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Back in the Ditch
Thursday, March 26, 0730, Underway at ICW mile 436, North of Charleston, South Carolina, Onboard Griffin.

We are starting to get into low bridge country. South of here, most of the draw bridges have been way up there at 20-26 feet clearance. We are starting to see ones with unopened clearance of 12 feet. We can sneak under 11' 2" without waiting for the openings, which are frequently only twice an hour.

Yesterday morning, coming off the high of a 200 mile run in a combination of the Atlantic Ocean and ICW, we optimistically headed out the Savannah River to the Ocean. Tom has really gotten the bug for going offshore, and wanted to take this to the next level and do 40-50 miles offshore at Night! Somehow, I thought this would be a good idea. We looked at the charts and came up with our plan. Out the Savannah River inlet, north 100 miles to Charleston Harbor. Pull in for fuel. Back out to the Atlantic and run north to Cape Fear, arriving at about 10:00pm. I thought the night run, and arrival at Cape Fear (what a cool name) would make good Update reading, so I bought in to the plan.

We roared through Charleston Harbor at 20 mph. These mansions are right on the harbor quay wall. They look like the designs for the Lennox spice jars, if you've ever seen those.

We listened to the weather reports on our VHF radio. The forecast was for light to moderate winds, 2-4 foot waves, and great visibility. Sounded acceptable. We headed north from Thunderbolt and entered the Savannah River 7 miles later. We turned right and proceeded the 15 miles down to the sea buoy. As we left the protection of the breakwaters, it became immediately apparent to me that we were going to get the stuffing knocked out of us. Tom wanted to press on a little farther to see if it would be better when we turned on course for Charleston. We made the turn, the ride stayed rough, so we both decided to pass on the 6 hours of hanging on for dear life so we wouldn't get smashed down to the deck level of excitement.

Every night we give Griffin a good washdown to get the salt and diesel soot off of her. Here's a cleaned-up Griffin lying to the transient dock at the Wild Dunes Golf Course and Yacht Haven.

We turned back in towards Savannah and ran back up to the ICW. Finally, at about 9:00am we got going northbound again. We cruised up the ICW in a fairly deserted part of the world. Periodically, we would get into a wider expanse of the waterway, and get the full effects of the wind. Soon, we were seeing whitecaps, and pounding in the ditch! We became very glad that we had not tried the run outside today.

We roared through Charleston Harbor and stopped at the Wild Dunes Yacht Harbor, 10 miles north for the night. We would have liked to run for another hour, but the next marina is more than 50 miles north, so we either get to stop here or anchor later. Running the ditch without radar at night is just more excitement than we can handle. The channel is only 100 yards wide, and we have learned the importance of keeping between the lines. At night it is very hard to judge where the lines are. With all the activity of the last few days having taken their toll on our energy levels, we decided to stop and get a little bit of rest.

After we washdown, Tom tries to go rollerblading. Here he is returning to the boat after a short 5 mile skate. In Daytona he went nearly 25 miles in two hours.

When we push hard and pull in at 6:00pm, it usually takes us about 2 hours to clean and check out Griffin, and shower ourselves. 8:00 or 9:00 dinners have become the norm. We made it to dinner this night by 7:00. The hostess of the half empty restaurant told us to wait while she cleared and set up a table by the window. The Restaurant has great views of the ICW in the daytime, but it was night. I stopped her and told her we had seen enough waterviews in the last 625 miles and one of the other tables would be fine. Two couples overheard us, and started asking us about our trip. Their names are now added to the update distribution list!

We talked real estate with a new Broker at the next table who started his company 4 months ago. Tom gave him some good recruiting advice, we gave him the Griffin website address, and headed back to the boat.

Wild Dunes is at mile 456.5 of the ICW. Mile 0 is in Norfolk Harbor. Hampton is about 20 miles north, and Annapolis is about 150 north of Hampton. For us to make it home, we need to get to Hampton by Saturday Night. That means we have to finish off the ICW and go another 20 miles in the next 3 days. That means about 160 miles per day. We want to spend Friday night at Bel Haven at mile 135.7, as there are no suitable stopping places north of there for 50 miles. That means getting to Cape Fear tonight.

Underway at sunrise. It takes about 15 minutes to light off the engines, take in shore power, wipe the condensation and dew off both sides of the pilothouse glass, and secure for sea. Our goal is always to get this done and get underway well before sunrise.

Several of the Griffin Followers have e-mailed us with concern when the Update wasn't sitting in their mailbox at 8:30am. On the southbound trip, we would write the Update in the evening. This turned into a pain, getting in the way of Dinner and other evening activities. We have taken to the habit of getting underway at dawn, having coffee, getting the boat running right and then doing the update. Unfortunately, there are times when navigation or "incidents" require the attention of both of us, and that's when the Update comes out late. We will do our best to get it out early, but by noon at the latest.

I was just finishing this update in time to get it to you by 8:00. I was thinking this was a fairly boring Update and hoped you wouldn't be put off by the dull cruise of Griffin. I have to train my mind to stop thinking like that. I was computing with Tom driving when disaster struck!

I'm torn. Today's misadventure is really supposed to go in Update #8. I know it's a little Saturday Matinee-ish to leave you hanging, but that's what we are going to do. Stay tuned for Update #8 with really cool action/adventure photos of the latest escapade of Griffin on the ICW. I will tell you it's not another grounding. I'll have it to you by 9:00am tomorrow.

Warm Regards,

The Griffin Crew, Jon & Tom

P.S. Don't be worried us. The ever resilient Griffin crew made it through our latest catastrophe and are northbound again, two hours later and two oranges lighter than planned. We'll pick up more fruit later. Let's hope we can pick up the time.

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