It’s finally starting to get warm… 54 degrees when we left this morning… much better than temps in the 30’s. Pulled anchor and were underway at about 0730 and headed out finding we had the current against us making about 5.5 knots for the first hour of the day.
But it was not long before we had current with us and pushing us over 9 knots.

This is how the entire day went… 8 - 9 knots then 4.5 - 5.5 knots and then there were areas that were so shallow we had to slow to an idle to make it through… The first 2 miles of the Dawho River we had just over 5 feet of water… then Watts Cut we had 6-7 feet through most of it… of course we were transiting these areas at low tide.

There were several areas of shoaling… none that we were surprised by but you had to be very cautious in these areas… running aground is never a good experience.

Had several of the same boas pass us again that have been passing us the last few days… a 36 foot Monk named “Elizabeth” from Belhaven, NC has been very friendly… as he passed today he hailed on the VHF… see you tomorrow about the same time… he has been passing us each morning around 0930. Some of the boats that passed us were pretty big… I know pone was at least 100 feet long… not sure how he was getting through these shallow areas without grounding.

We arrived to our destination for the night… Beaufort, SC and planne don anchoring since it was late afternoon… there is a FREE dock here that we always hope to get but the last three times here it has been full… it’s a 100 to 120 foot floating dock just to the west of the Beaufort Downtown marina. Much to our surprise as we were heading into the anchorage area we found this dock totally open… so we made a quick change in plans and… no anchoring this time… FREE dock. No power or water but it’s much easier with Beecha when we are tied to a dock.

We were securely docked at about 1600… our location: N32°25.845’, W080°40.524’.

We traveled today for 8 hours and 30 minutes covering 55.12 nautical miles averaging 6.48 knots.