Kaimusailing

My stay at Joyner Marina started when I tied up late at the gas dock. They had said there would be no one available at that hour to check me in or help me tie up. They had given the passcode for the laundry and rest rooms, so I took a shower and did a load of laundry. While the laundry was processing I was writing blog entries.
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In the morning I met the one man band who does everything at the marina, JW, and took his advice to walk across to the Atlantic Ocean side of this little peninsula and get breakfast at the Carolina Beach Fishing Pier. There is a fishing shack there that also serves as a greasy spoon diner.
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I continued writing blog posts after I returned and decided to get lunch at the Fishing Pier, borrowed a marina beachcomber bike, and rode over. The bike was a torture device and I was worn out when I returned. I thought of getting my bike out of Trillium to ride over to a couple of stores, but it had begun to rain off and on, so I called a cab instead.
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For fifteen bucks he took my on a round trip to the grocery and auto parts store. It poured rain everytime I had to get from the store to the cab. Back at the marina I had to sit out for a long while till the rain took a breather. I brought the purchases down to Trillium and stowed them. I got the two 5 gal. gas jugs ready to be filled and returned to the cozy skipper’s lounge.
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JW had to go down to the gas dock to fuel a boat in the rain, so I asked if he could fill my gas cans also. When they all came up to the marina office to pay, I talked with the two guys who were taking the boat down to Savannah. They asked about Trillium and how fast did it go. I talked about the problem of going straight to Georgetown from Cape Fear, and not use the ICW. It’s too far to make it in daylight, so you have to leave at night, and tonight high tide is around 7 or 8. They said they would leave in the early morning about 5:30. Well, I said, that’s when you will have the contrary tide. I’d leave about 10 in the morning, but then I’d have to navigate Wynah Bay at night. It continued raining and I decided to stay another night and leave in the morning. I told JW I would settle the extra day tomorrow morning.
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When I got down to Trillium it had stopped raining and I saw the tide was between flood and ebb. I untied the boat from the dock and hoisted sail after the Yachtwin refused to start. We turned into the beginning of the ebb tide current and proceeded down Snow’s Cut, the narrow channel that connects the ICW to the Cape Fear River. The twilight was good enough to navigate and quickly we were in the river as it got dark.
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I followed the lights which were now ship navigation style, red right returning. At some point we stopped, even though we were moving through the water. It was the beginning of the flood tide. The tide schedule of the ICW and the channels that lie to the north of Cape Fear is different from the tide schedule of the south side of Cape Fear, so there is a strong current through Snow’s Cut.
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We made it out of the Cape Fear River, following a ship, and began sailing toward Georgetown, South Carolina. We had the 150 and mainsail up and the north wind was pushing us along at a good speed. Later the wind began to drop.
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At some point about 4 AM I could not keep my eyes open, so I dropped the sails and tried to take a nap. There was no marine traffic around. I couldn’t sleep, the boat was tossing about so much, I had to hoist sails again and continue. I was finding it difficult to survive on the bouncy boat, a small pot of oatmeal tipped over onto my foot, burning it, making blisters. Then I had to clean it up and no breakfast. Trying to get the boat to self steer by lashing the tiller was a hit or miss process and I couldn’t get it to work. I was making food with one hand while steering with the other.
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I would get the boat steady on course, lash the tiller, then dash down below and grab bread and peanut butter, or if I had the forethought, some pasta dish. Eat it cold, cooking is too painful. My appetite wasn’t that great due to the constant rodeo bouncing of the boat.
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The day was long and I counted down the mileage to Wynah Bay, the entrance to Georgetown, SC. I didn’t know if the tide would be ebbing or flooding. It must have a similar schedule as Cape Fear which was flooding at night when we were trying to depart.
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It turned out that the tide was at the last of the ebb when we started to sail up the channel, cheating to one side in case any ship traffic came down the pipe. Probably tug and tow or shrimp trawler would be the usual traffic.
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The entrance to Wynah Bay has partially submerged jetties and turns to the right as you enter. The wind would head us at some point doing the turn, the engine hadn’t started, so I decided to heave the anchor over when I ran out of room at the edge of the channel.
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The slow ebb current made it possible to practically sit in the channel stock still, even though we were moving through the water. I found I could sidle the boat over to the right side of the channel without gaining or losing any distance, then bear off a bit and scoot ahead, slowly, a few yards. This way we made it up to a safe spot to anchor, in about 20 feet of water and out of the channel.
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Needless to say, I slept well, but got up frequently to check that the anchor was holding. The danforth anchor has a reputation of losing its grip when the tide changes. I was up for the tide change and could see we were holding just fine.
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When I awoke in the morning we were quite a ways down the channel. The anchor had lost its grip in the wee hours of the morning. Fortunately our path was just out of channel or on its edge and the dragging anchor caught again before letting us drift out to sea and into those jetties.
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The image shows our track from Cape Fear River to Wynah Bay. We actually made good progress in spite of the wind dying. The total was 90 miles in 24 hours.