Our first overnighter of the season

We left Wrightsville Beach, NC, waaaay too early on Tuesday for an overnight run to Charleston, SC.  It was very successful, as we are here! Winds were mostly from the NE 8 to 12 kts, and we were headding SW. That gives an apparent wind of 5 kts or less, so we motor sailed nearly the whole way. An overnight run is an easy way to make miles count  - we went 143 miles in 28 hours instead of 50-ish miles per day on the ICW.  Boring at times, as it gets dark by 5:30 and not light again until 7.  Long perids of night. The nearly full moon, hidden above the thin cloud deck surrounded us with an eerie, misty light horizon at times, a luminous haze at others, as we motor sailed along on a gentle sea almost 30 miles off shore, past "long Bay" NC.

from Luke - I'd like examine the last two days to put into into perspective the "inside" (ICW) vs the "outside" (offshore) decisions that we make. The ICW has statute mile (SM) markers. Moorehead City is at SM 205. Wrightsville beach at SM 285, Charleston SM 465  and we are presently anchored at SM  487. To relate this to nautical miles (NM),  SM X 0.8695 = NM, or one NM = 1.15 SM. Latitudes happily motors at 6.7 kts or 7.7 SM/hr at the engine rpm we prefer to run. So, since we left Beauford/Moorehead City at dawn on Monday 1/9, 'till we anchored at 11 AM this morning, we have progressed 282 SM in 52 hours, a bit over 2 days. This was with a 10 hour run offshore from Moorehead City to Wrightsville beach, and a 22 hour offshore run from Wrightsville Beach to Charleston.

If we had stayed "inside" on the ICW, we could have theoretically done 7.7 SM/hr X 10 hours of daylight for 77  SM per day. In reality, we have to find an anchorage, we can't just stop. Also, most bridges are "restricted" and don't open between 7 and 9 AM, and 4 to 7 PM, open every 30 minutes in between. In NC, SC and GA we often find currents of 1 to nearly 2 kts with or against us. The net effect, we'd be lucky to average 50 SM per day. So, our 282 SM "inside" on the ICW would have taken us about 5 days vs 2 days with our 2 outside runs. Of course, the trade-off is that we need favorable weather forcasts, which we define as winds from not foreward of the beam, and 15 - 20 kts or less, 15 preferred, and that doesn't happen every day!

When we got to Charleston we stopped for diesel and water. Here is the dock in the early (7 a.m -. ish) light.

We took an hour nap before the marina opened, but,  ummm...nobody feels great after 4 hours sleep...

We reentered the ICW in  Charleston.  How about this boat???  Think the "fishing camo" will work?  -- or maybe it's a decoy to attract fish --- We thought the paint job was great.

Smokey was glad to get back on the quiet ICW.  She showed her appreciation by helping us read the chart....and then her daddy found her tummy - she LOVES  a tummy rub!  A good reward for a good boat cat.

She is sound asleep in the back berth - I'm going there soon!  Tomorrow we want to try to get to Beaufort, SC.  Maybe Savannah late on Friday.  From Savannah we can wait for a good weather window to take an outside run to St.Augustine. FLORIDA!!!!