A worthless and miserable day on the water

Oh, we had a worthless and miserable day on the water!  We started out from Charleston before sunrise on Tuesday morning to make our way down to the GA/FL border.  The forecast was for VERY strong winds out of the W-NW…okay, gale force, but we’ve done it before and as long as the winds are coming from behind, it’s a fun bobsled ride.  We knew we’d be cold because this would be riding a cold front down, but we’ve gotten used to that by now.  We left the Charleston inlet just after sunrise and the winds were very light out of the west…Reinhart was already cursing the forecasters as we bobbled along at 2.5 knots.  However we heeded the warnings and put up our storm sail in these light winds to prepare ourselves for the possible close-haul sail we might have since the winds definitely seemed to be coming out of the west.  The winds and seas did build, but the direction stayed west, if not a little south of west.  As the winds and seas built, we were getting a real thrashing, and I was glad Reinhart put up that storm sail while it was still calm.  By lunchtime the winds were 20-25 knots out of the southwest and we realized we were going to spend the whole night in even stronger winds, hand steering and tacking our way…no fun.  We decided to come in at the closest inlet, which wasn’t close, and anchor before dark, which we didn’t.  The winds were blowing 30 knots against us as we motored our way into St. Helena Sound in SC at sunset.  It was low tide and the strong winds had blown even more water out, so the anchorages were too low to enter; we dropped the hook just off the ICW at 8pm and called it a night.  It turned out to be a lovely spot though and we sat out the gusty winds in comfort.  If we had just taken the waterway, we would have been better off…nonetheless, we should have waited until Wednesday to leave.  We woke up on Wednesday morning and decided to try again by taking the ICW down to the Port Royal inlet and go around the outside Wednesday night to arrive at Cumberland island on Thursday morning…we’ll see how that goes.  I’m hoping this Blog gets published as we motor through Beaufort, SC…if this is published on Wednesday afternoon, it did, and you can marvel at modern technology!