This is our first offshore overnight passage, just the two of us. It’s strange how one of the most uneventful things we’ve done is also one of the most momentous.

I was feeling pretty good about the plan until about an hour before we left on Thursday, then I started to get really nervous. Honestly, I think it’s because I ran out of things to do and got in my own head about it. The tide was totally slack and there was almost no wind so we didn’t need help untying, but James had run down in his golf cart to do his routine checks so he gave us a hand, and just like that we were free. I stayed busy coiling lines, untying fenders, and tidying anything that was still out. Then I made us lunch, and soon after that we started to feel some ocean swell. Staying busy really helps.

I had put some docklines on the cockpit table and they left some grime behind, so I grabbed a kitchen towel and wiped it off, then threw the towel in the dirty laundry. From the look of utter devastation on Kyle’s face, I knew I’d done something wrong. This is when I learned that not all kitchen towels are equal, and in fact, that towel was his Favorite Towel and he’d just gotten it out and now it was already in the dirty laundry. MY BAD.

Thursday morning, Kyle sent his dad a float plan, then after we untied the lines his dad stalked us on AIS (he can see our location, our bearing, our speed…AIS has no secrets!) until we got too far from shore. A few dolphins played under the boat for just a couple seconds, but it was still fun to see.

As we got out further into the harbor, past the breakwater, the 5’ swell never materialized, in fact , the sea was surprisingly calm. Winds were exactly as forecast, a tiny breeze from the east. We had both engines running.

We eventually unfurled the genoa, which gave our speed a boost. The Ravenel bridge makes a striking visual landmark in Charleston, I could still clearly see it from 25 nm out (29 regular miles), although it’s not so clear in the photo.

Kyle made us dinner, and as soon as I was done eating I tried to nap on the couch. I must have slept pretty well because soon he woke me up to start my shift. The Milky Way was bisecting the cloudless sky as I took the helm. I could tell the wind had clocked around to the south because we were sitting in the stench of our own exhaust. A little after an hour into my shift, I looked at the time on the chart plotter and realized Kyle had woken me an hour early, the bugger. I decided to take the high road and not say anything.

I only had one boat to contend with, but I could not figure out what was going on. There were two lights, pretty far apart, so I thought it may have been two vessels. However, the only light I could see from the second was green, so while I was 90% sure this wasn’t the case, I had to assume there was a very large vessel coming straight at me. I altered course away from that mess. The whole thing passed me by a couple miles off the port side, but the green light disappeared, came back, added a red light, then the green disappeared again. Based on the lights of the first vessel, I assume it was a tug pulling a barge, and either the barge was spinning or the people on board were messing with the lights.

Kyle came out to check on me, I let him know that we were wildly ahead of schedule. We want to hit the inlet at noonish, 10am at the earliest, so we arrive on a favorable current. Our current trajectory put us there at 730am. We had to slow down, so we decided to shut down one engine and see where that put our speed. I grabbed my cell phone to make sure I had the engine key in the right position, and realized that it was an hour later than what was listed on the chart plotter. So not only did he wake me at the correct time, we also lost an hour off our arrival time. After correcting the time on the chart plotter and shutting down an engine, we were set to arrive around 10.30am, which was early but acceptable.

During Kyle’s shift the swell started to pick up and the bridgedeck slamming woke me up a couple times. He said he had an uneventful shift.

I took over at 4am. A sliver of moon had risen, I took its smile-shape as a good sign. I didn’t have to deal with any traffic during my shift, but an aggressive looking cloud bank was quickly closing in on us. With nothing else to occupy my mind, I kept watching it and remembering the last time we’d been at sea and clouds like this had brought gale-force winds with them. Kyle poked his head out and I told him my concerns. He said if it makes you feel better, we can take down the genoa. I let him go back to sleep since the clouds weren’t that close yet, but for the next half hour flashbacks and anxiety clouded my judgment, and finally I woke him back up to furl the sail in. Fear is a disappointing emotion, but we both understood where it was coming from. We’re being pretty conservative on this trip, we don’t need another bad experience.

The clouds turned out to be big fluffy, friendly clouds. I don’t know why they had to approach so aggressively. As they dissipated, so did my anxiety, and with that the first signs of daylight appeared on the horizon.

Since Kyle hadn’t slept for more than an hour at a time (mostly his own fault, I only woke him up once to furl the genoa), I stayed at the helm until he woke up on his own. I went to bed and dreamed of jackhammers and other ground-shakers (thank you, bridgedeck slamming).

We spent Friday morning approaching the inlet. Seriously, all morning. We could see tankers anchored outside the channel for hours before we got near the channel, and then once in the channel it took us hours to get in. I can’t imagine going for ocean day sails, you’d spend 90% of your time just going out and coming back in.

After that, we were in the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW). Skipper Bob cautioned that the first weekend in October is a big mackerel tournament in Southport and – oh sure enough, it happens to be the first weekend in October. So now we are stuck in the ICW, we can’t use the autopilot, and there’s a thousand fishing boats flying by and hitting us with their wakes. As we both remembered what hell the ICW is, especially around the Outer Banks on a weekend, we looked at each other and said “we should have stayed in the ocean.” And honestly, we might have discussed it, since things were going pretty well and it’s so much faster and easier, but we told our families to expect to hear from us around noon on Friday so there would have been widespread panic if we had continued offshore.

We anchored around 6pm in Wrightsville Beach. We forgot to test the windlass before leaving the marina, fortunately it worked great. Unfortunately, we were anchored close to an inlet and center consoles are going by on plane, both around and through the anchorage, all evening. There aren’t many anchorages to choose from here, so there wasn’t anything we could do about it, but we’re both complaining about being back in the ICW.

As soon as we anchored we sat down on the transom with cold beers and cheersed our success.

The is the first time in 36 hours that the engines have been shut off and it is so quiet. At the marina the AC was always going so there was constant white noise. Now, nothing but silence. Peaceful.