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The
Return of Vagrant Sea
Charleston to Georgetown
Part 5
By Bonnie James
Cool spring sailing
In this instalment, Jim and Bonnie continue
moving north in their 34-foot sailboat Vagrant Sea along the Intracoastal
Waterway through Charleston, South Carolina, and on to Georgetown. Bonnie
writes:
Charleston is a rarity on the waterway. It
has an honest-to-goodness harbour, not just a bulge in the bank of a river.
There is much commercial traffic, and a naval presence, though this has
decreased somewhat in recent years. We left Vagrant Sea here for the off-season
in 1998-99, at a boatyard on a decommissioned portion of a military facility. It
seemed to us we could rely on the security.
Charleston is also home to a major U.S. Coast Guard station, and a tragedy that
took place right here in December 1997 has raised many questions about USCG
operations. The sailboat Morning Dew was being delivered from Myrtle Beach, SC,
to Florida during the Christmas break. On board were the owner and three
teenagers: his two sons and a nephew. They had sailed along the Atlantic
coastline for a day or two, then entered Charleston harbour about 2:00 a.m. on
December 29. The boat struck a rock jetty and was severely damaged. One of the
young boys issued a distress call on VHF radio. The operator who received the
transmission could not hear it clearly and did not investigate or report the
incident to his superior. Four hours later, the bosun of a container ship
entering the harbour heard a cry for help from the water. The vessel’s pilot
boat did a search, in poor pre-dawn visibility, but found nothing. They informed
USCG of the incident, but again coast guard did not launch its own search. The
bodies of two of the teenagers washed ashore at mid-morning, close to where the
voice had been heard. A search eventually located the bodies of the other two
crew members, as well as the sunken boat. The incident was the subject of a
formal inquiry that identified shortcomings in USCG response and made
recommendations for changes to its operating procedures (see link). The families
sued the U.S. federal government. In June 2002 the appeal process ended with a
decision that the families would receive $21 million dollars in damages.
We enter Charleston from the Intracoastal Waterway and anchor in the Ashley
River, off the downtown. The collection of boats around us includes small
weekend cruisers, some liveaboards, a few foreign-flagged vessels on extended
voyages, and the usual scruffy derelicts rotting at their moorings. Our progress
north has been relatively slow, and we have over 400 miles left to reach
Norfolk, so we decide to stay only a single night. We get underway Saturday
morning, planning to cross the harbour and get through the only bridge for the
day before 9:00 a.m.. Early in the morning, the bridge opens ‘on demand’, but
once the boomers in the suburbs start driving into the city for their weekend
outings, it opens only on the hour.
While Jim is on the Ham radio chatting up friends thousands of miles away, I
(Bonnie) try to dodge a large military tug and its tow. I have trouble gauging
its intentions - is it going up the Cooper River here or to that base over the
other way? Am I fast enough to cross ahead? If I give way, will I be too late to
catch the bridge? Then visibility drops in heavy drizzle, and I can’t find the
channel markers leading from the harbour into the ICW. Maybe, just maybe, it
wouldn’t be so bad to be home shovelling snow right now.
All this aggravation is for nothing. We just get into the waterway and a real
downpour hits. There is no option but to head for the nearest reasonable
anchorage - just a wide bend in a river - and wait it out. We are miles from
nowhere, and stranded on board, so it’s just like a blizzard day back home. We
read, play Scrabble, listen to Radio Canada International and cook huge meals.
By Sunday the rain has stopped and we are keen to make an early start. After a
quick breakfast, I step up to the cockpit to start the engine, as Jim goes to
the foredeck, ready to haul the anchor. I switch on the starting battery, pull
back the priming arm and move the gear shift into position, then press the
starting button. All I get it a faint click. The engine won’t start.
We’ve been lucky during our southern cruising to have very few mechanical
problems. Jim is not given to panic, so he works us through all the
possibilities he can think of, step by step. Then he takes out Nigel Calder’s
book, which lets you look up the symptoms and works you through to a diagnosis.
As a last resort, there is always swearing and praying. On this occasion, the
thoughts of what it would cost in U.S. dollars for a service call up this lonely
creek help to focus our efforts. We realize the engine isn’t getting fuel, and
the lift pump seems to be the problem. Eventually, we coax the engine to life,
and off we go again.
This night we stay in McClellanville, a fishing community that is several miles
up a narrow creek from the ocean. We’ve never been here before, but our
five-year-old guidebook and some sailing friends we spoke to recently both told
us it was a delightful small town, with a supermarket and other interesting
shops and facilities. Well, the place is still pretty, with a few big
plantation-style homes, and a fresh-scrubbed look. The sad news is that it has
lost many of the essentials of town life. It is now so influenced by the big
cities within commuting distance that local services are non-existent. Everyone
has a car and takes the highway to go to work and shopping. There is no longer a
need for a grocery store or coffee shop that people can walk to. Even the post
office has been moved out near the highway. We walked three miles along a road
where no one is expected to walk, so there is not always enough space on the
shoulder. At the highway junction we find a gas bar and convenience store with
the usual junk food, beer and lottery tickets.
This may be “The South”, but it’s only February and the weather has been cool,
and getting colder all the time. On many days the thermometer reads less than 10
degrees C in the cabin when we get up. We have a heater on board, but we don’t
operate it while we sleep. Since this is a sailboat, one person needs to stand
all day in an exposed cockpit. I pay for my lack of skill in other areas by
spending most of my time at the tiller. To stay warm, we depend on hot liquids.
Breakfast is cooked cereal. All morning we have hot drinks - coffee, hot
chocolate, tea, instant soups. If it’s a good day, the sun is strong enough to
thaw us out by early afternoon. On a bad day, we have hot toddies after we drop
anchor for the night. We usually aren’t able to do more than seven or eight
hours’ travelling. It is so cold in the morning we often don’t leave until
nearly 9:00, and we need to stop before the early sunset.
As at home, we listen to the marine forecast on VHF radio. The voice sounds
eerily familiar, something about that odd accent. It took us a while to figure
out that both Environment Canada’s Weather Service and the U.S. NOAA (National
Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration) Weather Radio use the same
computer-generated voice. We are now on the part of the waterway where the
mechanical man gives us the forecasts for both Northern South Carolina and
Southern North Carolina, without ever once mixing up the names. This week the
outlook is not pleasant. Strong northerly winds are as unwelcome for sailing
here as in Newfoundland. We sail up the wide Sampit River to Georgetown, a route
that used to carry rice, cotton and indigo from slave plantations to world
markets. We anchor in 11 feet of water, less than a mile from a steel mill, in
shouting distance from a tourist board walk on the restored waterfront. This
should be a good place to lay low for a few days.
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