We made really good time today and made Beaufort, SC by 15:30 local.
We bought 30 gal of fuel at Hilton Head Marina on the ICW. They were
under staffed and the dock hands were very inexperienced. The dock was
wood with no rubber and they wouldn't even lift a foot to push us off the
dock when we arrived. They did have a few lame bumpers on the dock but
two of them were completely deflated. We ended up with some dock rash
worse than from the Hurricane.
They will only give you water if you buy more than 50Gal of
fuel and otherwise charge $10 flat fee. We only needed 25 gal or so that
was a little too much. They also wanted $10 to put one small kitchen bag
of trash. We will not be going back.
The anchorage we are at now is Factory Creek. It is very quiet but very
narrow. The holding is not particulary good and the approach is shallow
and I wouldn't attempt it at low tide. After you get in a ways it deepens
up to 14 feet or so beyond the marina. There is a bridge to go through
before the creek. As soon as you get through the bridge (channel 9) you
turn starboard and follow the bridge till you see the creek.
When we anchored we tightened up the stuffing box. It was dripping about
2 times a second and we were emptying the bilge every hour or so. We
also put on the chain to the centerboard that broke last week so that
when we go off shore we will have our centerboard. Now it's about 6:38
local pm and Hannah is off to Publix for food. The boat is quiet and
it's a beautiful evening.
The ICW from Savannah To here is easy and has plenty of depth.
It was a beautiful trip with tons of seenery. We made a loop around an
Aligator that we found swimming in the river. He was pretty cool!
There were so many boats on the water today with the holiday and
everyone waved and said kind things about our boat! It was a lot of
fun. Sam spent a lot of time on the wheel and we also did a lot of
testing and comparing C-Maps vs Navionics. We also played with setting
up routes and let the auto pilot run them. It worked great. With the
engine running the batteries were well charged when we arrived and we
did not need to run the generator to charge anything.
Oh... the handheld Cobra vhf radio decided to die. it's only a year and
a half old but the battery simply died. So we are using the Baofeng's
as backup programmed for marine frequencies. I need to get a remote
hand set for the icom installed.
Oh, we are planning off shore from here. The winds will be good
tomorrow and the seas easy so the plan is to go offshore to Charleston
and perhaps beyond.
Lilah In her Harness at anchor