Location: Bull River, SC
We set out early this morning from John's Island. What started as a quiet, slow morning soon became an eventful day. A handful of boats were traveling down the ICW now, spewing a torrent of talk over the radio. Many captains were telling their friends and followers where it was shallow, deep, or just plain dangerous. Unfortunately there are some obstacles that a boat is bound to collide with.
Some may call these things fate, others would like to blame a skill-less captain but season sailors widely attribute unfortunate occurrences to lack of devotion to Poisedon. If you are not pouring a sip of beer a day into the sea as tribute you are asking for it. Today Dad and I were those forgetful sailors. Coming down the Wadmalaw River a sudden crunching, grinding sound issued from underneath the boat. Rushing to the transom I looked down to see the almost unrecognizable remains of a crab pot. It looked like someone had placed styrofoam in a food processor. Oops, Dad was driving. Luckily the engine didn't stall or skip a beat and the prop seemed unaffected. We trudged on, resigned to be more aware of our surroundings. As it turns out we needed to be. An hour later we made our way into Fenwick Cut. This was a small canal that many sailors had been issing warnings over on the radio. One unlucky sailor was already stuck in the sand on the left side of the channel, but we just sailed closer to the reds like everybody else and got through just fine. When we got out the other side we continued to follow the boat in front of us. Unfortunaty we soon discovered that he had been leading us in the wrong direction. We had to turn around to get back on the ICW. Our fearless leader eventually turned around as well to follow us. Back on track we headed through one last canal, the Ashepoo Coosaw Cutoff. Back on track we headed through one last canal, the Ashepoo Coosaw Cutoff. The Cutoff was a little more than a mile long. As we traveled further along it we started to become more aware of the muddy banks that were creeping closer and closer to the dug channel. Soon the depth sounder rang out its alarm, signaling an end to the deep water. Soon the dial read 0.0, zero feet, zero inches of water under the keel, but we were still moving. The end of the canal was so close. Dad reved the engine up and we powered through the last few yards of mud. We dropped the hook at Bull River, thankful to have gotten through the day relatively unscathed. Little did we know the day's events were not entirely over. As I switched the engine into reverse, to back down on the anchor, it spluttered and died. Dad guessed that we had a leftover suveniour from the crab pot that we ran over, meaning it would be a wet morning.
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