A new anchorage for us.
08 April 2009
• Tom Peter’s Creek, SC
by Mike
Last night was chilly but at least the wind died down so there was no question about the bridge opening in the morning. For me the only question was whether the dock staff would be in to work in time, or indeed have the time, to give us a pump out this morning before we set off. I shouldn't have worried. These guys are as professional as they can be and knew from yesterday that we had a schedule. Although a small powerboat rushed around and tied up at the fuel dock right in front of the pump out station they merely warped him aft so we could come forward and get de-pooped. A few moments and a couple of slurps later and we were 20 gallons lighter in the holding tank and $5 lighter in our wallets and we were off to wait for the 0900 bridge opening.
The Lady's Island Bridge is one of only a couple of turntable bridges still in existence and a lot of the locals that live on the island want it done away with and replaced with a high rise bridge. A lot of boaters that use the ICW would probably like that too but it seems a shame that an older piece of engineering like this will fall to the demolition blast some day. If it were up to me, when I heard that some of the islands residents were making statements like, "Who the hell to these boaters think they are anyway? Do they think that they have the right of way?" I hope someone told them, "Yes they do!" The waterway was a highway long before we built ones of dirt, gravel and asphalt.
Today was a day of new navigation techniques - direction by crab pots! Our trip was done at a much lower tide than we had when we came through this way on the trip down and we had to pay a lot more attention to the depths especially as the winter storms have rearranged the bottom a bit. In some cases that was beneficial such as at Brickyard Point where the channel had been scoured out to navigatable depths, but at others we needed special directions from a variety of boats that had gone before us to be able to get through. You know the treasure hunting sort of directions - stay close to R116 and them immediately turn and head across the charted channel for G115. Then head for the temporary G113 and swing wide across the channel again to G111.....etc. Sounds complicated but it worked and we were very grateful to the three or four separate other boats that were good enough to give us these clues and others.
We made the day a short one so as to let Screech catch up and also, well heck, we're not supposed to be in a rush are we?
We arrived at our planned destination at 1400 and motored into Streamboat Creek in a conflicting heavy wind and current, set the hook and settled down to wait for Mary Lou and Jay to arrive in a couple of hours. About the time that we were expecting them I came back on deck to find something that I'd left behind up there and found that I could almost step ashore and milk some of the cows that were grazing there and staring at me in a sort of bovine curiosity. The boat had been sailing about the anchor in 360 degrees for the last couple of hours and had popped the CQR loose. After several fruitless attempts to reset it and thinking about what a worried night I was going to have under these conditions anyway we decided to pick up and move to a better site at Tom Peter's Creek. It's a much longer dingy ride to walk the dogs but much more sheltered. We arrived there with Screech at about 1700, set the hook, walked the dogs, BBQed diner and got caught up on what they had been doing. Two nights ago they had experienced the same conditions as we did at Steamboat Creek only worse and with a major fuel leak had called Towboat US to take them to a marina to make the repair. They only got things made right this morning and that put them two hours behind us in today's trip.
One interesting thing that happened during the day for us was that another boat heard us calling them in the AM and hailed us to introduce themselves. Jay and Mary Lou had spoken of them several times as the Doobie brothers but we never thought that we'd get to meet them. Now it appears that they'll be in Georgetown when we will be and that will happen. Even more startling was that they knew all about us. Apparently Jay has been speaking to them about us as much as he had told us about them. Great to have a social coordinator, isn't it?
Tomorrow we will be heading for Charleston where we hope to meet West Fraser, the artist who did the small painting that I found hanging in the trees on Cumberland Island. We have been in touch by e-mail and made tentative arrangements. We hope to be able to get a spot on the Charleston Maritime Marina - it is less expensive than the other places and close to Mr Fraser's gallery.
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