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Sea Islands 300 : Last Leg to Beaufort

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In the morning we have a flood tide to float us out of the Magic Kingdom. It’s even high enough to squirt us through a local shortcut and shave 10 miles off our last leg, saving roughly two hours. By late afternoon we will be docked in downtown Beaufort, SC, where Doug’s circumnavigation will pause until the summer hurricane season is over.

Up Calibogue Sound we go and out Skull Creek past Webb’s pier and condo, then out into Port Royal Sound. The tide has turned and carried us past Hilton Head, but that means it’s now rushing out of creeks, marshes, into two big rivers and out of Port Royal, headlong into a fresh breeze coming in off the Atlantic. Port Royal Inlet has a reputation for much unpleasantness with unwary boaters. In truth, we find the roughest passage of the past three weeks right here, coming down the home stretch. 

We swing across the mouth with the ocean over our shoulder and make the turn to head up the Beaufort River. At the turn, I can just make out Fripp Island to the north where my parents still live, where I spent many summer days since elementary school.

At least we aren’t beating INTO the wind. With the main furled, the jib flying, and help from the motor against the current, if feels like we’re galloping along with a herd of horses. White caps are everywhere, waves rolling, but they’re going the same direction we are. A trawler we’ve seen before runs alongside us, snaps a photo and sends it to Doug, with another taken when they passed us back in Georgia.

We pass Parris Island, then the funky old seaport village of Port Royal, turn under the “new bridge”, and just like that we’re docked in Beaufort on the waterfront.

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Sea Islands 300 : 23-DisneyWorld for Boaters

Smallest boat in the harbor, always.

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There’s so much going on here, in Shelter Cove. I’m still trying to get my head around it.

Before I get into all the weirdness, let me first say Shelter Cove is a really nice place. All the staff are pleasant, everything is clean, and everything you need or want is clustered around the harbor. In some ways, that’s part of what makes it so . . . strange. 

Wiggling through the narrow, muddy gap in the bank to get there, I expected a small outpost type marina like we found on St. Simons Island. The entrance is inconspicuous and very shallow at low tide, after all. But the obscure little creek is a trap door into a boat-themed Secret Garden. 

Entrance creek at ebb tide.

We suddenly find ourselves in a harbor walled in by towering pink hotels. There’s live music bouncing off the walls coming from two bands in competing tiki bars. And the harbor is full of boats. BIG boats. Some so big I can’t imagine how they got here through that skinny entrance. 

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Sea Islands 300 : 22-The First Key

Daufuskie Island Denied

Links to Chapters in the Series

It’s flat calm when we shove off from Skidaway Island. Back home in the Chesapeake, watermen called this a “Slick Ca’m” – a slick calm. The front has blown itself out. Beautiful weather is behind it, but the sails will stay furled all day.

We glide past the marine science center where I spent that summer digging in pluff mud, and enter a tangled patchwork of tidal rivers and marsh islands that scribble in the margins between ocean and land. We turn into Moon River, made famous in the song by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer. I once had a toddler from the Creek tribe hold my hand at dusk and walk me to the bluff along this river. There he pointed excitedly at the sky to show me the object of the only word he knew – “Moon” – which he repeated over and over until he was sure I understood. We wondered at it together, a full moon rising through a curtain of Spanish Moss from a silver tray of salt marsh, until dark fell and the dinner bell rang.

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Sea Islands 300 : 20-Heavenly Sail to Hell Gate

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Two days of storms swept the world clean. Everything sparkles. The sky is so deep and blue you can almost see stars, the water is a galaxy of tiny suns. I break out a gator for both the chill and the bright burn. By the time we motor out of Wahoo River into a rising sun, a southwest wind comes up from the Atlantic. We raise canvas, cut the motor, and will sail all day long.

Beyond the dividings of St. Catherines Island, the marshes open up wide. Tight creeks relax into broad flat sounds and bays with clear air and easy tacking in the few places we need to. It’s glorious easy cruising. All day we slide through a vast watery wilderness – no docks, no marinas, no hotels or houses. Just sawgrass prairies, palmetto hammocks, and pine forests. We even have the tide with us, riding the current from one island to the next like a magic carpet.

The destination is a small marina on the south end of Skidaway Island. Late morning I get a text message from Saudi Arabia. It’s from my daughter and son-in-law, both teachers there. They have friends in Amsterdam, who happen to be sailors, who happen to be following our progress, and happen to have family on Skidaway Island. The message includes a phone number and says to send our ETA to it. A short time later we have an invitation for dinner at “the club”, from perfect strangers who are several degrees of separation from anyone we know. Marvelous! Now we have something else to look forward to, if we get there in time.

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Sea Islands 300 : 19-Dragging Anchor at St. Catherines Island

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This marina is the smallest yet, more like a trading post stuck out here on the tip of St. Simons Island. But we can get diesel and ice, use the facilities. Get some local knowledge from the clerk. And a weather report.

As we fuel up, a young entrepreneur pulls up in a skiff. He’s a fellow son of the South. I recognize him immediately. He swaggers up, all animated in camo and a Skoal cap, and launches into conversation without a greeting, just “Hey, you guys know sailboats, right?” He’s local. I speak his language.

Islands in the marsh called “hammocks”

He has noticed all the wrecks scattered around his watery neighborhood. They’re like Easter Eggs dropped in the tall grass of his lawn. Though he’s not familiar with these seafaring craft from distant lands, he perceives (correctly) they represent significant reservoirs of capital. Seems a shame for them to go to waste, just abandoned by their owners, folks who can afford insurance policies, from northern corporations with no interest in retrieving their investment. 

“Come to think of it, nobody owns them! The captains sold their boats to insurance companies, and got paid! So they don’t own them anymore! The insurance companies don’t want boats, they just pay good money to leave them out there and rot! Maybe what they’re REALLY buying is Captains, not boats! That would explain it, right?. Think about it!” 

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Sea Islands 300 : 18-St. Simons Island Storms

YOUR QUEST IS COMPLETE. ADVANCE TO LEVEL 4.

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We’ve had beautiful weather for 8 days and 150 miles, all the way from Daytona. That will change today.

Doug returned from Brunswick with a bounce in his step and a smile on his face. He finally found that rarest of treasures: a new phone case. He has bags with enough provisions to last several days. Anything seemed possible now! We stow the food, shove off, and head north. The gleaming tower of the Jekyll Island Club recedes over the trees like Cinderella’s castle, and I get to hear the story of his quest.

Turns out Brunswick is quite the busy little town now. When I was a kid, all I remember seeing of Brunswick was huge piles of ragged pine stumps – roots and all, mountains of them.

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Sea Islands 300 : 17-Jekyll Island Slave Ships and the Federal Reserve

The Wanderer – Yacht turned slave ship. Oil painting by William Yorke circa 1870.

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Most visitors would never guess this sleepy little island on the coast of Georgia gave birth to the most powerful financial system in modern history. Or that the genesis transpired in total secrecy. But that’s what happened, right here. How that came about in this remote place is an interesting tale, with an interesting backstory.

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