April 4, 2014.

It was nice to wake up in Charleston after 7 uninterrupted hours of sleep. We have to get moving north but the engine was due for an oil change. The oil change pump had an issue and I was able to fix it but my “quick” pre-departure oil change turned into a three hour job.

At first glance I figured this issue had surfaced because the universe hates me and enjoys seeing me have to dick around with something that should be so simple. But once underway I looked at the tide charts for the day and realized that the universe LOVES me and wanted us to hit the scary stretch just north of the Ben Sawyer Bridge 2 hours before high tide.

Everything went perfectly today and places that we've bumped the bottom in years previous, we transited with a few feet of water to spare. Cool. The ICW is practically empty. We weren't overtaken by a single powerboat and only saw 2 other sailboats on the move all day.

Today was the day we didn't want to be on the ocean because of the wind and waves forecast. We had the breeze over our starboard quarter for the bulk of the day and with the genoa up we spent a lot of the day flirting with 8 knots. Several times the true wind speed topped 30 knots. I'm so glad we decided to move on the inside.

We dropped the hook just off the ICW in Winyah Bay after a 60 mile day. The anchorage was dead calm in spite of the wind and we once again we slept like babies.