October 31. Happy Halloween everyone.

Today we were up and underway at 0930 for a thirty couple mile trip to Ladies Island, SC. We waited for 0930 because the low tide was around 0700 and we wanted to give the tide some time to fill in a bit before heading out.

The other advantage to waiting, besides deeper water and the extra sleep, is that we will get a tidal push for most of the day. As it turned out whenever the tide was against us the wind piped up and made the difference for us as we motor sailed along.

We ran through the worst of the shallow spots at just before high tide. There’s an 8 foot tidal range here and several times the depth sounder showed less than eight feet under us. This means that if we had come through near low tide we would have been just about out of water. The big drawback to hitting these spots at high tide is that if you run aground and don’t get off quickly the tide rolls out and leaves you literally high, dry and laying on your side.

Considerate passing is an interesting dilemma we’ve encountered. In theory as a power vessel overtakes a slower vessel they contact the lead vessel and announce intent. It goes like “Veranda, Veranda this is the trawler Dipshit and I’d like to overtake you on your port side. Standard procedure is that when he’s almost at your stern he’ll reduce his speed by half or so and you do as well. So if he was doing 10 knots and I was doing 7 now he’s doing 5 knots and we’re doing about 4. This is where I don’t get it. Now that we’re both within a knot or so of each other the pass takes about forever. The wake that he was just kicking up doesn’t slow down so now it overtakes us while the good ship Dipshit is right in our pocket leaving us nothing to do but get our ass kicked by the overtaking wake. With the original 3 knot difference he’d have been long gone before his wake got to us allowing us to turn into the wake and it’s over in one quick swell.

When a power vessel calls out to us we tell em’ to keep their speed and we’ll deal with the wake. They’re usually shocked, ask if we’re sure and then thank us very much for the consideration. Until today……

We’re in a tight section of the ICW with suspect water depths. The channel makes a very tight 90 degree turn to port. As we’re approaching the turn the good ship Dipshit announces he’ll be overtaking us on our starboard side, the outside of the turn. As we’re more than halfway through the turn the Dipshit is still not abreast of us and calls out “Veranda you need to learn about slow passes” I almost broke my fingers grabbing for the microphone to give this guy a geometry lesson. We ‘re barely moving through a hard left hand turn and this clown slows down and is surprised he can’t overtake us as he runs the great circle route off our starboard side trying to make the same left hand turn. Dipshit.

On the other hand, woe be it to the power vessel that passes someone too quickly. Some people lose their minds and start screaming all kinds of crap. Grown men sounding a little girl with a spider in her panties. Sometimes a slow pass is a nessecity but sometimes its unwarranted and some folks just expect it all the time. If I we were on a power vessel I might just lose my mind.

We made excellent time and dropped the hook at 1500 hours. We’re in Factory Creek which interestingly enough has no factories at all. It’s quite beautiful with tall trees protecting us from the south, east and north with marshlands to our west.

We should be here for a few nights as we’re plenty protected and have a few boat chores to do so we might as well do them here.