We had a real nice evening on anchor out behind the Georgetown Light house. Got an early start at 7:15am and still the last boat to leave. It was 5 miles to the Sea Buoy but with a favorable tide it went well. We got out in the ocean and just light breeze and a 2 foot ocean swell from the East. Well after 20 minutes of rolling in the swell we decided it wasn't worth it and turned around. Back in was a S L O W process since that "favorable" current was now against us.
We approached the infamous R2 marking the entrance to the Estherville Minim Creek Canal and reading the cautions about entry tried to split the distance between R2 and shore. Ahhh this must be accurate when you are at low tide because at 2 hours off high tide we went aground in 4.8' of water. I need 5.2'.
Well the bottom is soft mud so I plowed towards R2 and about 100' off I found 9.5'. Yippee floating again.
The trip to South Santee River was filled with shallow water spots but nothing below 7.5' and the tide was falling. We made it to anchorage by noon and felt as if we had spent a whole day traveling. The anchorage is fine and at 4pm only one trawler shares it with us. Maybe more coming tonight. Plenty of room though.
We stopped here because 10 miles down the stream and at low tide we would have passed through McClellanville which has the shallowest water for a couple miles. Reports are that a low tide it is only 4 feet deep. By stopping here we will hit that area about 1.5 hours after high tide.
Gosh I wished could have made that offshore leg to Charleston today but then again we are PLEASURE boaters and if it ain't a pleasure we don't do it.
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