In Charleston the current in the channel reverses every tide. That means that four times every day the boats swing around to face in the other direction. Our solution for that was to lay one anchor out front and one out back. That way we sat all nice and tidy in one place while all the other boats swung around on their anchors. One even broke free and dragged all through the bay until one good samaritan dinghied out to it and tied it up to another boat on a mooring ball.

When the time came to haul anchor and depart towards Savannah, we had two anchors to pull. We tied a floating buoy to the stern anchor line and dropped it in the water. Then while Wee happy was resting on her bow anchor, we took the dinghy out to recover the stern anchor. We pulled in all of the line and chain, but we couldn’t bust the anchor free with all of our combined muscle and might! So we dropped the line back in the water and left it with the floating buoy.

The thought was that we’d return to Wee Happy and then use her mass and momentum to break the anchor loose. So we did. Back on Wee Happy, we pulled up our 120 feet of bow anchor and chain and headed over to the buoy to pick it up so that we could recover the second anchor.

Now I’d already hauled over 200 feet of anchor line, and I was getting tired. The stern anchor had 120 feet of rope and 50 feet of chain. I hauled it in dutifully from the bow, but by the time I had pulled in all of the rope I realized that I had no more energy reserves left to pull in the 50 feet of chain an anchor. It was the first time in my life that I have reached complete and total exhaustion. My forearms ached and my hands and finger curled inward in tension. My heart was racing and I could barely keep up enough breathing to satisfy the oxygen demand!

We had to just stop where we were: close to a buoy and another boat in a strong current and strong wind. There was nothing I could do but wait for my body to recover a bit. All I could do was sit and rock back and forth like a crazy person! Damn!

Needless to say, after I recovered a bit of my strength, I was able to pull up the remaining 50 feet of chain and anchor, and the mass of the boat broke the anchor free. then we were off and on our way. Time: 8:50 am. The bridge that we needed to pass through opens at 9:00! We only had ten minutes to make it, so we plunged the throttle up to full and raced towards the bridge.

We managed to squeak through at the tail end of the opening, and thanked our good fortune that we didn’t have to wait another hour for the next opening. I collapsed on the floor and went catatonic for a while.

We’d planned to put the miles behind us on our run from Charleston to Savannah. We thought we’d be able to run two 55 mile days and make it to Savannah in two days. The currents here in southern South Carolina are intense, however, and yesterday afternoon when we looked at the speed guage and realized that we were only doing 2.5 knots at full throttle, we decided to call it an early night.

The temperatures here have been far from tropical lately. The weathermen don’t stop predicting record breaking cold nights! We find ourselves regularly in two pairs of long johns with an over layer of good solid pants. An undershirt, top sweater, and down outercoat are required above the waist. Lala laughed at me when I decided to bring my ski mask with us on the voyage, but she sure is jealous now!

So, we dropped the “parking hook” in the middle of no man’s land. Lala was seriously bothered by the fact that there was no wind protection. We were in a marsh that went on for miles in all directions. There was a small creek that fed into the ICW, and we anchored as close to the middle of it as possible. Still, the channel was so narrow that we worried that when the current reversed (when the tide changed) we’d be swung onto the muddy shore.

Still, it was uber cold, and the current was so strong that we’d just be wasting fuel like SUV’s do, so we decided to just hunker down and wait out the coming night as best we could while watching the shore and the anchor alarm. Thankfully when the tide changed, the current subsided and we rested as steadily as if we were on land.

We resolved not to repeat that day’s venture into the fierce oncoming current, so we decided to get up at 5:00am to run with the flood tide and hopefully get a boost from the tidal current rather than a big drag from it.

We ended up getting the anchor raised by 6:30am. 5:00 was just too insanely early (and dark!) for us. The current was in our favor, but not as much as we’d hoped. This area is notorious for strange currents and windy marsh narrow passages.

Despite our planning, we found ourselves beating into the wind and serious chop. That’s sailors terminology for an incessant onslaught of waves hitting you right on the nose…bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam…ad nauseum. Imagine spray everywhere every two seconds as the boat lurches up and down every two seconds. Woo hoo…fun! Just add in a near gale force wind also right on the nose and a standing tempurature of about 25 degrees, and you’ve got a great morning for coffee with kahlua!

Around noon the ICW veered out of the nasty river that we were in and hung a left into a fairly wide open channel without the nasty chop, current, and header gale. We were suddenly surrounded by dolphins there! Dolphins on the left and on the right and in front of us made me cut the motor and put her in neutral. I don’t want to run over any dolphins, you know! I got some video footage, but the experience of sharing water with these magical mammals is really beautiful. I think they were hanging out in that in-between channel waiting for the slackwater between tides. They are the smart ones. Why waste precious fuel/energy pounding into a fierce current when you could just hang out and play?!

As soon as we turned out of that blessed calm channel to follow the ICW south in the next river, the dolphins stayed behind and we made peace with another tiring onslought of chop, wind, and current. We had two full tanks of fuel, and our motor is running strong and we still had half of the day left, so we kept on.

An hour or so later, we heard a radio call from another sailboat headed towards us (the “wrong” direction). Turns out that it was our friend Kimbel on his 28 foot coastal cruiser named Kestrel. We’d had Thanksgiving dinner with Kimbel in Wrightsville Beach, and we were surprised to see him here. We’d left him behind there when we left, yet he’d passed us sometime. Maybe it was when we stayed in Charleston for a couple of days.

He radioed to us that he was turning back from the coming entrance to a wide open river and that we should too. He said that when he turned right from the current channel into the wider river up ahead, he experienced nonstop chop and seriously strong wind on the nose. he said the waves were four to five feet in height and every couple of seconds so that forward progress was almost impossible. He called it “dangerous.”

He said that he was headed back a mile or two to anchor in a calm channel and wait it out. Maybe he was headed to where we had met the dolphin pods. We thought about his recommendation to turn back seriously for fifteen minutes. We were tempted to turn back and join him for an anchorage, but we decided that since the river junction was just a mile ahead we’d go check it out for ourselves before making our decision to turn back.

Lala was worried. I thought about it all and told her that we need to make our own decision. It was tempting to just blindly trust Kimbel’s assessment, but each captain is responsible for his/her own vessel. So we headed towards the river junction. We could see the waves in the river from half a mile out. They were like bull heads rising above the commotion of the herd charging Eastward. Scary! Still, cool heads prevailed, and we motored out to the river junction.

I remembered having dinner aboard Kimbel’s boat “Kestrel.” It is a spacious and comfortable 28 footer coastal cruiser. That’s the key term there: “coastal cruiser.” Wee Happy is not a coastal cruiser. Wee Happy is a “blue water boat,” also known as an ocean cruiser. It was built for crossing oceans. The Swedes know how to build boats!!! Sure, she is only 27 feet long, but she is a tank!

When we hit the river, we ventured out past the entrance bouy and turned into the chop that Kimbel had warned us about. The boat rocked and rolled, and Lala and I crouched down in the cockpit to lower our centers of gravity and balance ourselves. Wee Happy was a bit of a bucking bronco, but didn’t feel anything near overwhelmed! Lala, as always, wanted to raise the sails. The idea was that by raising our sails we would steady out and not rock and roll so much. So we rolled out the Genoa about 50% to test out the idea. Instantly the boat steadied and started cutting through the chop like a sharp knife through a ripe tomato. It was so even that we rolled out the rest of the capacious sail and started beating to windward steadily and happily. Weeeeeeeeee!

We had a few stressful tacks to fight our way upwind, as we hadn’t prepared the boat to go to sail. What’s new?! Lala always wants to go to sail so we can shut the motor off, but we never run through a checklist first. 1) stow the knives in the kitchen. 2) close the doors to the cabinets in the kitchen. 3) make sure the laptop and all important electronics like cameras and such are stowed so they won’t fly across the cabin. 4) Take in the fenders so they don’t get caught in the sail lines. 5) Clean up the cockpit so there aren’t random things like water bottles and cushions and anchors and coolers and fog horns and cameras and winch handles flying around the cockpit.

So, covered in four layers of long underwear and down coats, we worked our way to windward, thankful for our dodger/sprayhood. Each tack through the wind was a fight, and we often lost and stalled. We just couldn’t get the boat to get her nose all the way through the wind under the genny alone. We had to start the trusty Honda outboard to give us the little extra umph for each tack until we finally could turn on a starboard tack that would take us five miles up the river to the next turning point. With the motor finally completely off, we relaxed into a beautiful and serenely quiet sail through the “dangerous” chop that forced Kimbel back.

The cats just hunkered-down to wait out the roller coaster that we were riding. Mojo picked a spot in the cabin by the stove under the table–all nice and secure. Slowmo made his way into the v-berth up front and dug in amongst the body pillows and blankets. They are such good cats!

So we pulled into Beaufort, SC around 2:00pm and dropped the parking hook and called it an early night. What a day! Tonight we are closed up in the cabin with the wee propane heater, trying to stay warm, and sending you all our hellos.