PHOTO ABOVE: Dataw Island Marina Office and Restaurant 'Sweetwater'

Dataw Island Marina (about 3 SM from ICW MM 523 on the Morgan River)

We made our way further south and spent a little more than a week in Charleston, which, by the way has some fabulous restaurants, easily the best collection of dining experiences of any place we sailed to and stopped so far.

Our original plan was to shoot out to the Atlantic at Charleston, as we did last fall, but weather is simply not cooperating. So we bit the bullet and traveled 49 nm via the ICW from Charleston to Dataw Island. If we had pushed on to Beaufort, we would have to wait for the 6:00 pm bridge opening and now that daylight savings time is off, we would hit the Beaufort City Marina in the dark and with no attendants to assist docking in the notorious Beaufort River tidal current. Dataw made sense from a stopping perspective and because we have heard many good things about the Island and the marina.

The ICW trip to Dataw was interesting. We departed Charleston City Marina with a group of 4 sailboats from the group known as Cruising Sailors of St. Michaels. All 5 of us were lucky as just before departing the U.S. Coast Guard cutter 'Anvil' was making its way south on the ICW. That meant that we did not have to wait for the 9:00 am bridge opening. The USCG has the distinction of getting bridges to open regardless of schedule. So we followed her and a couple large motor yachts through at 8:15 am, 45 min ahead of schedule.

The Eliot cut was real interesting with a whopping 3.5-4 kts of ebb current on our nose as we exited on to the Stono River.

Under most circumstances the 45 minute break on the bridge opening would have been great, today however it just meant we had to slow down so as not to hit 3 stretches of the ICW until the tide had risen 2-3'. The worst of these areas is known as the Ashpoo-Coosaw River cut (MM 517) and based on the tidal heights and the depth we saw passing through, I'd say there is 4' or less of water at low tide. We timed and hit area just before 3:00 pm and saw under 6.5' of total water depth on a tide that was predicted to be, at that time, 3' above MLW (Mean Low Water).

The entire leg was enhanced by following the shallow sail boats of the Cruising Sailors of St. Michaels who were kind enough to announce depths on the VHF as they lead us through this cut. Once through we were home free for the day.

This season our trip down the ICW was made very enjoyable by traveling with and meeting our cruising friends Chris and Susie (m/v FOREVER FRIDAY), and Gary and Maggie (m/v ASTRA) as we traveled from Morehead City, NC to Charleston, NC.

Our stopover points on the ICW this year were:
10/21 Morehead City Yacht Basin (MM 203)
10/22 Beachhouse Marina, Surf City, NC on Topsail Island (MM 261)
10/23 Southport Marina, Southport, NC (MM 309)
10/24 Barefoot Landing Marina, Myrtle Beach, SC (MM 354)
10/26 Harborwalk Marina, Georgetown, SC (MM 403)
10/29 Isle of Palms Marina, Isle of Palms, SC (MM 458)
10/30 Charleston City Marina, Charleston, SC (MM 469)

The Gallery now has a collection of photos from various stops taken as we made our way south the last few weeks.

We plan on staying in Beaufort for a few weeks to celebrate Thanksgiving with family and visit with friends. Also a number of boat projects need to be completed before we make our way to Florida (Fernandina Beach, St. Augustine, and Vero Beach to name a few of out stops) for December and Christmas.

We are striving to be in Marathon back at the Harbor Cay Club in early January.