Stone River to Beaufort, SC to St. Mary's, GA

Wed, Nov 10

Distance Traveled:  58.88 nm

Total Distance: 1463.37 nm
Stone River to Beaufort, SC

Post with tide going out Ashley Marina

Changes at Ashley Marina

The alarm went off at 6am (so early because of the time change, sunrise is earlier now) and Phil started the engine at 640am.  By 645am the anchor was up and we were on our way.  It’s 58F inside and colder outside.  We need to get another thermometer so that we can measure the outside temperature.  Today will be the day of traveling along multiple rivers on the ICW.  We will be going on the Stone R., Wadmalaw R., Dawho R., North Creek, S. Edisto River, Fenwick Cut to Ashepoo River, the Ashepoo Coosaw Cut to the Coosaw River to Brickyard Creek to get to Rick and Carol Butler’s dock 6 mi before Beaufort, SC.  We had an uneventful passage today and docked at Rick and Carol’s by 356pm.   

Rick and Carol Butler's Dock Patio

Changes docked at the Butler's Lady's Island, SC

The water in the sun showers was warm and the sun was still up, so Phil and I both took showers in the head.  It felt good to be clean and it wasn’t too cold in the boat.  We started walking down their long pier and in the middle we met Carol Butler and her next door neighbor, Allen Rae who is an Ocean Cruising Club Port Captain. 

Pier to dock - about half the length at high tide

View from the Butler's front door

We went to Carol’s home (it’s beautiful) and had wine while we chatted.  Allen’s wife Cathy joined us and we had an enjoyable time getting to know each other. Rick was on his way home from delivering a boat to Florida.  Both Rick and Carol and Allen and Cathy have cruised on sailboats before.  Rick and Carol cruised for about 10 years starting 1984 in a 42’ Pearson 424.  Then they traded in for a trawler and did the circle route going the long way.  By that I mean if there was a different route to take, they took it going through the Great Lakes, the north Channel and other water ways.  They would cruise and then in the fall take the boat out at a good marina recommended by the locals, go home and start again in the spring.  It took them about 7 years to go to all the places they wanted to travel.  About 6pm we went back to the boat to fix supper and have a quiet evening.

Thursday, Nov 11

Beaufort, SC

Happy 68th Birthday Phil!

We spent the day at Rick and Carol's dock.  Phil fixed pancakes for breakfast.  Then we went  up to their garage and picked up the rest of our boxes (we gotten the small ones last night).  Thankfully, they have a dock cart so getting the large boxes down the 300+ foot long pier to the dock was easy.  Phil put together the other folding bike using the one that currently is together as a model especially for attaching the derailleur.  We also put together the Froli bed system.  The hard part for that was pushing the button down to slide the bases into place as there were many to do.  Tamure (tam ur {rhymes with pure} long A), a 40' Valient owned by Scott and Kitty Kuhner, pulled into Allen and Cathy's dock.   It turns out that we met them at the Sailors Potluck in Oriental, NC!   In the afternoon, Rick and Carol let us borrow their Nissan Frontier Truck for us to go to West Marine and the Piggly Wiggly grocery store.  We got hoses and other necessary items to install the salt water foot pump into the galley sink.  On the way back we saw a local seafood market - the kind that has the seafood in large coolers.  We bought a pound of jumbo shrimp to have for supper with the steak we got for Phil's birthday dinner.  I also made from scratch Charleston Chocolate Cake for him.  Late in the afternoon, Rick came aboard and we talked about traveling the ICW in Florida and the opportune places for crossing over to the Bahamas starting with Fort Pierce and ending in south Florida with Key Biscayne.  He discussed the optimum weather window for crossing in regards to wind direction and speed to ensure a smooth crossing and encouraged me not to worry about the horror stories I'm likely to hear about other boat's crossing the Gulf Stream. I'm sure that if we follow his advice that we too will have an easy crossing.

Per Phil's request we had steak, baked potatoes and broccoli for supper with the chocolate cake for dessert.  We spent the evening reading.

Friday, Nov 12

Beaufort, SC

Friday morning we were trying to decide whether to put away the folding bikes or not. It also was the day to go through the boat and see what we were going to send home.  We sent home a box of books, my star quilt and other items.  Allen is a UPS shipping agent so he'll be able to send them for us.  It was a little cooler and breezy today.  Phil went up to the house to get rid of trash and was enlisted to take his trash and Rick's trash to the dump.  He also took the diesel jerry jugs and bought 19+ gallon of diesel and got packaging tape.  After he returned, we went immediately to wash clothes.  As Rick and Carol needed their truck at 3pm to drive down to visit their daughter, we were able to mostly dry the clothes and then I hung them up all over the boat to dry the rest of the way.

Late in the afternoon, we helped carry Allen's dinghy down his pier to the dock, get Tamure's dinghy up on deck and then went back to our boat to get ready for going outside tomorrow (go out Port Royal Sound to the Atlantic Ocean).  This entailed packing the 2 folding bikes, and the cruising shute into the sail locker and getting the dinghy up on the fore deck.  Actually, it worked out pretty good getting the dinghy up on deck.  Phil used the main sheet halyard winch to lift up the dinghy then Phil and I turned it upside down and used the rachet straps to hold the dinghy down on deck.  We got done just as the sun was setting.    I fixed curry shrimp over rice with green beans for supper.  I need to spice up this recipe a little next time I make it. We tried to get to bed early for tomorrow's long day.

Saturday, Nov 13 to Sunday, Nov 14
Passage on the Atlantic Ocean to St. Mary's, GA
Distance Traveled:  145.66 nm
Total Distance:  1609.03 nm

We woke at 7am to frost advisories in the area.  I had turned on the heater at 430am since we had electricity  so it wasn't that cold on the boat.  We still had a lot of chocolate cake left over, so I dodged the sprinklers in Allen and Cathy's back yard to drop off some with Kitty and Scott on Tamure.  I hurried back to our boat not having to dodge the sprinklers as Allen turned them off for me.  By 745am we had left the dock with blue skies and N winds 4-7 knots.  We went under the Lady's Island Swing Bridge along with 6 other boats.  About 921am we went under the Lady's Island high bridge and took photos of the new bridge that is being built.  By 930am the winds had increased to 10 knots.  While we were on the Beaufort River, I made sandwiches for lunch and Mexican Beans and Pasta bake for supper as who knows how bad the wind and waves were going to be on the ocean.  Just to play it safe, I took to Marezine to ward off any seasickness that may arise. Tamure also went out on the outside the same time and it was about 1215pm that we crossed the demarcation line indicating that we were officially in the Atlantic Ocean.   We had 2 hour watches that started at 2pm and then starting at 6pm we started 3 hours watches to help the off watch person get a little more sleep.  I took the first 3 hr watch  and Phil's first watch started at 9pm.  It was a good thing that I was prepared with the meals as the waves and swells were just bad enough that I'm glad that I didn't have to do all the cooking on the ocean.  We had 3-5 foot swells coming the east-north east and the 1-2 foot waves coming from the north.  After getting supper ready, I needed to take some more seasickness medication and was on the irritable side until my stomach settled down.  I had bought a pair of gloves that had the tip as a mitten that folded back so you had bare fingers.  We gave them a try and they worked really well - just enough warmth but also quick access to bare fingers when pushing buttons on the GPS.

The crossing outside went fairly well.  As the night progressed, the swells and waves calmed down.  It wasn't too cold so that was a blessing until the wind clocked to the west and was upwind coming into Cumberland Sound (St. Mary's Channel) starting 545am.  We started in the channel at about 3.5 knots going slowly until the light increased enough for us to see the markers.  The sun did rise at 648am and at 650am the instruments went on daytime lights.  It was cold with the wind blowing on the nose and I was glad when we dropped anchor in St. Mary's River in front of the town at 924am.  I was cold when we anchored, so quickly got into my flannel pajamas and went to bed with 3 quilts on me.  Phil ate breakfast and then went to bed.  We didn't get up until mid afternoon.

As I looked outside, I noticed that we had swung on the anchor and that we're a little too close to the boat next to  us.  Once Phil got up and got dressed, we raised anchor and moved over a little bit.  There are 25 boats anchored here or on mooring balls.  I heated up the Mexican Pasta Bake dish and made cornbread for an early supper.  We can have cheese and crackers later if we get hungry.

We took the dinghy off the foredeck this time using the main sheet self-tailing winch on the port side, which made it much easier.  Phil took the dinghy into town dropping off the trash we had stored in the sail locker.  While in there he met the owner of S/V Sparrow who is on a mooring ball here.  He runs the St. Marys Cruising net on channel 68 at 8am.  He came into St. Marys 3 years ago and is still here on his sailboat ever since. We'll listen tomorrow and see how it goes.

We got into St. Marys 11 days before the Thanksgiving Dinner Day.  We're not sure if we'll make a side trip to Cumberland Island this week or what.  They also have a ferry that goes to Cumberland Island, which is a National Seashore of the National Park system.  I would like to start working on recovering the cushions using the same foam at this time until we can replace some of the foam.  We spoke to Ken and Jeanne on Sail Away.  They are at MM 670 anchored on the Federica River with a few other boats we have met along the way about 35 miles north of us.  We will see Katie in less than 2 weeks so we are trying to decide what to do in the meantime.