Today's goal is to do at least 35 miles, half the distance to Charleston -- we both were looking forward to seeing the city and I was going to have lunch with a college fraternity brother who lives there and whom I hadn't seen for 20 years.
It was sunny and another "heat advisory" day -- the heat index was expected to get over 110. Worse yet, there wasn't much of a breeze, so while we were moving, the heat was tolerable, but once we stopped ..., well, needless to say, we were hoping for a strong breeze that night :-)
The route through South Carolina thus far had been either through highly developed areas like Myrtle Beach or along inland rivers lined by quiet wooded areas. Just south of Georgetown, however, the landscape changes dramatically. The Intercoastal marches through a series of rivers, cuts and sounds that are predominantly salt marsh and largely uninhabited.
Apart from birds, the most visible wildlife in the salt marshes are dolphins -- we saw many pods feeding in the Intercoastal over the course of the day. At one point, one individual decided to "run" with My Weigh. Now, it is quite common for dolphins to ride in the bow wave of a boat. sometimes jumping up and out of the water -- it's an amazing site to watch and they look like they are having great fun. Once, in the Sea of Cortez on a charter, we had dolphins run 20 minutes with us -- fabulous.
This guy was a little different -- he chose to run at the stern of the boat -- he would briefly surface right next to the helm, then go down and swim along with us. The water was a bit murky so sometimes you could see him and sometimes you couldn't. He did this for about 10 minutes, coming up a handful of times. When he would surface, you could see his whole whole body, including the blowhole and nose, quite a sight although sadly, I was not fast enough to get a picture of it.
The trip also had more than its fair share of shallows -- the Intercoastal is full of what the guides call "trouble spots" -- places where shoaling recurs no matter how much dredging the Army's Corps of Engineers does. These occurred at a number of the inlets that we traversed in North Carolina -- for the most part, they hadn't really interfered with our forward progress -- the waters would shallow, we would slow down and pick our way through, even bumping bottom a time or two, but you were through it and on your way in a few minutes.
Today was different -- we happened to hit a 4 mile stretch of "shifting shoal" waters between two marshy islands at dead low tide -- we were forced to pick our way through, steering back and forth looking for "deeper" water all the time (we never saw more than 6 feet). For a while, we were both incredulous, thinking that we had somehow made a wrong turn and wandered out of the Intercoastal -- but multiple checks verified we were right where we were supposed to be -- deep in the heart of a trouble spot. It took almost 1.5 hours put it behind us; we did run aground twice, but managed to get off quickly both times.
Our anchorage for the evening was a creek in the salt marsh just off the Intercoastal -- we were surrounded by fields of low, "wheat-like" grass as far as the eye could see -- not a tree or home or any sign of human habitation anywhere in sight. The waters were crystal clear; we could see a couple of dolphins feeding in the creek perhaps 30 yards behind the boat. We took a swim, half hoping that they would come and investigate us (the other half wondering whether all dolphins are really as friendly as Flipper :-) -- they never did.
The anchorage also had a nice breeze, which offered great relief from the heat while you were on deck -- unfortunately, it also had a strong current, so strong that it oriented the boat's hatches away from the breeze. Since we didn't have any wind scoops on board, there was no way to channel the breeze below (note to self: get some scoops). We thought about sleeping on deck, but quickly discarded that idea when the gnats showed up at dusk. We had no choice but to put up our shields and sleep below. We suffered through a very uncomfortable, hot and sticky few hours until the current flipped direction (the tide was going out) and the hatches came into the breeze -- sleeping was no problem from that point on.
It was sunny and another "heat advisory" day -- the heat index was expected to get over 110. Worse yet, there wasn't much of a breeze, so while we were moving, the heat was tolerable, but once we stopped ..., well, needless to say, we were hoping for a strong breeze that night :-)
The route through South Carolina thus far had been either through highly developed areas like Myrtle Beach or along inland rivers lined by quiet wooded areas. Just south of Georgetown, however, the landscape changes dramatically. The Intercoastal marches through a series of rivers, cuts and sounds that are predominantly salt marsh and largely uninhabited.
Apart from birds, the most visible wildlife in the salt marshes are dolphins -- we saw many pods feeding in the Intercoastal over the course of the day. At one point, one individual decided to "run" with My Weigh. Now, it is quite common for dolphins to ride in the bow wave of a boat. sometimes jumping up and out of the water -- it's an amazing site to watch and they look like they are having great fun. Once, in the Sea of Cortez on a charter, we had dolphins run 20 minutes with us -- fabulous.
This guy was a little different -- he chose to run at the stern of the boat -- he would briefly surface right next to the helm, then go down and swim along with us. The water was a bit murky so sometimes you could see him and sometimes you couldn't. He did this for about 10 minutes, coming up a handful of times. When he would surface, you could see his whole whole body, including the blowhole and nose, quite a sight although sadly, I was not fast enough to get a picture of it.
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| It's hard to get a picture of anything but the dorsal fin :-( |
Today was different -- we happened to hit a 4 mile stretch of "shifting shoal" waters between two marshy islands at dead low tide -- we were forced to pick our way through, steering back and forth looking for "deeper" water all the time (we never saw more than 6 feet). For a while, we were both incredulous, thinking that we had somehow made a wrong turn and wandered out of the Intercoastal -- but multiple checks verified we were right where we were supposed to be -- deep in the heart of a trouble spot. It took almost 1.5 hours put it behind us; we did run aground twice, but managed to get off quickly both times.
Our anchorage for the evening was a creek in the salt marsh just off the Intercoastal -- we were surrounded by fields of low, "wheat-like" grass as far as the eye could see -- not a tree or home or any sign of human habitation anywhere in sight. The waters were crystal clear; we could see a couple of dolphins feeding in the creek perhaps 30 yards behind the boat. We took a swim, half hoping that they would come and investigate us (the other half wondering whether all dolphins are really as friendly as Flipper :-) -- they never did.
The anchorage also had a nice breeze, which offered great relief from the heat while you were on deck -- unfortunately, it also had a strong current, so strong that it oriented the boat's hatches away from the breeze. Since we didn't have any wind scoops on board, there was no way to channel the breeze below (note to self: get some scoops). We thought about sleeping on deck, but quickly discarded that idea when the gnats showed up at dusk. We had no choice but to put up our shields and sleep below. We suffered through a very uncomfortable, hot and sticky few hours until the current flipped direction (the tide was going out) and the hatches came into the breeze -- sleeping was no problem from that point on.
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| A salt march sunset ....... |
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| ...... and its afterglow |
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