We departed Charleston, SC before sunrise at 0630 hours and were bound for Beaufort. SC. We had a good boost of current with us for the first few hours but soon lost it... that was the way most of the day went... 4.5 to 9.3 knots... it seemed to be equally split slow and fast today. It was not as windy as yesterday and it was sunny all day... NO RAIN... :)

There was not a lot of boat traffic... a few sailboats and one steel trawler with Sydney, Australia as the hailing port... one sailboat we had passed yesterday leaving Georgetown, SC... its hailing port was Cape Coral, FL and we passed it again today just after leaving Charleston, SC... I feel really bad for these people on the sailboats... totally exposed to the weather... and it was pretty COLD this morning... low 40's... :)

We were cruising with an ebb tide... so most of the areas we went through were at or near dead low tide... very skinny waters in a few places... the cut that goes between the Ashepoo River and the Coosaw River was really thin... 5-7 feet all the way through it and we lost the depth sounder reading as we exited the cut and entered the Coosaw River... did not feel us dragging but we were inches from the bottom... all mud bottoms... :)

When we turned up the Coosaw River is when we had the worst current against us... we actually slowed to below 5 knots for a little while... but we were close to the tide switching from ebb to flood so it slowed and we eventually were doing almost 6 knots. Once we exited the Coosaw and entered the Beaufort river we had the current kick in our favor again and we held 7.5 to 8 knots all the way to Beaufort.

We arrived to Beaufort, SC at approximately 1430 hours and had hoped to dock at the small city dock just south of the Beaufort Downtown Marina... but, it was full... 3 sailboats filling the 140 foot floating dock... no FREE dock tonight...:( So, we moved a little further south and dropped the anchor at approximate coordinates... N32°25.801', W080°40.571'... safe and sound at 1445 hours.

We traveled today for 8 hours and 15 minutes covering 61.3 nautical miles and averaging 6.45 knots.

Trip totals to date:

Distance: 1068.71 nautical miles
Hours: 168 hours 11 minutes
Avg Spd: 6.35 knots
Days not moving: 12