After just over a week in South Carolina, we flew back to Maine to attend a wedding and get our car. Then we drove down over a full week, making some stops along the way.

We have been back in South Carolina for 2 weeks now and have begun to explore our new home. There are lots of parks and nature areas around us, and we love exploring new ones together. Being that its typically at least 65 degrees in December doesn’t hurt our desire to get out an explore!

Here are the places we’ve enjoyed so far……

Beaufort Public Pool – Beaufort

Almost across the street from us is the high school, and the community pool. Pricing is pretty reasonable, at $10 for a family day pass, and $40 for a monthly family pass. The water was nice and warm, but we still put Trixie in a wet-suit, knowing her tendency to turn blue pretty quickly. Despite her lack of body-temperature retention, she is a total fish! With just 2 noodles under her arms she swam the entire length of the pool up and back by herself! Tristan is, of course, a fish in his own regard, and was practicing his strokes and learned how to do a flip-turn from Ben.

Cypress Wetlands – Port Royal

We are in the Lowcountry of South Caroline, which means lots of swampy wetland areas, and lots of signs about Alligators. This park was the first time we had encountered the signs and it spurred a weeklong unit on Alligators for homeschooling. The main pathway is a boardwalk raised above the wetlands, so there is really no chance for any alligators to get close to you. We saw 3 small ones (2-3ft long) but hear there is an 18 footer who calls this swamp home. We will have to visit again in hopes of seeing that one. There were also lots of large birds, mostly herons and storks, along with turtles and fish.

YMCA Pool –Port Royal

Right next to the Cypress Wetlands is the local YMCA. We have some fellow boat friends who are staying at the Port Royal marina, which comes with a free membership to the Y! We joined them one afternoon to check out the pool. This was our second day in a row of swimming, the kids loved it.

Tuck in the Woods Campground – St Helanea Island

Grandma and Grandpa Fernald stopped by to visit on their way South in their RV, and they stayed at the Tuck in the Woods Campground in Beaufort. We visited for an afternoon, and got to traverse another boardwalk with Alligator warnings all over. We didn’t see any alligators this time, but we did spot a few turtles. There was also a rickety playground at the campground, and despite its condition the kids still had fun playing. There was one odd structure, we’re pretty sure its a section of an old waterslide that they just placed on the ground and you can walk through it. The kids had a blast doing circles in it, despite how dirty it was!

The Sands Beach – Port Royal

This adventure blossomed from a failed attempt to go to the local indoor play-space. Despite the fact that it is listed as open and running online, it was closed, and didn’t look like it had been open yet when we arrived. So in trying to figure out where else we could go, we found this beach not too far away and decided to explore it. While it was pretty windy and chilly (in the 50’s) that day, everyone still had a blast. We had to drag Tristan off the beach to check out the boardwalk and scenic tower.

Island Playground – Hilton Head

A few days after our first failed indoor playground attempt, we headed for another one a bit further away. It was worth the longer drive. We had the whole place to ourselves, as it was mid-morning on a weekday, and it was a blast. There were 4 large inflatable structures, a pirate ship, a huge double slide, a bouncy house, and an obstacle course, along with a slackline, rock wall, punching bag, and toddler area. Since we were a bit further away from home, Trixie fell asleep on the drive home, which ended up leading us to our next adventure as we tried to find a place to take a scenic drive while she slept.

Hunting Island State Park – Hunting Island

I think this is everyone’s favorite new place. Its also South Carolina’s most visited state park, so its a popular place! Since it is the off-season down here, and again it was mid-week, there weren’t many other people around. The park has a long fishing pier and nature center, which we haven’t visited yet, along with a campground, large beach and the only South Carolina lighthouse that is open to the public. We didn’t climb the lighthouse because Trixie isn’t tall enough, and Tristan didn’t want to. Perhaps Ben and I will have to go back alone sometime to do it! The beach was the big hit of the park, and the kids played there happily for over an hour before we dragged them away. We did get to see dolphins right off the beach a few times while we were there! Everyone can’t wait to go back (which is planned for Tuesday of this week for a talk about Alligators and getting up close with the 2 juveniles they have at the nature center to round out our unit in homeschooling.)

We returned to the state park about a week after our first trip, since we enjoyed it so much, but checked out a different part of the park. We visited the nature center, and learned more about alligators from the rangers, and got to see one being fed and touch one!

Then we headed out to the beach again, but to a different part. We expected a beach like the one we had visited before, but this beach was like nothing I have seen before. It is littered with whole dead trees, so much so that we couldn’t get to the ocean. There was a sandbar between us and the ocean, and between us and the sandbar was all the blown down trees and very shelly mud filled with oysters and clams, that we didn’t want to walk on. We had a blast anyway, playing in the sand, building castles and an alligator/dragon, and playing among the trees.

Naval Heritage Park – Port Royal

Having driven past this park with a ship-shaped playground a few times, it was time to make a trip there. The big draw for the kids was the full sized skate park, as they were eager to use their wheeled toys again. This time we went with 2 bikes, a scooter and a skateboard. Trixie is still about an inch too short for her balance bike, so she stuck to the scooter. Tristan started on the skateboard, but quickly switched over to his bike once I had reassembled it and pumped up the tires. He was having a great time using the skate ramps, until he went off the side of a ramp he hadn’t seen and took a tumble. He was pretty shaken and a bit scraped and bruised but generally okay. By the end of the after noon, after some lunch and some time on the playground, he was using both the balance bike and sitting on the skateboard riding down the ramps again.

Crystal Lake Park – Beaufort

Another park we have driven by multiple times that we finally made it to. A small parking lot behind the Beaufort Soil and Water District, along with a covered walkway (which itself is covered in solar panels!) are where this park starts. Again it has a boardwalk, and signs warning about alligators. Mostly the signs warn to stay away, please don’t feed (a fed alligator is a dead alligator) and general safety tips (don’t swim in waters where alligators are known to be.) There was a boardwalk pier that took us our over the small pond, and then another, brand new looking, one that allows you to circle the pond. We saw lots of fish jumping in the pond, and met the work-crew for the park on their lunch break about 1/2 way around. Also about 1/2 way around we found the only alligator we saw this day. But it was worth it! It was at least 12ft long, and basking in the sun for all to see. The closest the boardwalk/path got to its location was still a good 100ft away. Our little collector (Trixie) picked up 2 pine cones, a brilliantly purple leaf, and at least 1 stick along the way. Trying to convince her to leave them behind was fruitless, but only the 2 pine cones made it into the car (oops?) and now they are sitting on our table.

First Friday – Downtown Beaufort

As the holiday season is upon us, the holiday events are in full swing. First Friday is actually something that happens the first friday of each month, but the December one its special with Christmas around the corner. All the businesses on the super cute and quaint ‘main’ st (named Bay St) stay open late, there is a holiday decoration contest among the stores, and most stores give out FREE treats and WINE (?!?). Apparently it is the one night a year that the city allows open alcohol on the streets (‘its just beer and wine’ one local told me, ‘not the hard stuff…..’) and allows for it to be given away for free, which at least in Maine is a big no-no. There were people dressed up, light up necklances and light sabers everywhere, Santa to visit, and the Marine Corps band putting on a lively show. I guess there was a tree lighting at 8pm, but we missed it as we were exploring (perhaps that was when we were getting ice cream?) and headed back toward the playground due to the kids request. We ran into our boat friends on Twig, who have an 8 year old girl, and walked the street with them for awhile before letting the kids run off the ice cream and free candy at the playground. I had on my Sebago Brewing Company jacket, and had 2 people ask if I was from Maine because of it. I didn’t realize so many people knew about Sebago (the lake is what they recognized, not the brewery, but still!) It was a wonderful night.

Boat Light Parade – Downtown Beaufort

To continue the holiday festivities, the next night there was a boat light parade. Ben had to work, but our friends from Twig were planning to attend in their dinghy and invited the kids and I to come along. We bundled up, knowing full well that everything is colder on the water, and got picked up around 5:30pm. We were the only boat out that wasn’t participating in the parade, but it was awesome to see from the water! There were about 13 boats, both sail and power, decked out to the nines in lights and Christmas flair. We followed them from Port Royal up to the Beaufort Town Dock where they circled a few times for the crowd on shore. One sailboat lots their engine about 10 minutes in and had to be towed for the remainder of the parade.

Holiday Parade – Downtown Beaufort

To round out the holiday festivities weekend, there was a Parade on Sunday. As we are in the South, and most of the populations spends Sunday mornings at church, the parade wasn’t until 3pm. We tried to go to the YMCA pool in the morning, but the Y apparently turns into a church on Sundays and the pool doesn’t open until 1pm. Despite the disappointing morning, the parade was a lot of fun. Emily and Rev from Twig met up with us down-town and the kids had a blast watching all the floats go by and collecting copious amounts of candy as it was handed or thrown to them. We are just about out of our Halloween candy, and now I think we are set for another month or so from their haul.

This kind of family fun and adventure is just what I’d always pictured boat life as.

The top part of the ICW(intra coastal waterway) was great. Wide channels with plenty of depth.

Below Beaufort, NC, everything changes.

Half an hour outside Beaufort we hit a ‘speed bump’ of shallow water. This was 100% my fault as I strayed outside of the channel by mistake. Luckily the bottom was all sand so no damage done.

Now let’s talk about those sandy bottoms. Sand is great for running aground, it’s soft and forgiving. If it’s only a tiny bit too shallow sometimes you can just push the sand out of the way to get through.

But sand is also prone to moving with the waves and current (unlike the sticky mud of the Chesapeake or the granite rocks of Maine), and this creates shoaling.

Jelanea draws 5.5ft, meaning our deepest point is 5.5ft under water. So really we like a minimum of 6ft of water, but we really prefer at least 7, and we feel much better with 8 or above.

Over the past 2 days of transiting the ICW we have had 0.1ft ‘under’ our keel at least 6 times. Not our idea of a good time.

The channels on this part of the ICW are much more narrow then the ones further north. They are typically maybe 30ft wide. Barely enough for a boat to pass at a safe distance.

The whole ICW also has a tendency to place buoys and day markers well outside the channel. So you may run aground even inside the markers. Sometimes the markers are smack dab in the middle of the channel as well. What?

Assuming you can deduce where the channel actually is, and stay inside it, you may still have to deal with shoaling.

Storms, winds, currents and tides can all cause the sandy bottom to shift around. Just in case the scattered channel markers didn’t create enough of a ‘Fun-House’ environment for you, the sandy bottom will oblige.

We have been using 4 different methods of navigation in order to not run aground. These include: our Raymarine chart plotter, with 2 year old charts; the Navionics app on our phones, the latest version of the paper charts, and the Waterway Guide Nav Alerts (accessed on our phones). Just tying all the data together to find the best paths is exhausting.

Our chart plotter is the best method we have of staying in the channel. For most of the ICW the channel is marked in white, while the shallower surrounding water is blue.

Navionics is best for user reported shoaling, and directions for how to get around the shoals. The information can be years old though, so it’s important to pay attention to dates of reports.

The paper charts are great for getting the overall picture of what is coming next. This is also the best source of land based landmarks to use as sight points.

The Waterway Guide Nav Alerts are great for getting the most up to date information. They also have great bathymetric images of the shoaling, which really helps us visualize where we need to avoid. The biggest downside to this program is it doesn’t have GPS to show us how close we may be to said shoals.

We have had many close calls, and overall it has had us on edge for the past 2 days. Add in the multiple bridges that only open every hour or half hour, and we have reached our tolerance level for this trip. We have one more 25 mile stretch in the ICW to transit tomorrow, and then we are leaving the shoaling, bridges and wacky channel markers behind and heading offshore straight to Beaufort, SC.

Here is what our last week looked like:

Monday, Oct. 21 – Annapolis, MD to Rose Haven, MD- 17nm
Tuesday, Oct 22 – Rose Haven,MD to Tilghman Island, MD – 18.5nm
Wednesday, Oct 23 – Tilghman Island, MD to Cockrell Creek, MD – 62.5nm
Thursday, Oct 24 – Cockrell Creek, MD to Norfolk, MD – 60nm
Friday, Oct 25 – Norfolk, MD to Buck Island, NC – 64nm
Saturday, Oct 26 – Buck Island, NC to Belhaven, NC – 70nm

Monday was a short day because we were headed for Harrington Harbor South, a marina where our friend on Brio II were staying while they fix up their new (to them) boat. We also needed to do laundry, shower, and dispose of our trash and used oil.  It was great to have the crew of Brio II over for dinner and to catch up with them. After dinner Leah took me to the grocery store to provision.  

Tuesday was a short day because we got out of the marina later than planned, around 12pm, and not long after we left we realized we were taking on quite a bit of water.  Our ‘dripless’ stuffing box was gushing water into our bilge.  We were able to stop it by throttling back the engine to only 2000rpm.  

Wednesday we headed south again, thinking we may have fixed the stuffing box issue. Typically the issue when water is coming in is that there is foreign material caught in the stuffing box, between the carbon plate and the stainless plate that are supposed to created a water-tight seal.  But if foreign material from the water (sand, seaweed, etc.) gets caught it causes a leak.  I had cleaned and flushed the stuffing box the night before.  All day Wednesday we had no leaking problems while the engine was running, so we thought we were in the clear.

Nothing is ever that easy on a boat though.  While we had no problem on Wednesday, or Thursday with the stuffing box.  Come Friday, though, the problem was back. It was leaking only when in neutral or when the engine was off.  So for most the day we were fine, as we were motoring all day.  However we did end up waiting over 2 hours for a bridge and a lock collectively, and while we were waiting it was leaking again.

Saturday it got even worse.  Not only did we wake up to boat covered in bugs that pooped green all over our deck, but it took us the whole 10 hour motor to get rid of 99% of them. There are still a few lingering over 36 hours later. At least they were midges and not mosquitos so they weren’t trying to eat us all day.

We motored all day and it didn’t matter if we were in forward, reverse, or neutral, it was gushing water all day.  Our aft bilge pump is a tough worker, and worked through the day to keep the bilge from overflowing. When we stopped for the night in Belhaven, we jury rigged it to stop leaking for the overnight.  As we arrived on Saturday, and we are in the South, nothing opened on Sunday until noon, and the hardware store didn’t open until 1pm. 

Our last adventure of six days of almost non-stop travel was about 2 ft from our dock for the night. 

We ran aground.  There’s a first time for every boat right?

In trying to see if the town dock was full (it was) as we tried to turn around to exit the town pier we ran aground.  With the help of 3 fellow boaters, a boat hook and a lot of reverse, we finally got free.  As we were backing up to leave the cut where the town dock is, one of our helpers mentioned that the side we were on, across from the dock, was fine to tie up on as well.  So after backing 30ft behind the shallow spot, we tied to the pilings and called it a night.   

We took the morning to wash the deck (in the rain) to rid it of midge carcasses, and to take a family walk to provision and work on Halloween costumes for the kids.  Once we returned to the boat the rain came again, and we held off on trying to fix the stuffing box (attached to the large metal prop shaft) as the thunderstorm rolled through, for safety purposes. We have now fixed the stuffing box, and will be off again tomorrow morning heading for Oriental, NC.

More details on the problem with our dripless stuffing box and how we handled and fixed it in the next post!