Good Evening.... It's November 8th 2012.... Thursday
Today should have been an easy day... The intended destination was the Winyah Bay anchorage...
We started the main engine, and disconnected the shore power at the Barefoot Resort yacht Marina....and were waiting for Carla, and Rick to leave the dock first... as they were secured to our bow on the main face dock. WELL............. They followed the instructions, given to them by the dockmaster... for leaving this face dock from that end.... They turned hard starboard right off the dock... and WHAMM or should I say WHOMP! Big time soft grounding...feeling like the entire keel was supported by a giant mud-mound. No matter what they did with the engine... stuck hard.... And of course...the Tide was falling... Why is it always FALLING when you go aground? ????
Anyway... we left the AB, still running, and dashed down the dock to see if we could assist... I want to tell you we tried everything... lines to shore... sweating the lines... We tried winching from the big sheet winches... We tried heeling the boat over with the main Halyard.... (That should have worked...); we tried running a much longer line from the anchor windlass to the shore... and using the windlass power...
We even tried taking a line to Autumn Borne's manual windlass (on low speed - high torque).... Trying to pull them straight ahead... (fearing that any movement to the rear would hurt their rudder). We had all the lines ashore so tight, they were like bow-strings.... Nothing....
Rick finally decided they were there until the tide started to rise.... So Susan and I went back to AB, and fixed more coffee, and a nice breakfast.
Then, as I was having another coffee.... I saw "Euphoria" start to rotate back toward the dock.... OK... out we go... and sure enough... the tide rose just enough that a little 'sweating of the lines... freed up the boat... Wow...
the end result was a very late leave time from Barefoot Landing... So our destination today was adjusted to an anchorage that Susan and I had never been to.... It's call "Thoroughfare Creek" (below Bucksport, and Wacha Watchee, and even below Bull Creek... But still above Butler Island).
It's a nice anchorage. High currents, but decent depths, and well protected from the winds. I'll plot Lat/Long on the web page in a short bit.
Today took us down a large percentage of the Waccamaw River. It's about 2 days to Charleston (because of short "fall" days).
Carla and Rick have reservations at the Charleston maritime Museum Marina...... We'll probably go 'round the Charleston peninsula, to the Ashley River, and take our normal anchorage.
We could use a couple of days wandering Charleston...maybe meeting Carla and Rick for lunch or dinner someplace, and just 'vegging'. It should be much warmer this coming weekend.... Up into the 70's