Southbound ’17 – Travel Day 21: Charleston, SC to Beaufort, SC

FROM: The Captain

Conditions: Sun, winds light and variable, seas calm

Distance traveled: 71 statute miles

Time underway: 6 hours 50 minutes

Average Speed: 10.5 mph

Max Speed: 24.5 mph

Fuel used: 73 gallons

After a great day off in Charleston, we were up early for a sunrise departure from the MegaDock at 7 am sharp.  We would have had to leave in the dark to beat the falling tide a bit better  but, on balance, we always prefer to travel in daylight.

The current is known to run quickly at the City Marina and it was ebbing at a good clip on our departure.  Though clearly not insurmountable, it required a bit more forethought and concentration to get OLOH off the dock and avoid having the current bring us too close to Athena in front of us, let alone her stern anchor which was very close to the path of our departure. 

With a few feet to spare we cleared Athena’s offending anchor chain and motored a short distance across the harbor, back into the narrows of Charleston Harbor as the sun began to reveal itself to light the way.

 

It was a pleasantly uneventful day through lots of meandering stretches of nature with a handful of tricky and sometimes stressful shallow spots to negotiate as low tide approached and only a few boats to make passing arrangements with.  It also warmed up to shorts and t-shirt weather again and that pleased us immensely.

One Waterway Idiot Of The Day to report:  We were cruising along in a desolate area at a leisurely ten knots when we were hailed by another vessel saying, “OLOH, I am passing you to port.”  Not really the way you go about that but I grabbed the mic and began to respond that I would back it down for him assuming he wanted to pass us to port.  As I was telling the captain that I looked to port and saw that he had already crossed our wake and was probably 20 feet away from us.  I adjusted my response and said, “I see you’re already there.”  He said, “yeah, sorry for the late hail – I couldn’t make out the name of your boat.”  Wrong response and wrong move, idiot.  As I slowed down his wake caused our boat to pivot in his direction.  Had I not slammed OLOH into reverse it could have gotten very ugly very quickly.  First of all, we take great pride in the fact that our boat’s name is quite visible on our stern – we recognize how important that is.  Second, if you are coming up on another boat so quickly that they might not even know that you’re there and you can’t see their name from afar, slow down when you get close and pick off the name BEFORE you attempt to hail and pass.  Or just hail “the southbound motor yacht, by marker so and so.”  We do it all the time as so many boats, particularly sailboats, have their name obscured or in some illegible font.  But again, this guy was an idiot so none of this occurred to him, let alone the idea of equipping his million-dollar-plus cruiser with something as relatively inexpensive and fundamental as AIS (the transponder system that lets you see and be seen by other AIS-equipped boats).  Or how about a pair of binoculars?  So, to the captain of the blue-hulled MJM Journey, you sir are the Waterway Idiot Of The Day.

Once we shook that off we would not let it ruin what will be the final leg of this journey until after Christmas.  Call it the close of Chapter One.  The rest of the ride to Beaufort (Bew-fort) was beautiful with sunshine and glassy-calm conditions.  The pictures we took captured it much better than I can possibly articulate.

Questions about our trip or anything at all about the Adventures Of OLOH? Please leave them in the comments section below.

The journey so far…

106 hours underway over 21 travel days

1,197 statute miles traveled

1,279 gallons used