ICW Mile 462: Charleston, South Carolina
Sunset During the Overnight Passage
Earlier today we completed another big jump around the ICW ditch as well as another first: An overnight sail. We decided to make one big jump offshore below Cape Fear rather than dealing with the problems of the channel. Shelly researched the options (as she has done for the last month) and the shortest hop we could do was a 60-plus miler which involves a long sailing day with either the beginning or ending in the dark. So we decided what the hell, let’s go overnight and get all the way to Charleston, the advantage being we begin and end in the daylight and cover a lot of miles.
The last night in Cape Fear was cold, getting down into the 30s F, and we were getting annoyed about constantly dealing with the fact that we left late in the season. We were also getting more concerned about avoiding winter storms that may form on the east coast this far north. And avoiding the ICW itself is always a good thing, so our plan was to cover approximately 135 miles in one shot. You can of course sail all the way to Florida and beyond from here in about 3 days, but we are also trying to ease into long passage making and a multi-day crossing was probably not a good step for us at this point.
So the story: We made a leisurely exit from the marina at Cape Fear at about 10:30 a.m. and headed southwest, following the coastline. The promised northwest wind happened to be from the west or southwest for most of the day, making progress slow. Over time the wind swung mildly west to northwest. Late afternoon faded to evening as we watched the sunset. It was strikingly red-orange due to many fires raging in this drought-stricken region.
Our plan was to take two hour shifts over the night but it didn’t work out that way. Shelly was too excited and concerned to sleep much and she only got about two hours sleep around midnight and another early in the morning. I tried to sleep on my breaks but it wasn’t easy. We had prepared to sail overnight with our smaller staysail, setting it up at dusk and that worked out well.
The only weirdness in the night was when a sailboat suddenly showed up on Shelly’s watch. It appeared on the AIS a few miles in front of us but Shelly couldn’t see any lights. She monitored the AIS track for a while because we were on a collision course. Because she couldn’t see the other boat, even in the relatively bright moonlight, she tried to spotlight it with our bright light. Very soon afterward they turned their running lights on (they’re supposed to be on all night in coastal waters), presumably because they saw us. This was at about 2 a.m. Shelly thought someone was sleeping or they just weren’t paying attention, it was a too-close encounter in what should be a big ocean.
We watched as thousands of stars rose over the horizon and arced overhead as the night progressed. The half moon rose at about midnight. A really cool thing I noticed is that you could see stars so low on the horizon they looked like sailboat lights, something almost impossible to see on land. The night was surprisingly warm and the wind increased from the north. We had to reef the sails a couple of times. Sometime after about 5:30 a.m., the sky began to brighten and soon after we found the sun also rises (sorry Hemingway).
We still had many hours to go and had to fight the waves to get into the Charleston harbor entrance. Got to a marina about 25 hours after leaving. Success!