Saturday 28 March 2020
We got underway as usual at about 0740 in light air for a
64-mile day to Charleston. Rather than
eat breakfast, somedays we just get “on the road” serving breakfast at the
capacious dinette booth in the pilothouse.
The weather was mild for the first couple of hours, but turned a bit
muggy in the 80s later on; so we had the generator running all day with air
conditioning in the pilothouse – luxury.
I never had that in the Navy! Also
as usual, there were a few times the water was so skinny under us you could
have read the Lord’s Prayer through it.
At one particular intersection for which I had an alternate route around
a shoal in the middle of the waterway, we slowed way down to “feel” our way
through because following this alternate plan called for going outside the
buoyed channel. When the water under us
ran down to 1.6 feet, I chickened out and decided to try something else. Luckily another shallower draft boat came up
to the other end of this short passage, and I told him on the radio that we
would let him come through first. He
took the buoyed channel and reported it was ok for depth. Another win for us. As we passed outlying districts of the
Charleston area, we began to see more and more speedboats. I finally stopped looking aft to see if
anybody was coming by because there was ALWAYS somebody racing by with a
boatload of people in close proximity to each other ignoring any warnings about
corona virus. I guess they all figure it
won’t hit me or someone I love or I am young and it won’t harm me. Some places have shut down boat ramps to shut
off one more place people can gather, but South Carolina has not, yet. By the time we got to Isle of Palms and the
last few miles of the AICW before Charleston Harbor, the water was one giant
mass of boats going with us or coming at us.
Being the biggest vessel out there, we really had no issues as everybody
pretty much avoided us as we moved along at about the same speed as the ones
going with us in the “no wake” zone we were in.
Due to the hydrodynamics of hull, the smaller boats actually made more
wake then we did at 6-7 MPH. We finally
popped out into sloppy Charleston Harbor where the 20-MPH southeast wind which
had been slowing us up all day created a side chop through which we waddled on
our northerly course of several miles to Charleston Harbor Marina where we
moored port side to a tee head at 1715.
Now until the wind dies off, we wobble at the pier. Tomorrow will most likely end with us
anchored south of here in the marshes. I
am hoping for the coastal winds and seas to subside enough for u to go offshore
and shot straight down toward Florida.
