In St. Mary’s Again (finally)
Well we sat for three nights near Cowan Creek with the wind blowing a steady 20 plus for most of the time. After deciding it was time to head out again, we calculated our departure time. With the currents as swift as they are we needed an ebbing current. This put our departure time at around 0300 (as in OMG that’s early!). The weather window we had been looking at was starting to shrink. Another cold front was due through the area late Friday night. Our estimate arrival time to St. Mary’s Inlet was 2100 that same day.
Up early we prepared for our day. Since we hadn’t really gotten undressed since leaving Charleston (did I mention it’s been really cold) we put back on a few of the layers we did take off. We slipped into our foul weather gear and readied the boat for departure. The electric windlass effortlessly reeled in the chain until it was straight down to the anchor. Mary slowly motored over it but it wouldn’t budge. “More power” I hollered back to the helm. As the boat picked up speed the bow slowly started to be pulled down by the firmly embedded anchor until it popped free. I reeled in the remaining chain and the anchor came up with a huge chunk of mud about two square. It fell off with a huge splash. We headed off into the darkness.
The trip out was fine. It’s easy to follow the bread crumb trail on the chart plotter. We cleared the inlet as the sky began to lighten and set our course for the outer marker at the inlet. The seas were still rough and we made some adjustments to ease the pounding. The main was set with a double reef and off we went. As the day wore on the winds subsided and the seas began to calm. Shook one reef out and sat back to enjoy another sunset.
Sometime around 2100 we saw a flare about 5 miles further out than we were (we were out 15 miles). I hailed the Coast Guard to report our sighting. As I was describing our sighting we saw more flares. They seemed to be following us. I asked the Coastie to check with the Navy and see if they were out there and sure enough they were. Pretty weird stuff. Comforting though to know that we could easily talk with Charleston Sector from where we were.
At 2230 we started to make our turn into the channel. We saw two rather spectacular shooting stars (or were they?). What a strange trip. It was to get stranger. I chose to head right down the channel and split all the lights as I went. When you’ve been up for as long as we had been it’s the easiest thing to do. As we got between the breakwaters I saw what appeared to be big white crosses or what I thought were angels floating above the range markers. They were slowly drifting and it had me a little confused. I asked Mary to check it out with the binoculars and she thought she saw a ship. Hmmm, weird no running lights? Then we saw the red. Red, let’s see, that means we can see the port side. How can that be? The channel is straight! About that time we realized we were about to be run over by a container ship and it was altering course to avoid us. A rather abrupt burst of full power and a hard turn put us abeam the ship. Mary swears she could read the fine print on the fire extinguishers as it power by rather quickly. The pilot hailed us on the radio (why now and not sooner?) and told me what a dumb ass I was and that I was lucky to be alive. I thanked him for his observations and sailed on to Fernandina Beach to anchor. As we approached the anchorage the pilot boat came back with the pilot. It seems our bow navigation lights had burned out again and he couldn’t see us. I don’t think he believed me when I told him that I had trouble seeing him. Well, all’s well that ends well and we dropped the hook at 0100 on Friday morning. The winds and the front were fortunately late in arriving and we hit the sack.
Friday at noon we headed over to St. Mary’s for Thanksgiving. We’ve taken a slip (if you can call it that) for a week. The boat needs a thorough cleaning and I need to make repairs to the lights and to the anchor rollers after the beating we’ve taken.
