Starry Night

We arrived in Georgetown SC today around lunchtime. The scenery here along Winyah Bay is stunning, though we haven’t adjusted to the water color in the states yet. It seems so murky compared to the Bahamas and Caribbean.

Leaving Charleston was bittersweet – what a beautiful town. We had planned a crossing of around 75 miles to take advantage of a good weather window and the plan was to leave Charleston Wed morning and arrive in Georgetown by 9am Thurs. Weather was calling for light and variable winds at first, which is a bummer because it means motoring, but Wed afternoon and night was to give us a beautiful tail wind and calm seas.

Of course nothing goes as planned. Our lovely tail winds didn’t happen all day Wed. We ended up with 15 knots on the nose and a hard beat to windward all day. We also kept hearing thunder. Though we saw no lightening, it was a bit unnerving.

Sometime around 9pm, life became sweet again. Our tailwinds appeared and we had very comfortable sleeping conditions for a while. Bob took the 8p-12a shift. I came up at midnight to a beautiful full moon with the wind gently pushing us along at 4 – 5 knots. By 2:30am, we had arrived outside our inlet, pretty much as planned. The weather was still good and the channel was lit up like a runway, but there was now lightening on shore at the inlet. I wasn’t sure what the conditions were there, but I didn’t want to sail into a thunderstorm. If we stayed out a little while, it should pass south of us. We were only in 35 feet of water, so we anchored just outside the inlet thinking we’d hang out for an hour or so until the lightening threat was over.

Unfortunately, a rather unexpected bit of weather came our way. Before long, the boat was pounding in the seas and the wind was howling. We had waves breaking over the bow and our poor Starry Night was jerking on the anchor. We’re not sure exactly what the conditions were, but the winds were 30+ knots and the seas were 6+ feet. We had to get the anchor up.

By 7am, the winds had calmed enough to attempt hauling the anchor. The winds were around 20kn and seas around 4-6ft. Bob went up to the foredeck to haul the anchor while I took the helm. We’ve pulled the anchor at 20kn before and it isn’t easy. The helmsman has to keep the boat pointed toward the anchor and move forward just enough to take pressure off the chain while the deckman hauls up the chain. Everything has to be timed perfectly or you’ll run over your rode or put too much stress on the windlass and deckman.

Well, the seas were a bit rough for anchor hauling. The bouncing from the waves was enough to overload the windlass. In fact, I watched the bowsprit, windlass and Bob disappear under each oncoming wave. To keep trying would be risking Bob getting an injury or washed over. To stay put in the worsening conditions was a threat to Starry Night.

We decided to drop the ground tackle – our CQR anchor, 145 feet of chain and 270 feet of line. We tied a float on the end of the line in hopes that we can retrieve it later. It wasn’t easy to watch almost $3,000 of ground tackle go over, but it was the right decision. Bob and Amanda needed to take a quick break at this point to become violently seasick. Bob turns a really interesting color of pale green. Amanda was just pale.

The winds at this point were around 25kn and the seas were around 6 feet. We’d drifted a bit while taking our emesis break and were downwind of the channel entrance and needed to fight our way back up so we could head in. Problem was, we weren’t moving, even at full power. I tried angling off the wind, but whenever our nose came off, the boat would blow further downwind.

Bob set our storm sails to give us a bit more stability and hopefully a push. That seemed to work well and we were able to reach the channel. We had to experiment a while to see if we could hold a line at all. The channel entrance was about the worst layout for the conditions. It was a narrow dredged channel with shallows on both sides. There was little room for error. There is no jetty or breakwater, so the entrance is fully open to the wind and fetch. The wind, waves and current were all broadside to our course and would push us toward the side. We weren’t sure if we should attempt going through. If we got pushed off course, we’d be grounded in near gale force winds. However, the weather forecast called for worsening conditions, squalls possible of up to 40 kn. So the thought of staying out in that wasn’t overly exciting, either. We were also very tired. I’d had about 3 hours sleep and Bob only about 2 hours.

Again, we talked it over and decided to go for it. Bob did a great job angling in and we got through without further adventure.

Once inside the inlet, it was like another world. We had calm winds, still water and warm sun. There was no sign of our experience, except perhaps the float off the SC coast with our ground tackle attached to it.

Now we are at anchor (thank goodness for back-up anchors) and trying to figure out what happened and what to do. Turns out, an un-forecated low moved off the coast last night, complete with thunderstorms and winds up to 50kn. I’m sure there are many more boats with worse stories than ours out there. We were lucky, we didn’t get lightening and only had winds to 30kn (maybe some 35kn gusts). We’re not sure if we’ll be able to retrieve our ground tackle. We’ll need calm conditions to attempt it (assuming it’s still there) and there is no calm weather in the near future here.

However, we are all well and no one was hurt. We are safe, the boat is safe and the rest is just details!