If I had to name this day it would be "SKINNY WATER DAY". We got up early today in Charleston (Ashley river), and High Tide was at 0700 hours;

The messy part of the day was the Wahpoo Creek Bridge opening.... (locked out until 0900), which put us well behind high tide...(then falling)....

The tides here are really "serious"... 8 foot change in levels (high to low).

So if you make a mistake and go aground at near high tide... you're going to lay the boat over on it's side, if you can't get off in minutes....

Anyway... We proceeded as fast as we could trying to make it as far south as we could before we got to a really skinny water condition.... WELL...that worked for a while (i.e. riding the falling tidal currents....) then all of a sudden we realized that as we traversed a couple of man-made cuts between rivers... it was NOW "DEAD-LOW" tide.... hummmmm WELL... the depths under the boat were doable...(typical depths in the cuts....8.0 down to 6.1 feet... (we draft about 5'-3").... so we were skimming above the bottom with less than a foot clearance... in the really 'thin' places.

The Optimistic way of looking at today...was that "IF we go aground... all we have to do is sit and wait... the tide will lift us off the bottom in less than an hour". End result... never touched the bottom... but lots of tension, and staring at the depth meter, and of course steering to stay in the exact center of the channel.

We're now anchored in the Bull River at N32 30.861 W080 33.883 The wind is really howling outside.... A total reversal of most of the day.
The weather front finally caught up to us.... I guess. :)
We about 1.5 hours north of Beaufort SC.
Tomorrow we'll try to anchor in the Cooper River (north of the Savannah River).

OK...time for NCIS, and rest.