Hilton Head Island: seventh circumnavigation 1

 

On Tuesday morning I went down to GANNET at about 9 AM to prepare her for another epic voyage.  Well, not really so epic.  

Getting ready took longer than usual.  GANNET is no longer self-sufficient.  When really voyaging I could leave and return to the little boat with nothing more than the devices I carried in my messenger bag.  No longer.  I’ve removed as much from her as possible, including the Jordan drogue, clothes and most food.  I had to fill various water containers, stow things, fit the Torqeedo and check that it started.  It did.  Fit the tiller pilot.  Put the Velocitek in its mast mount.  Move the anchor and rode deployment bag from the bow to beneath the forward hatch.  Remove the mainsail and the tiller covers and the covers for the compass and the depth finder.  In all it took me more than an hour, but at 10:30 I was ready.  I undid the line to my new pile float and realized that I had placed the bracket on which I intended to hang it too high on the piling.  I tried tossing it up there two or three times and gave up and dropped it in the water.

I pushed GANNET back out of her slip.  The wind was northwest at 8 knots, pushing her back in, but the tide was still ebbing which neutralized that, and I leapt on board and put the Torqeedo in reverse until we were clear enough to go forward.

We were heading around Hilton Head Island counter-clockwise.  The northwest wind was behind and perfect.  I unfurled the jib, feeling resistance from one of the lead blocks on the furling line that I need to replace, set the Autohelm to steer, stopped the Torqeedo and tilted it out of the water.  It had been on for about seven minutes and its job was over for the day.  Water began to ripple past the hull as I brought in fenders and dock lines.

Past the marina Skull Creek runs south for almost two miles.  I’ve only sailed this way once before and that was when I left Hilton Head for Panama two years earlier during my previous circumnavigation.  I was careful to stay between the Intracoastal Waterway markers and was navigating by eye and the iSailor app on my iPhone.  The water in the channel is twenty and more feet deep.  In places just outside it is only one or two feet deep

Familiar restaurants on the shore seemed to fly past.  Dockside.  Hudson’s.  The wind was on the beam and gusty, heeling and rounding up the little boat sometimes more quickly than the Autohelm could respond.  At the turn at the marker at the bend to the west, we came hard on the wind.  I sheeted in the jib and took the tiller myself.  Two power boats had just come under the bridge and were heading toward us.  I hoped they understood sailboats well enough to know that if I were headed I would have to cut across their bows.  I had no room to tack away.  But I was not confident that they did.  

GANNET was heeled well over and making six knots under her small jib alone.  Smooth water.  The wind held steady.  Fine sailing, but I was relieved when we could ease sheets and fall off for the opening beneath the center of the bridge which is the only way on and off the island.  Mast height on GANNET is not a worry.  A small power boat was tied to a bridge piling fishing.  A brief lull in the bridge’s wind shadow and we were through.  

A curving half mile past the bridge the channel turns south again.  I don’t know where Skull Creek ends and Calibogue Sound begins.  Perhaps at the bridge itself.  With the wind now on the starboard quarter I set the mainsail and our speed rose to six and seven knots.  And then GANNET went out of control, rounded up and headed for a nearby shoal.  I glanced down and saw that the plastic end fitting on the tiller pilot arm had broken.  I grabbed the tiller, got us under control and when the sound opened wider, turned GANNET into the wind, loosely hove to, and slipped into the cabin and forward where I grabbed another tiller pilot, returned to the cockpit and swapped the old one out.  Back on course and the sailing was glorious.  Good wind.  Smooth water.  Warm sunshine.  February.

My plan had been to anchor somewhere near the south end of the island, but we were off Harbor Town at noon and no sailor wants to waste good wind, so I decided to keep on going.

We passed Hilton Head’s South Beach at 12.30.  A woman walking on the beach waved at GANNET.  I waved back for GANNET who was busy sailing and unfortunately has no hands.

Hilton Head Island is eleven miles long, the second biggest barrier island on the Atlantic Coast—New York’s Long Island is the biggest—and shaped like a shoe running northeast-southwest.  We were rounding the toe and heading up the sole of the shoe which is an almost continuous hard white sand beach that is perhaps Hilton Head’s chief tourist attraction.  However you don’t make a sharp turn and you don’t sail close to the shore.  Shoals extend out two to three miles.  The channels are marked, but I kept close watch on our position on my iPhone. Finally we were able to make the turn to the northeast three miles offshore.  As soon as we did the wind went behind us and died.

To be continued.