Day 16

We finally left Georgetown.  We got underway around 8:00 (surprise) under cloudy skies with a little wind left over from last night.  It also rained, again, overnight.  The morning was pretty uneventful until we got to McClellanville.  McClellanville is a notorious spot for groundings and shallow water, and it was approaching low tide.  In addition to that, because the water is on the shallow side, the crabbers put down crab pots everywhere, even in what passes as a channel.  There was a stretch there where I was scanning the water for crab pots with binoculars while Rick drove the boat.  I would call out clusters of pots so he could steer away from them or pick our way through, all the while keeping an eye on the water depth.  We saw 5 ft. under the keel, but nothing less, so we had a couple feet clearance zig zagging as we went.  This went on for about 4 miles then the pots weren’t being set in the channel anymore as the depth became greater.  We made it through the gauntlet.  About 11:00 the sun came out and it was quite nice after that.

We motored on and eventually reached the spot to turn up Seven Reaches Creek where I figured we would anchor for the night.  We made the turn and idled up the creek looking for a suitable spot.  Well, the creek was much narrower than I had anticipated.  Even though it was deep enough and others had shown it as an anchorage on Active Captain, it just was too narrow for a 42 foot boat.  So I spun the boat around and we idled back out the same way we came in and continued down the ICW.  I found another spot listed as an anchorage a little further down so we kept going.  Eventually we got to that creek and turned into it.  There was a line of crab pots all the way up the creek, great.  One commenter on Active Captain warned about going too far up the creek to anchor because someone in the past had dumped a bunch of telephone poles and they had snagged their anchor on them and having to get a diver to free it.  We went a couple hundred yards and dropped the anchor.  As we let out 30, 40,50 feet of anchor rode, the boat got closer and closer to the shore,  even though I was still showing 12 feet under the keel.  We were probably no more than 10 to 15 feet from the shoreline at low tide.  I still needed to let out another 10 or 15 feet of rode to get close to the 5:1 scope I needed with a rising tide, and allow for swing.  Crap, this wasn’t going to work either.  We were almost to Charleston Harbor, and the next anchorage would be on the other side of the harbor which is huge and takes a while to cross and get back into the ICW.  It was approaching 4 p.m. and there just wasn’t time to go all that way before dark.  The only choice was another marina, Tolers Cove Marina.  I really didn’t want to do that, but choices were limited at that point.  So here we are in Tolers Cove Marina out of the current.  On this part of the ICW they have 5 ft. tides.  Farther south they reach 7 ft.  That’s a lot of water that has to go somewhere, and the currents can be pretty strong.

Tomorrow we will cross Charleston Harbor and make our way to Raccoon Creek where we will anchor in a much larger area.

Today we traveled 62.1 miles, approximately 694 miles total so far.  It took us 8hrs.

Until Tomorrow, Over and out.