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April 25, 2015  Day 155 South for Winter

At Anchor
Bull Creek off Bull Island, Awendaw, SC 

We departed Palm Cove Marina in Jacksonville at 0700 Thursday to avoid shallow water we would soon face at low tide.  About an hour later as we approached the Jacksonville Inlet, we made a last minute decision to leave the ICW and run about five miles offshore. We had a great sunny day with calm seas and very few boats out there.  It was very relaxing not to worry about shallow areas or low bridges. We decided to come back in at Doboy Sound. We followed it a short distance to the Duplin River, Georgia, where we have anchored before.  We had traveled 11 hours when we reached the anchorage and we were ready to stop.

There is a ferry dock at the entrance to the river and we saw the ferry coming back in at a high speed. Bill radioed the ferry captain to tell him we would let slow down and let him pass us. The captain slowed down but before he was completely past us he sped up again and waked us violently. This caused the chart plotter remote control to fall which made the cord jam into the stop engine switch. Our starboard engine was shut off and would not restart.  We continued on to our anchorage on one engine.  After the engines cooled down Bill was able to bleed the air out of the system enough to get it started again.

When we pulled anchor Friday morning the engine stalled out, so we put the anchor back down again. After a few more bleeding exercises, it finally started!  This caused us over an hour delay so we decided to stay on the ICW rather than going the mile and a half it would take to get back off shore.  That was a good decision because the winds picked up and we had some rough seas when we passed two of the inlets. By afternoon the wind and water were calm again on the ICW.

We traveled 10 ½ hours to reach our anchorage on Bull Creek, just off Bull Island. We can see the lighthouse at Hilton Head Harbor from the entrance to our creek. We have stayed here at least twice before. Our plan is to stay two nights because thunderstorms are forecast for Saturday. Can’t believe we are in South Carolina already!