May 25 Beaufort to Toogoodoo Creek

May 25 Beaufort to Toogoodoo Creek Anchorage

No early start today. Having to play the tide. Plenty of time to head over to Rain N Bagels for a freshly made half dozen assortment of bagels and a container of cream cheese. We toasted and ate one each then bagged and froze the others for later. YUM!!

We never get tired of watching the dolphins ride our waves

There are a couple of tricky sections of the ICW in SC. I was originally concerned about Watts Cut but as I dug into my route planning closer, we would be hitting the Ashepoo Cut first which has developed a serious shoal across the mouth of the entrance. My charts were showing a very narrow channel that was still only 4-5' deep at low tide. By leaving Beaufort at 11:30 we could hit that cut at 1:30 on a rising tide with an extra 1-1/2'. We're heading down the Coosawa River approaching the cut. It's closer to 2 pm as we've been fighting the current the whole time. I figure that's fine - extra time for the tide to come in. I run the autoroute program in Navionics to take me through Ashepoo Cut and to the start of Watts cut to get an ETA for Watts. Surprisingly, Navionics refuses to program me through Ashepoo Cut based on my draft criteria and the tide adjusted water level. It instead directs me to continue down the Coosawa all the way to the inlet then loop around a shoal area that extends almost to the ocean before bringing us up the real Ashepoo River and intersecting the ICW further north. It just isn't worth the gamble of a grounding in this remote area so we decide to take the long route around despite it being several miles longer. We got to see how the boat handled with some 2-3' choppy wind and tide driven waves on the nose as we approached the inlet. Then engaged the stabilizers as we turned around the shoal and started taking those waves on our beam. The boat handled it all great.

Calm waters at high tide passing through Watts Cut

The trip up the Ashepoo was settled as we were suddenly in protected waters again with a nice incoming tide pushing us along. Watts Cut wound up being a non- issue as we approached it nearing high tide. On to our anchorage up the Edisto River, We had stayed at Tom Point Creek before but decided to try another new anchorage for the night. It was the next creek up called Toogoodoo Creek. Love that name. It is another great place with better protection, scenery and swing room than Tom Point Creek. Dropped the hook in 15' without issue. Easy set. Wind died down overnight and we slept soundly with just the gentle swing of the tide. Short trip tomorrow to bring us home to Charleston.