunset.

Even though we are almost to Florida, we're still not far enough south. We were fortunate to have a nice warm day for our long walk yesterday, but temperatures are on the way back down and by this time next week, it will be freezing overnight again. At this writing we're not sure which way we'll turn when we hit the St. Johns River tomorrow sometime.

Gratuitous additional pic of SCYC at night.