Location: Kilkenny Creek, GA
When we awoke at high tide in Bryan Creek the scenery was quite different. The muddy banks that had surrounded us when we went to bed we replaced by water, water everywhere. While maneuvering around the shoals to get into the creek was difficult, leaving was a piece of cake due to the high tide. The day was entirely uneventful except for the crossing out of South Carolina and into Georgia. I finally feel like we are getting somewhere really worth being, but to be honest it doesn't look like it. Georgia has been devoid of life so far. The place is covered in salt marsh. Dad says that there is so much marsh here, making it too expensive to build bridge after bridge over the wetlands. He said there is a reason no one talks about the famous Georgia beaches, because most of them are very hard to access. Before reaching Georgia we had been warned that the state was distinctly hard to navigate due to the strong tidal range, moving shaols, poorly marked channels, and poor holding for the anchor. Many ICW sailors we had met suggested that we sail outside, in the ocean, and skip Georgia entirely. We are not brave enough for that yet. We pulled into the marina at Kilkenny Creek in the late afternoon to get fuel. The place looked exactly how you would expect a marina to look on the byou in the Deep South. The rickety dock opened up to a pavilion, under which the marina hauled boats. There were huge wooden boxes under the pavilion as well, the tops of which were uncovered with PVC piping around the edge. Dad and I curiously walked over to these boxes and found them to be full of water and live shrimp. It was pretty cool, but very backwater and extremely quiet. It was unlike any marina I had ever been to, it wasn't immediately apparent if they had electricity. Dad asked if I wanted to spend the night on the dock. I told him that there are no showers, no lounge area, no town, and most importantly no interweb so clearly it was not worth staying, how wrong I was. We left the dock and anchored in the basin just a little further up the creek. We were completely alone until another sailboat, flying a Canadian flag, showed up just before bed and anchored just north of our spot. Around one in the morning Dad woke me up and told me to come up on deck. Up in the cockpit I looked around, we had moved far. We were now miraculously on the north side of the Canadians, about twenty yards away from them. It was amazing that we hadn't collided with them as our anchor dragged us downstream. But the anchor seemed to be secure and unmoving now so we decided to leave it as it was. The tide was incredible, water was rushing by the hull. It was like watching rainwater run down the gutter. Even with all that movement, including the movement of the boat, it was still dead silent inside the creek. It was hard to go back to bed after all the excitement. Turns out there was no need to sleep, less than a half hour later I heard a subtle "tap-tap" on the hull that could only be one thing, fiberglass on fiberglass. Dad and I rushed out the companion way to see the bow of the Canadians boat rapping gently on our transome. We tried to pull the two boats apart but the Canadians anchor weights were fouled on our rudder, wedged into the small gap between rudder and boat. Dad tried in vain with the boat hook to pull the line free. As the situation got worse I suggested that we wake up our foreign friends. As you can imagine it is quite a shock to be woken up by strangers on your boat, a very alarming happenstance, like walking into a strangers bedroom and shouting hello at two in the morning. Dad knocked hard on the hull and although they were startled the crew of Beaujolais was in pretty good spirits. More than an hour later, and after many failed maneuvers we were free floating again and quite a ways apart. The whole experience was incredibly stressful. Again the adrenaline kept Dad and I awake afterwards so we made hot chocolate and sat in the cockpit. It was a good thing we did. Soon enough the tide changed causing
our anchor line to run foul around our keel again, though we hadn't begun to move. Dad figured out a solution and was able to maneuver the boat over the anchor and the line came free. Just in the nick of time too. As soon as we got back to our chocolate we saw Beaujolais start moving backwards and fast. Their anchor had wrapped around their keel as well and the force of the current dragged the ship backward into the dark. Fortunately Dad and I were close enough for the crew to hear our shouts. They started their engine but were unable to put it in gear, for fear that their propeller would slice through their anchor line. The engine power would be their last resort. If need be they would let go of their anchor line but retrieving it in this muddy mess would be nearly impossible. Luckily it didn't come to that. Having experienced the same situation moments before Dad directed the helmsman in loud shouts to steer hard to starboard so the boat would *cross your fingers* sail over top of the anchor line and come free. This all happened in a matter of moments, seconds really. In that small amount of time it is hard to figure out the best possible action. Panic seems the only action to take, logic escapes you, and more often than not one is left with a hand on a wheel with buckets of uncertainty. The seconds are important, I thought after the ordeal was all over and both boats secured. It was now five in the morning, two hours before sunrise. Dad told me to get some sleep so we could get out of here as soon as possible when it was light enough.
What we ate: sweet potato, & BBQ chicken
No comments:
Post a Comment