The sounds are like inlets into the ocean except that they’re incredibly wide. Some are several miles wide so finding your marks and staying in deeper water gets to be a little tough upon occasion.
Getting out through the Wassaw Sound was a winding affair lasting several miles. The water was as deep as the charts predicted so it went fairly well. We had the tide running out with us so we were moving along at close to 8 knots. The only issue was that the wind was coming over our port bow and pushing waves into the outgoing tide. It was a little rougher than I had hoped for but it was only unpleasant for the first hour or so until we turned south towards Saint Catherine’s.
While we’re in the ocean we can still hear the boats traveling along the ICW as they talk with bridge tenders. On the charts draw bridges are shown as “bascule bridge”. Today we heard a woman calling “Bascule Bridge, Bascule Bridge”; she was trying to arrange an opening for 10 minutes with no reply. Finally someone chimed in and explained that “Bascule” was a type of bridge not the name of a specific bridge. He went on to explain to her that every bridge for 25 miles in either direction can hear her, so she needs to either call the bridge by name or at least tell the bridge tenders where she is. How the hell have these people been traveling? What do they do just sit and wait for someone else to come through the bridge and then scurry through as well.
To enter the channel when heading south to Saint Catherine’s you must go past two thirds of the sound and make a hard turn to starboard and head almost northwest. As we were passing the sound we were parallel to a series of sand bars. 500 yards off our starboard side we had breakers hitting the sandbar between us and the sound. It was kind of creepy to be outside the breakers looking inshore for a couple of miles before our channel markers came into view.
The chartplotter and the charts both seemed to agree where the marks should be but when we got close enough to actually see them they were out of position by a few hundred yards. So it seems that the channel has moved from where it was charted. Not the end of the world but the pucker factor just went up a bit. There’s sand bars everywhere just outside the channel entrance so we picked a likely looking spot and threaded our way into the channel. We draft five and a half feet and at one point we were in only nine feet of water, this is in a rolly following sea still over five miles from shore!
As we established our position in the channel the bottom did start to drop away. It was still several miles with 14 feet of water. We had gotten here so quickly that the tide hadn’t yet turned and was still ebbing. So it was about an hour until we turned the corner and into Walburg Creek.
Walburg Creek is just inside the southern hook of Saint Catherine’s sound. There’s a wonderful beach that
we took the dogs to as soon as we were anchored. Jim & Deb from Freedom took some time and walked the beach with us as well.We had a first today. As soon as we got back onboard the boat I saw a power boat bearing down on us kicking up a giant wake. I’m thinking that I can’t believe this jackass is going to fly through the anchorage. Then as if by magic 400 yards away he slows way down and starts to crawl towards us. Great. Now he’s getting so close that Christy remarks “What’s he gonna do, anchor right on top of us?” Crap.
He gets so close that now I can speak to him without yelling. He says “Could you give us a little help? We can’t seem to find the ICW” It was all I could do not to laugh. As he was headed south he missed a ninety degree turn to starboard and had kept right on barreling along until he saw the anchored boats. I got my chart and explained where they went wrong and off they went. A half hour later we heard him on the radio explaining to the some boat in front of him that “No, we don’t intend to pass you. If you don’t mind we’ll just follow along as were having trouble with these charts”
So we actually had a guy stop and ask us for directions.
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