1.21 – Monday

In addition to the fun of worrying about the anchor, it was also supposed to get down to 27°F last night. And we are running out of gas for the generator, we tried to fill up at Bucksport but they didn’t have any.

It was brutally cold today, especially in the wind. The only redeeming factors are the beautiful sunshine and low humidity. And! And and and! Tonight should be our last anchorage before Charleston!

The only real notable thing today was the shallow water. We ran into a few shallow places, so finally I looked for hydrographic surveys for this stretch of the ICW and found a file covering the entire section from Winyah Bay to Charleston dated November 2018. There were very shallow sections, but nothing too concerning. Just knowing where the shallow areas are and when they end makes them easier to endure – it takes away much of the stress about running aground.

Still, today was awful. The bitter cold wind was incessant. We anchored early, because there are no more anchorages before Charleston, but when we anchored I couldn’t get the boat where Kyle wanted it. The wind and current were so strong, we need speed in order to have any control, but I can’t accelerate toward shore because I have no brakes right now.

We tried to keep busy until dark and then fired up the generator so we could hole up and watch a movie with the heater running. However, it seems that the generator doesn’t want to work when it’s extremely cold out. We finished our movie on laptop battery power then curled up for a cold night of not sleeping. We’ve been leaving the tablet on all night so that whenever I wake up in a panic I can look at our position and make sure we’re still within our anchor radius and not drifting down the river. Not being able to set the anchor means I don’t sleep much. Lack of sleep means stressful situations are magnified 10x.

Today was really hard.

40 miles in 8 hours today, 5mph.

1.22 – Tuesday

We anchored about 7 miles ahead of a swing bridge that doesn’t open between 7-9am. I thought we might be able to sleep in, but we got underway at 7.30am. The wind and a strong current were with us and the nav software showed us arriving at the bridge at 8.50am. I slowed us down a little so we didn’t arrive too early.

Before we got to the swing bridge, we approached a fixed 65’ bridge. As we got close, I saw it had a chart with the vertical clearance (not every bridge shows this) so I asked Kyle to grab the binoculars and tell me how much room we had.

“61 feet!” he said in disbelief. Are you serious? ICW bridges are required to have 65’ clearance. We don’t know exactly how tall we are; the boat listing said Hobbes is 63’ tall. Every other Island Spirit I’ve seen lists a 59’ mast, so we think maybe there’s a 4 foot antenna on top of the mast or something? We made it through a 63.5’ bridge yesterday, but 61 feet…we can probably make it, but we’ve got a lot riding on that ‘probably.’ I pulled a u-turn.

We did circles in the channel for almost two hours as we waited for the tide to go out. Charleston was under a flood warning and we were right at high tide. Around 10.30am, we made it under the bridge. The current was crazy, it was pulling us down the channel so hard we were fighting for control with just one working engine. The strong wind didn’t help.

Kyle started seeing some shallow water so I pulled up the hydrographic surveys from yesterday. My heart dropped to the floor as I saw we were approaching a section that showed 2-4’ depths. Right in the middle of the channel. With the tide still pretty high, and our draft is only 3.5’, we could probably make it through there without touching bottom, but that was a huge risk, especially since we couldn’t slow down at all with the strong current. Somehow we made it through that section without ever seeing shallow water – maybe it’s been dredged since those surveys were done.

Finally we approached the swing bridge – you can see it in the distance in the photo of the fixed bridge above. I called them early to let them know we only had one working engine and we were fighting a strong current, and we’d appreciate any help they could give. The tender told me to keep on coming and he’d have the bridge ready for us. Finally, a break!

As we approached the bridge, the tender took his time. Finally we saw the cars stop. The barriers came down. Kyle throttled back, the current was sucking us into the bridge and we were almost between the bridge fenders (side walls along the channel). Suddenly the bridge tender hailed me on the VHF.

“Hey, so we just had some 25 mph winds, I can’t open right now.” WHAT?! WTF?! I yelled back at Kyle to quickly turn around because the bridge wasn’t opening. With panic in his eyes, he tried to turn the boat before the current pushed us into the barriers. Out of all the situations we’ve been in on this trip, this was by far the most dangerous. He barely got the boat turned and tried to motor against the current to take us away from the bridge as the tender hailed me again.

“Hey, so it looks like the wind has died down, I’ll open now.” WHAT?! Ten seconds ago it couldn’t be done, now it’s fine?

“Wait, so you’re…you’re opening now? Okay. Um. We’ll…complete our turn and make our approach.” I must have sounded like a lunatic, I was so nervous I was about to puke, I was so stressed out I could hardly string words together. Of course, the real lunatic was this bridge tender, he couldn’t have warned us that there might be a wind situation, especially knowing we had one engine and limited control?

Kyle completed his turn and the current was again sucking us into the bridge. It didn’t move. It didn’t move. It didn’t move. Kyle was yelling into the air “START OPENING!” What was the bridge tender waiting for? The cars were stopped, the barriers down, there was no reason to wait.

Finally it started to open. It was swinging away from us, so we could continue our approach. If it had started swinging towards us I don’t know if we could have avoided hitting it. It was so close.

We passed through the opening. Now, normally, at this point, I always thank the bridge tenders and tell them to have a nice day. This time…I didn’t want to. I still told him “thank you,” but there are several four-letter words I wanted to add to my pleasantries.

Then we were in Charleston harbor. The wind was strong and the waves were choppy, but it’s big and deep and there’s not much we can hit out there. As we approached the Ravenel bridge we hit max ebb current, we were making 1.5 knots of progress. Walking speed is about 2.7 knots.

Oh, I forgot to mention that we were heading to Cooper River Marina, our home for most of 2018. It took a few hours, but I was texting friends at the dock the whole time so they were waiting for us. We also advised the marina staff that we were running on one engine and needed help docking.

A whole party of people was waiting as we approached the dock. Fighting the wind and current on one engine, we were turned at about a 45° angle just trying to stay parallel to the dock. Kyle did a fantastic job docking, we bumped a stern fender pretty hard but it was just the fender. It was so wonderful to be greeted by familiar faces.

After we got the boat properly tied up, we grabbed beers and headed over to see Chris and Sarah and decompress. They have a lot of stories of their own, it was wonderful to commiserate with people who understand how intense today was. After a couple beers my stress levels were back down to normal, so I took a long, hot shower then curled up on the couch with a big blanket and both heaters running.

We’ve still got to get hauled out, but it feels like we’ve reached a goal. We’re at the dock in Charleston. We made it.