Bad Things Happen in Threes

Days on Cruise: 16

Today’s distance: 32.6 statute miles

Time Traveled: 4:15 hrs

Total trip odometer: 481 miles

As usual, all’s well that ends well, but late Sunday was our first rough day on this journey. A learning experience.

 

We decided to leave Beaufort about 3:30 and go a couple hours further north to find a spot to anchor out for the night, making the next travel day to Charleston a more enjoyable distance.

After transiting the long, wide Coosaw River, we arrived at the Ashepoo-Coosaw Cutoff, a narrow channel, and realized it was probably too shallow to make it through, so turned back into the deeper river to discuss what to do. Examining the charts, we noted another river immediately east, but not on the Intracoastal Waterway, with charted depths of 13-25 feet, which re-connected with the ICW only a few miles later. We decided to head that way rather than hang out for a couple hours waiting for the tide to come in, as it was already late in the afternoon.

Just at the entry to this second river, we were well wide of the day mark and in charted depths of 14 feet but saw our depth sounder suddenly drop rapidly. Before we could back off, we felt a “bump”, telling us we had just touched bottom on an uncharted shoal – yikes! We quickly reversed, but the boat stayed put, so Bob raced to the bow and dropped the anchor to give us a few minutes to figure out what to do, and to prevent the wind and waves from blowing us further onto the shoal. By then we realized the port engine and the generator had also died. Uh-oh.

Fortunately, the wind blew us around into slightly deeper water, which must have happened when our boat rose on a wave – so it was what they call a “soft grounding” not a “hard grounding”, and the bottom here in the ICW is all sand, no rocks. At that point we were able to back the boat off of the shoal, pull up the anchor and head for deeper water.

We tried to re-start the port engine, but no luck, and the  engine temp had spiked after we touched bottom.  So we  continued upriver the short distance back to the ICW on only the starboard engine, in waters that never saw less than 12 feet below our hull – whew! We arrived at an anchorage spot in the South Edisto River about 6:30 and were happy to see another boat there, Windsong, the folks we had dinner with in Savannah, Jerry and Janet.

Bob went to the bow to drop anchor for the night, and when he took his foot off of the “out” pedal it kept spooling out and wouldn’t stop, all the way to the end of the anchor rode! What’s with that? He put his foot on the “in” pedal, and sure enough, it began coming in. He took his foot off of the “in” pedal at the appropriate rode length, and it kept coming in until the anchor went “clunk”, hard on the windlass. Huh??? Why’d it do that?

Bob grabbed the tools to do a manual lowering of the anchor, but it was still stuck! He grabbed the windlass manual to make sure he was doing it correctly and saw that he was. What now? The back-up anchor! He dug in the storage area underneath the dinette to retrieve the spare anchor rode, attached it to the spare anchor, and dropped it overboard. Whew!

We were happy to be in a secure spot for the night, but realized we didn’t know how long the spare anchor rode was, so were unsure what our scope was. No way to find out without pulling up the anchor and measuring, and since we had other worries on the list (that pesky dead engine and generator), we were ready to move on to something else, and because we couldn’t make the rode longer anyway.

We decided to check the raw water strainer on the generator’s cooling system and discovered it chock full of sand, sucked up when we touched bottom a few miles back.

Back at the helm after cleaning the sand from the strainer, we agreed to try starting the generator and stare at the temperature gauge for a while so we could shut it down immediately if the temperature rose too high. Finally, something went right! The generator started up, purred like a cat for the rest of the evening, and the temperature never rose above normal. Whew!

Next we checked the temperature on the port engine, it had dropped back to normal, and we tried starting the engine. Bingo! It too started up and “growled” just like normal. We let it run for 10 minutes, the temperature stayed low (as it will do in neutral and not under load), and we turned it off for the night.

The only remaining problem was Cathryn was worried about whether our anchor would hold, as were in a 3-knot current, and we’d been warned by Captain Chris that Fortress anchors (our spare type) don’t always re-set in reversing tides. She stayed up until 1am after the tide turned for the first time, the boat swung 180 degrees, and it didn’t drag anchor, so she finally went to bed. We both got up at 4am to peer out the window to see if we were still in place: yep! And the alarm went off at 6am so we’d be awake during the next tide swing to make sure we didn’t drag anchor and end up on shore.

Morning came, both engines and the generator started right up, and we took off for Charleston, exhausted, but relieved.

(An aside: the photo below is a tug pulling a dredge that took up the whole marked channel, so we had to follow it 3 miles at 3mph until the channel widened and we could pass)

We telephoned ahead to some people in Charleston we’ve never met, but from whom we bought half of our charts and cruising guides last year. They suggested we stop at Ross Marine 10 miles before Charleston to get the anchor windlass repaired, and a phone call to them revealed they’d be happy to look at it immediately on our arrival. Wow!

We pulled into Ross Marine, a mechanic arrived at the boat 20 minutes later, and an hour later they had ordered the new control box we need, and said they’d come to Charleston to install it on Wednesday!

Finally, at 3:00 Monday we arrived in Charleston, running on both engines and with the generator working normally, and the windlass repair underway. So we took naps!

All’s well that ends well.

Things we learned:

One: never leave the dock, even to travel only a few miles, without reviewing the charts, guides and TIDES to make sure you know what’s ahead. We already knew this, of course, but we violated it when we left Beaufort. We won’t do that again!

Two: never leave the marked and charted channel of the ICW to go a different route. Changes to the bottom aren’t charted so you can’t know what you will face.

Now: it’s time to check the impellers in all the raw water cooling systems to make sure they didn’t suffer damage from our touching bottom in the sand.

We made a phone call to Captain Chris (the couple who trained us for 3 days back at the beginning), and he spent 30 minutes de-briefing this event with us. He confirms the errors we made and confirmed we’d done the right things in the moment and taken the right steps since then.

Everyone says if you complete the Great Loop and say your boat never touched bottom, you’re a liar. Glad we have that one behind us and we can’t be called liars anymore!