Very peaceful night on the hook... strong current but no issues.

Departed from the anchorage this morning at 0800 and back to ICW... current against us all day... luckily we had a very short day planned going to St. Johns Island just below Charleston.

Weather was also not that great... it was windy and raining.

We did have the strongest current we have ever expereinced against us as we transited Elliotts Cut. I had the engines at 2750 RPM.. should give us about 7.5 knots... as we got into Elliotts Cut we slowed to below 2 knots... 1.6 knots being the lowest I saw... very very strong current! Glad it lasted only 15 minutes and we were out into the Stono River.

Where we turned down teh Stono running with the current... we were ruinning over 7 knots in idle... crazy currents here today.

We only had about a mile to go to reach our destination at St. Johns Yacht Harbor. It had suffered some damage from Hurricane Matthew and lost 3 or its t-head docks where we normally dock... today we had to dock on C Dock about 150 yards down the fairway. This same strong current was running through the marina. We bascially had to crab sideways almost perpendicular to the fairway to the slip.... was a little hairy getting in but had no problems. We will wait till slack tide to leave... :)

We were secure at the dock at 1140. Our location for the night N32°45.290’, W080°00.699’. We traveled today for 3 hours and 40 minutes covering 19.2 nautical miles averaging 5.2 knots.

They have a courtesy car here at the marina and we were able to go to Susan's favorite grocery store... PUBLIX.

We left Bucksport this morning at 0745 and headed south down the Waccamaw River. We had some current against us and we were making about 6 knots. Photo not when we left but after we arrived yesterday.

We planned to travel as far south as we could and stop at sunset. This meant we would be anchoring some place north of Charleston, SC. We had made a reservation for tomorrow night at St. Johns Yacht Harbor just south of Charleston... they have a courtesy car and a Publix for groceries.

About an hour into the trip the current switched to our favor and we were soon moving along at 8 to 9 knots... very nice! This current stayed with us for the majority of the day... not 8 to 9 knots but over 7 knots most of the time.

We had a lot of VHF traffic between a group of sailboats traveling south together. They kept going aground and TowboatUS Georgetown came to assist a couple of them. This photo of one aground at the mouth of Minim Creek with TowBoatUS ungrounding them.

This was the first of many groundings throughout the day... from what we could tell there were 5 or 6 sailboats in the group and at least 3 of them grounded a few times... Low tide in this area is not good for boats over 5 foot draft.

Sunset came and we were just a couple of miles from an anchorage in Whiteside Creek... turned to starboard off the ICW and 500 yards in and dropped the hook. We securely anchored in Whiteside Creek 1645. Our location for the night N32°52.330’, W079°42.913’. We traveled today for 9 hours covering 64.9 nautical miles averaging 7.2 knots.

We left Carolina Beach this morning at 0700... destination for the day either Barefoot Landing, Osprey Marina or Bucksport Marina... depending on current being favorable or against us... do not want to travel after dark if we can help it.

We started off with a bang... Cape Fear River with current pushing us along... 10.5 knots for quite a while... we were at Southport in just over an hour.... quickest I can remember ever doing the Cape Fear.

t all stopped at Southport... we dropped from 10 knots to 5.9 knots in a few seconds... we did pick up speed as the day went along here an there as we approached and passed each inlet.

Several very shallow areas... one we actually hit bottom... as we passed
Shallotte Inlet... this area has always been a shoaling area and following our track we have taken for serval years we hit what felt like a hill of sand... 8 feet deep as we approached and then BAM! the bow bounced up and up and over the hill we went... back to 8 feet on the other side... totally shocked me and Susan was in the galley and thought we had hit another boat.

We reached Barefoot Landing at 1400 and we had started getting a favorable current so we opted to continue on to Bucksport Marina with an eta of 1700.

Heard a couple of boats on the radio today and one boat passed us... other than that virtually no boat traffic today... Heard both boats hail Osprey Marina to stay for the night. So we will see both of them tomorrow when they pass us.

We arrived our destination and we securely dock at Bucksport Marina at 1715. Our location for the night N33°39.074’, W079°05.696’. We traveled today for 10 hours and 15 minutes covering 69.8 nautical miles averaging 6.8 knots.