Beginning at 1 pm, this was planned to be a 170 mile overnight voyage, past the Frying Pan Shoals at Cape Fear, and on to Georgetown SC at Winyah Bay.  There are two long legs to the route, each 70 nautical miles, run at 231 and 253 degrees magnetic respectively, plus the long inlet channel approaches.   We plotted our course on the electronic charts, with waypoints at every 7 miles to track our progress.  All of this was duplicated on paper charts as a back up.  We alerted Debbie’s siblings Stephen and Pam of our “float plan” and for them to expect a call from us at about 2 PM on Friday. 

Generally, we were 25-30 miles offshore, finding 3-5 waves on our beam, and 10-15 knot winds from the north and Northeast, on our stern.   We put up a staysail and motorsailed.   At night, with a new moon, and frequent cloud cover, it was very dark.  We could see no shore lights and we passed no other boats the entire trip, but we could hear military jets overhead all night.   At 1 AM, we were passing through 40 foot waters at Frying Pan Shoals, about 20 miles offshore, keeping the red flashing 4 meter high navigation light on our starboard.  Unnerving to find it was extinguished.

We arrived at the entry buoy at Winyah Bay at about noon on Friday, about 2 hours before low tide.  That meant that the prevailing east wind would oppose the strong currents of the Waccamah River flowing out through the bay.  The seas were confused and stacked up with strong cross currents as we made only 2-3 knots up the shipping channel.   We diverted to the ICW channel heading south on Minim Canal and found an anchorage at Minem Creek.  We put the dinghy back on the davits, took sorely needed showers, and turned in, rejoicing that we had avoided miles of shoaling, tidal currents and 27 fixed and draw bridges on the ICW in NC and SC , all bypassed by going offshore for 27 hours versus 3-4 days of daylight hours motoring.