Cape Fear, NC, or a Cape to Fear

Hilton Head Island, SC, to Wilmington, NC, Offshore.

It was a dark and stormy night (and oh was it ever!), but it did not start out that way. Brian will claim that I exaggerate, but I can’t squelch the creative writing degree in me. In either case, I will let you be the judge of this two-post series….

We left Palmetto Bay in the late afternoon hours last Friday. At dusk, we dropped anchor in Skull Creek at the edge of the Port Royal Sound, the entrance to the ocean, and had a quiet dinner. Our departure was imminent. We went to bed early and awoke with the sun the next day, refreshed and ready for the high seas. After a quick espresso, we were off. Illusion cut through some choppy water on the way out of the channel, but zigzagged her way smoothly out into the ocean. We sailed north for eight hours before the winds shifted slightly, and we turned the motor back on. Brian and I alternated watches throughout the day, but we didn’t keep track of the time. I lounged; I read; I napped in the sun. It was an all-around pleasant day of sailing.

The sun crept lower in the west as we approached the Stono River, Folly Beach, and then the Charleston Harbor – our intended destination. As Brian and I debated where to anchor for the next few nights, the NOAA weather station declared over the VHF that there was a bad thunderstorm moving east down the Cooper River from North Charleston. The storm had winds up to 60 miles per hour, lightening (which according to NOAA is nature’s number one threat to humans??), and hail. Since we definitely weren’t going to turn inshore into that, the next stop was Georgetown, SC, just a few hours up the coast.

I started having a deja vu when NOAA reported a new thunderstorm in Georgetown, not as bad as the one in Charleston, but with frequent cloud-to-ground lightening. But again, it was not a big deal to continue north up the coast. The boat was safer offshore than inshore at this point, and Illusion was performing well, so we carried on. Night fell quickly and soon we found ourselves beating into the wind. The sky was clear, with many stars and a visible Milky Way that crossed the sky over Cape Romain. It wasn’t a pleasant night, but it wasn’t too bad either. Illusion had come a good distance, which meant we would be able to get up to North Carolina faster than planned – an added bonus.

Dawn broke over a tranquil ocean on our second day offshore (see picture below). As the sun rose, the water appeared glassy, like obsidian, under a clear blue sky. The color was the deepest blue I have ever seen, smooth and soothing. There was no wind. Schools of fish passed us, boiling along the surface of the waves, dark patches, which flashed silver in the the light. Over the course of the morning, several pods of large dolphins swam by, ducking underneath the boat and surfacing below our peering eyes, on their way to breakfast (or lunch), and two small sea turtles frantically swam out of our way as we cut through the blue water.

In the afternoon, we noticed a line of cumulus clouds building to our west along the coastline (which you can also see in my pictures below). They eventually formed into two storm lines east of us heading southeast around Myrtle Beach, SC. In order to dodge them – which we did – we turned northeast and headed farther offshore, running parallel but in the opposite direction. This put Illusion on a course that would eventually take us around Frying Pan Shoals, NC (also called the graveyard of the Atlantic!), and up to Beaufort, NC, if we chose to do so.

We had just spent two full days offshore. Should we push the boat further before heading in? We didn’t know. We did know that the conditions offshore were going to deteriorate steadily over the course of the next few days, and high seas were predicted for Tuesday and Wednesday. It was Sunday evening, and the sun was starting to set, which meant that we had two options: we could head in at Cape Fear, or carry on and head in at Wrightsville Beach, after rounding the Frying Pan Shoals.