Date: 14 November, 2001
Port of Call: Brunswick, Georgia
Subject: The Home Stretch
The journey south this year seemed more difficult than usual. Partly this was due to uncooperative weather, as a series of tropical storms and hurricanes, from Dean in August to Michelle in November, skirted the U.S. East Coast this autumn, each leaving a swath of large swells that extended for thousands of miles and lasted for days. It may also be due to our being rather tired after a long season with too many miles and too little rest. Whatever the reason, rather than our originally planned series of quick hops down the coast, we wound up mostly taking the longer but more protected routes of America's inland waterways. The last leg of our trip south from Beaufort, North Carolina was no exception. With hurricane Michelle churning off the coast of Florida and gale force winds blowing in North Carolina's offshore waters, we decided to take the intracoastal waterway south until things cleared up.
Our first day south of Beaufort was a glorious sail, the kind that is rare even for folks like us who spend over a hundred days a year under way. It was sunny and clear, the wind a brisk 25 knots from the north, and the waterway straight and narrow heading almost due west. We sailed on a beam reach down the waterway, progressively shortening sail as the winds built throughout the day. Occasionally a gust would find Sovereign over-canvassed, and the boat would surge ahead pushing a huge white frothy wake from her bows. During these surges one of us would call out the reading on the knot meter, and we watched the numbers peak at more than eight knots. We anchored for the night at Mile Hammock Bay, and listened as the late afternoon air was punctuated by the deep booms of artillery practice at the nearby military base.
Trying to clear away fishing net
The next day we were under way at dawn, as that day's plan called for us
to make over 50 miles and transit three bridges with very restricted opening
times. We motored out of the anchorage and down the waterway, rolling
out the yankee jib to add a little to our motoring speed so we could reach
the first bridge in time. Less than an hour into the day we heard one
of those bad noises, the screechy, groany kind that you don't ever want to
hear, and thought it was a prop shaft bearing or transmission problem.
I took the engine out of gear and looked over the stern, and there was a
little doughnut-shaped float sitting just behind the rudder. We sailed
over to the side of the waterway and dropped the anchor, then took the dinghy
off the deck, and hauled out the underwater viewing bucket, the knife attachment
for the boat hook, and the neoprene gloves. We found that we had snagged
some kind of fishing net, with floats, weights, and line everywhere.
The part that wasn't all tangled up in the prop was perhaps 50 feet long.
Visibility in the water was basically zero, and my attempts to blindly cut
the mass with the knife-on-a-stick were futile. I thought for a moment
about jumping into the cold, turgid water with a mask and knife and hacking
away, but visions of getting caught in the net and not being able to surface
quickly chased that thought away. We finally called a commercial diver,
who came out to give us a hand. Even with SCUBA gear, it took him about
30 minutes under water to clear the foul. I was very glad I hadn't
gone in the water. By the time we were all done it was too late to
make it to the next anchorage, so we backtracked to the previous night's
anchorage and dropped the hook. Our daily totals were four hours and
thirty-three minutes and 8.5 miles logged, 0.0 miles made good. The
cruising life has a knack for putting glorious days and terrible ones in
close proximity like this, and it always causes us to think a little more
closely about this life we have chosen.The next day we set out on the same route as we had planned for the previous day. We nervously motored through the area where we had snagged the net, and once we were safely past the trouble spot we breathed a little easier and continued on down the waterway. We had never noticed these nets before, but this day as we traveled along the waterway we saw a number of fishermen tending them. The nets are shaped like an extra-long volleyball or tennis net, with weights along the bottom edge and floats along the top. The fishermen drop a heavy weight at one end, and then set the nets directly across the dredged channel of the intracoastal waterway, keeping the other end of the net in place with a similar weight. The bottom of the net settles to the sea bottom, and the top floats beneath the surface, invisible to passing boats. We saw one fisherman drop a net directly behind us and immediately in the path of the boat following in our wake. The fishermen gamble that boats passing over their nets aren't deep enough to snag them, and apparently they are not always correct.
The next few days were typical of intracoastal waterway travel--motoring down the channel in fairly light winds. We made nearly 50 miles the first day and 40 the next, when we entered the Waccamaw River. The Waccamaw is still our favorite part of the waterway, and we were again pleased to motor through this narrow and winding river with tall trees growing all the way to the banks. Logs along the banks sported rows of turtles, stacked like fallen dominos head over tail as they sunned themselves in quiet company. We flushed great long necked gray herons as we passed, and marveled that these gangly birds, looking like something from the earth's prehistory, could actually fly. We anchored for the night in a stream that runs parallel to the main waterway, and spent the evening lulled by a symphony of insects, frogs, and birds, with no human sound to disrupt nature's music.
Georgetown, South Carolina
We arrived in Georgetown, South Carolina early the next day, and we had enough
time to go ashore and replenish our supplies of fresh foods from the nearby
grocery store. In Georgetown we finally got a weather forecast that
looked like it would be possible to head offshore. According to the
forecast, our departure the next morning would coincide with the passage
of a "dry cold front", and the droning synthesized voice suggested a nice
ride south on strong northerly winds.We finally gain the protection of St. Simon’s Island
The next morning we put Eileen Quinn's "Passage Time" on the CD player and
hauled the anchor out of the river's thick, soupy black muck. We caught
the beginning of the ebbing tide and rode it out to the entrance of Winyah
Bay, where we turned Sovereign's bow to the southwest and headed along the
coast. The forecast northeast wind of 15 knots, which was supposed
to increase to 20 to 25 during the night, never materialized, and we spent
the first day and night of the passage motoring in light, mostly east winds.
Even though we had to motor, the night was pleasant. The moon was absent
for most of the night, so the stars were bright and vivid. Pod after
pod of dolphins came and inspected us during the night and swam just feet
from the cockpit. Their shapes were outlined in a sheath of glowing
bioluminescence, and we watched transfixed as the playful creatures paced
us for a while, then swooped under the boat and veered away into the darkness.
We have never seen so many dolphins for such a long time. Finally,
on the second morning of the passage the wind suddenly shifted from east
to north and picked up to ten knots. The cold front had finally arrived.
In the course of a few hours the wind increased to 25 knots and we were running
downwind under a double-reefed main and yankee jib. We ran downwind
wing-and-wing, with the whisker pole holding out the jib, making six and
a half to seven knots under sail. With the wind and seas directly behind
us, the apparent wind was less than 20 knots, the seas built to five to six
feet, and the sailing was great. The wind built enough that we eventually
had to trade the yankee for the much smaller staysail. We finally reached
the St. Simons channel entrance by 1330, and we turned upwind for the eight
mile beat towards the northwest that would bring us into the protection of
St. Simon's Sound. As we headed into the wind, the apparent wind speed
increased from less than 20 to more than 30 knots, and Sovereign bounced
over the now boisterous waves towards land. The waves crashing on the
side of the boat threw dollops of water into the cockpit, and having forgotten
to put our foul weather gear on, we were both soon soaked to the bone.
It was as if the sea was trying to remind us not to become complacent, that
it is truly the master and can do as it pleases even to experienced sailors
at the end of a long cruise. Those eight miles up the St. Simon's channel
were almost as bad as any weather we had experienced on this cruise.
It reminded us of the long days we spent beating to Bermuda two years earlier,
and once again reminded us of the fine line that sometimes separates pleasure
and peril on the sea.Just as we arrived in Brunswick the skies, which had been sunny for literally weeks, suddenly clouded over and began to threaten rain. By 1530 we had tied Sovereign to the fuel dock at Brunswick Landing Marina and we were ready for a much-deserved rest. That evening we went up to the bath house and took real-live showers with hot, running water. It was the first time we had been able to do that in seven months, and we savored the treat.
The next day, with a little less wind to contend with, we moved Sovereign to her permanently assigned slip, only feet away from where we left on this journey two and a half years ago. As if to give us a final slap on the backside, the sea arranged for just the right combination of wind and wave to snag the bottom of one of Sovereign's fenders on a cleat as we docked, and one of the lifeline stanchions was bent to a 30° angle as it jerked the boat to a stop. After thirteen years of living aboard, four and a half years of cruising, and 22,000 miles on the log, we are sobered by the realization that we can still make stupid little mistakes like this, doing something we have done hundreds of times without incident.
Right now our plans are to stay here in Brunswick for the winter. Sovereign is showing evidence that our 281 days under way in the last two and a half years have left less time for maintenance than we would like to admit. We have painting and varnishing to do, in addition to fixing whatever mechanical problems become evident as we look at Sovereign with a more critical eye. We have not decided what we are doing once Sovereign is brought back into shape. We are thinking longingly of a place with hot showers whenever we want them, where we don't hit our heads on the doorways, or have to crawl over the other person to get out of bed; of a place where the washing machine isn't a half-mile walk away, and where we can watch a clear TV picture if we want to. We don't know what the future has in store for us. One thing we have learned from cruising is to be wary of making long-term plans. Something small and unnoticed--like a storm that passes five hundred miles away, a net that has lain submerged and unseen along a murky bottom for years, or the unlikely intersection of a fender and a cleat--any of these things can jerk us to a stop in an instant. For now we are just planning to focus on the task at hand, and let the future bring what it may.
Smooth sailing,
Jim and Cathy Mueller