Day 308, Saturday, April 26th , on to the ICW

Day 308, Saturday, April 26th , on to the ICW

Again we are both up early as we want to get some things done before we head out.  We plan on leaving the dock at 12:30 which is when slack water occurs; this will make our leaving the dock easier.  Dawson is heading out for a run and Julie wants to head over to the farmers market for 8.  We both leave the boat together, Julie over to the shuttle pickup point and Dawson off for his run.

Dawson heads down to the Battery for a run along the seawall.  About half way through the run he decides to alter his finishing point at the farmers market instead of the marina.  It turns out to be an excellent 40 min run through downtown Charleston.  Meanwhile Julie has made it over to the market and has already spotted some items for purchase.  The Farmers market is a combination of fresh produce, art and crafts vendors and food vendors making for an interesting tour.  Julie picks out a lovely bracelet which features a hand-blown glass bead with precious metal flakes in it for her birthday.  Dawson who did not bring his wallet contributes $5 dollars which is all he has in running shorts, not a good thing.

From the farmers market we get the shuttle over to the local seafood market as we want to pick up some shrimp.  Unfortunately when we get there the only shrimp for sale are from Ecuador as the local shrimp season is set to start in May.  From here we head back to the boat to get ready for our departure.  We give the boat a good wash down, Julie does some taxes and then it is time to go.  We are off the dock at 12:30 with slack tide, an excellent departure.  We both quite enjoyed our stop in Charleston even though we had planned on not stopping.  The marina was excellent, a little expensive at $2.10/ft but the shuttle was an excellent feature that we made use of.

Now we are on a way to our first real run on the Intercostal Water Way (ICW).  The ICW is a canal system that runs from Norfolk Virgina to Somewhere Florida and was constructed in the 1920s to provide an alternative to going out in the ocean when traveling.  It is commonly referred to as the ditch, we are doing this portion of the ICW to get a feel for it as we have been told it is beautiful.  Time will tell, we did have someone compare it to driving the I95 at 5 mph.  Total distance from Charleston to Wrightville Beach where we plan to visit Ralph and Mike (friends from the Erie Barge days) is ~ 220 miles so about 4 to 5 days time.

House close to shore, and this is low tide!

So what has the ICW been like so far?  Busy as our first day was on a Saturday, so lots of fishing/pleasure boats out for a ride (16 to 24 footers).  Skinny, the first section we transited, just north of Charleston had shallow spots with Julie seeing a 4.7’ reading on the depth gauge.  It must have been mud we ploughed through our just stirred up mud giving a bad reading.  Very easy navigation but you have to hand steer and always watch were you are going as it shallows very quickly along the sides.  Based on this limited experience outside is way better.  Transiting the ICW takes more planning than going outside.  Outside is all about weather, the ICW is all about tides and currents, you want high tide when transiting the shallow parts and if possible you want help from the currents.  A must for transiting the ICW is the Active Captain feature on Garmin’s Bluecharts (it is a must).  Before starting on the day’s trip we review the Active Captain notes.
The land around us is all tidal marsh so there is no protection from wind.  We don’t need any today as there is very little wind.  At night all the anchorages are exposed to wind, protected from waves, but suffer from moderate to high currents.  Not ideal.

Lots of traffic along the way

Heading into the ICW about 2 hours after low tide, first we had to pass through a swing bridge then about 4 miles of “skinny” water where we saw a 4.7 on depth sounder (which has a bit of an offset built in but we could not have had more than an inch below the keel).  Julie loves helming in tight situations (sarcasm).  Once through the 1st section the rest was easy as we are riding the high tide in.  We even got the Genny out and got the boat speed up to 9 mphs for a short bit. We are now using statute miles (SM) as the ICW is all in SM.   It will be good to be back outside.


There are lots of dolphins and birdlife along the way to take pictures of.

After about 6 hours we make it to the turnoff of Town Creek near McClellandville where we anchor in Five Fathom Creek, mileage 430.  We started at mileage 470 so got the first 40 miles under our belt.

Once we shut the engine off we heard the water pump going and sadly we had a leak near the accumulator.  It is an easy repair as it was a cracked connector, but all the water from one of our tanks has emptied out.  At least it was free water.  Had it been the Bahamas it would have been $30 worth of water.  We are glad the boat has 2 water tanks that are independent.  We really do love the Caliber sailboats.  Imagine if the 2 tanks were connected, or there had only been one tank and we had gone on a long passage like we did heading south.  It would have been a real inconvenience if that had been the case.

Once Dawson deals with the water issue, we sit down to a fabulous shrimp dinner.  It is almost 9:00 by the time dinner is done so we are off to bed so we can get an early start tomorrow.

Cheers
Dawson and Julie