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Safely tied up at the new section of the “Mega Dock” in Charleston
Sylvia and I arrived in Charleston, SC, Friday afternoon after a rambunctious overnight sail from the Cape Fear River near Carolina Beach, NC. I made a couple of questionable decisions that lead to our leaving at 9:30 PM from an anchorage to sail all night on Thursday.
Let’s start with the first bad decision. (No, it was not leaving the dock in New Bedford.) On Wednesday afternoon, at anchor in Carolina Beach, we had a visit from the harbor master asking if we were aware of the impending storm and warning us that the holding in the spot we were anchored, right next to the mooring field, had a “mayonnaise” bottom. I was aware that we were due for a blow with gusts over 35 knots, and the bad decision was not moving to an unoccupied mooring and paying the $30 fee for the night. As forecasted, the weather turned snotty overnight, and we started to slowly drag the anchor. I awoke to see on my anchor alarm app that we had dragged the anchor about 50 feet, but it seemed to have reset. I was able to sleep the rest of the night, although I checked it often.
The next day, Thursday, the forecast was for the wind to increase. We started dragging the anchor again and we were running out of room behind us. We decided to pull the anchor and jump on a mooring while we got some more work done. We successfully moored, but it was tricky as the wind was pretty intense. Sylvia did the hard work of pulling the anchor while I tried to hold Sans Souci into the wind and motor forward to take some of the weight off the anchor chain. She struggled getting the mooring pendant pulled up in the wind, but I was able to run forward to help and we were safely tied up.
This brings me to the second bad decision: leaving the mooring ball. After work, we motored down the Cape Fear River to a staging anchorage to shorten the distance we needed to cover on Friday. The plan was to anchor there and get up early on Friday to sail to Charleston, hopefully arriving just after midnight on Saturday morning. The anchorage was terrible with huge currents and lots of wave action. It calmed enough for us to eat dinner and then go to bed with hopes that the forecasted wind shift to the north would not create another uncomfortable situation there. When the wind shift happened, it got pretty bouncy rather quickly, and a pitching bow pulls hard on the anchor. I checked the anchor alarm and we were dragging again. We laid there in bed discussing options. One was to pay out more anchor chain to increase the scope, making the angle of the chain more conducive to the anchor burying itself in the bottom. I didn’t think we had enough room behind us to make this a successful strategy. We could try to reset the anchor in a slightly more protected spot, but we were behind a very small island, and I didn’t like the odds of finding a good place. So we went with option 3; we pulled anchor and set off for Charleston.
The passage was made in winds that gusted above 35 knots and temperatures that fell to about 35 degrees. The enclosure helped to keep the wind at bay, but it was cold! We snuggled under a sleeping bag for hours as the autopilot did the heavy work of keeping us on course, poking our heads up on a regular basis to check for traffic.
All’s well that end’s well. We are finally in Charleston where we plan to work and take advantage of the great restaurant scene here this week. We will head off towards Savannah, GA, next weekend where we will be joined by Piper (my eldest) for Christmas and hopefully see Sylvia’s old college friend Carl and wife Wendy.
P.S. If you remember the couple we encountered aground in on the ICW, we are meeting up with them for dinner tonight.
Brr!
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Hugh
I am here in Charleston if you need help with anything