The evening passed quietly. Despite the aggressive tidal switches, the anchor held firm. Tidal range overnight was eight feet. Just after dark we had 20’ of water beneath the boat and when I got up at around 0200, we only had 12’. It’s an awesome thing to think about the volume of water it takes to make an 8’ difference in the water level over some much area.
We had a “Beirut Breakfast” at daybreak. All hell broke loose as we were eating. Seems the marines were on the small arms firing range and it reminded me of the middle east fighting you hear on the TV. After breakfast we got rolling to take advantage of the out going current in the Beaufort River and Calibogue Sound. The Calibogue was not kind to us because the southerly wind opposed the outgoing tide and created considerable chop until we turned into the Cooper River. The current here reduced our speed to about 4.0 to 4.5 mph.
All this outgoing tide and our progress was setting us up for arrival at several trouble spots at near bottom or bottom of the tide. Not Good! We had to reduce speed to idle in several areas and “feel” our way through several shallow areas. We met a sailboat who had turned back and was going to wait for the water to return. We then came upon “Abu Dai”, a sailboat, hard aground between the marks at the entrance to “Fields Cut”. We hugged the green mark and idled through with depths of 4.1 to 4.5 on the depth meter. It took about 200 yards of nail biting travel to finally reach 9’+ depths.
We had good depths at the southern end of the cut where we crossed the Savannah River. Our afternoon check of the weather confirmed a nasty low was expected to form and bring heavy rains, thunderstorms, high winds and even the possibility of tornados. All this expected to occur when we would be in the same area we had severe weather back in 2007. For the most part, the marshy areas of Georgia south of Thunderbolt are not the places to be anchored in these kind of storms. Taking this into consideration we called cancelled our plan to anchor in the Herb River and got reservations at Thunderbolt Marina.
That’s where we are as I write this entry.
Location: Thunderbolt Marina on the Wilmington River, Thunderbolt, GA
Started: 0730 Stopped: 1600
Distance Traveled: 44 mi, Max spd: 11.5, Avg spd: 4.4
Total Distance Traveled to Date: 584 Statute Miles
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