We spent two nights at the Harbourwalk Marina in Georgetown. Really great facilities, and it was nice to be at dock for a couple of nights. Cold nights means we could also run our electric heater at night, which is a nice luxury. Aria also was able to meet up with a friend who was anchored in the area as well. We also met up with a couple other people from the anchorage, including a family of 5 from London Ontario. Nice to hang out and chat with some fellow Canadian's making the same trip.
Georgetown is a very beautiful little place. Could have spent more time here too. Theone and I did a tour of the Rice Museum which was really well done. Probably the best guided tour of a museum we've ever had, certainly most spirited. Didn't know this but this area of South Carolina was a giant producer of rice back in the 1800's. Using slave labour of course, but basically built rice fields out of the low lands and river systems in the area. Crazy stuff.
We also heard about a cruisers Thanksgiving get together in St. Mary's (right on the border with Florida), so we looked that up and decided to head there as our next stop. The weather was looking pretty good for a big ocean hop from Georgetown to St Mary's. We waited for the tide to rise a bit so we could make our way out of Georgetown around noon. We were all well prepared (water full, fuel full, holding tank empty) and so we cast off and got underway. There were a couple of places where we only had a foot under the keel, but a foot is enough, and we made it out without running aground.
Out of the harbour we put up sails, our first time raising the main in a while... And with that we were underway. We only made it a ways down the channel before running into an incoming tide that was slowing us down, and wind was not quite in the right direction or strong enough to carry us through it. So we motored out and put sails back up once we hit the ocean. A bit slow sailing at first, but winds filled in and we were moving along nicely. Winds were good up until around 2am when they died out for about 2 hours, but we were underway again at daybreak.
The next day was great winds, but they were slowing coming around on our nose, as you can see in the track. Kind of pushing us slowly off course. This continued for the whole day, and eventually we were at the point where it required us to tack over. The waves were also building that far offshore, so we tacked over at around 11pm, and spent the entire night hard upwind until tacking back over at 5:30am. That tack always feels frustrating because you aren't making very much way towards your destination, but that is how sailing upwind works.
After tacking over it was a straight shot to the St. Mary's Inlet. We did have an hour or so of no wind the next morning, and we ran out of wind near the inlet, but other than that we were able to sail the majority of the route which is nice.
We made it into the inlet, careful not to cut the jetty. We had an incoming tide which pulled us in. No wind at this point, so it was all very nice and easy. We wound our way up the river to St. Mary's. You can tell something is going on here by the very large number of boats at anchor. We picked our way through the field and found a spot we could fit ourselves into. Seems like good holding. I count just over 30 boats in here right now. Glad to be at anchor and ready to catch up on the missed sleep from the past two nights under sail.
254NM total, 2 days 2 hours.
And as a bonus, a little video of us sailing along in the North Atlantic at sunset. I'd say the night is even more beautiful than this, but it is impossible to capture on video. We did cut the nav lights for a short bit when we knew it was safe, in order to watch the bioluminescence. It looks like a trail of stars coming out of the back of the boat as you sail along. Quite magical. But the sunsets at sea are pretty amazing too!
