Thursday, 20 November 33.7 SM
It’s the Low Country. It’s low tide. Despite the sun, t,he temperature’s yet to recover much from the overnight low of 33.
The historic Battery in Charleston.
Let’s put it the way Garth Brooks might which is to say, if you’re reading this, you’ve “got friends in low places.”
The plan was to shove off at 1030 hours, ride the ebb to the Battery, buck it up the Ashley to Wappoo Creek (don’t just love the names down here? You just want to shout it out, “Wah-POO! WAh-poo!”) and catch the 1230 opening so the current through Elliott Cut would be, let’s say, manageable. It’d be toward the tail end of the ebb, or so it was thought, versus a mid-tide max of something like five or six knots.
And we own a sailboat… why?
But calculations proved somehow amiss. Arrival at the Wappoo Bridge was an hour earlier than planned, not quite at low tide. The still ebbing current at that point slowed Steadfast to four-and-a-half miles-an-hour, not great but still moving. Then came The Cut, just a half mile long and plenty deep—20-feet or more—but all that water whooshes through the straight narrow banks. As hard as Little Red revved, even with that fresh golden 15W40 coursing through her veins, couldn’t get Steadfast moving more than a knot-and-a-half! And that ain’t movin’ much!
When the tide runs out, it’s a long way down to the pier.
This became a theme for the day, as Steadfast bucked a foul current hour after hour. Not nearly as bad as through Elliott Cut, granted, but enough to keep her from making time, rarely topping five miles-an-hour. At each turn in the waterway, it seemed, the current was close to dead low but not quite there, still running out.
Into the Stono River, then the Wadmalaw, past Toogoodoo Creek and finally the nearly hidden entrance to Tom Point Creek, guarded only by a pair of timid terns. Turning west, the Wadmalaw wants to sweep you with her sideways. There’s a shoal there, of course, just to make it interesting.
Navy vessels and ocean-going ships are at Stevens Towing on the Wadmalaw.
But Red revs a bit more and, once between the marshy banks, maybe 70 feet between them, the creek is deep, 15-20 feet. That’s at low tide, which it is when Steadfast arrives at 1620.
A 40-foot Beneteau sloop slips in just ahead, circles and her anchor hits the mud. The only other boat in here, Steadfast motors upstream far enough to be a good neighbor.
The tide turns, the flood begins. But for now, you’ve got friends in low places.
Steadfast out.
At Sea with Steadfast 
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