Video Transcript

Welcome aboard Swamp Puppy! We’re cruising the Great Loop Waterway. In today’s video, we have a slow, nice, easy cruise followed by a pretty interesting, strong current, dangerous situation that we have to navigate through.

But for now, you can sit back, relax, grab yourself something to drink, and come cruise with us.

Captain’s Log, April 26th.

This is Day 20 on the Great Loop and cruise number 13. We started out the morning in Beaufort, South Carolina and we’re on our way to Charleston. We set out early with plans to do a 40 nautical mile day.

The weather was chilly and overcast with light to no winds. There were hardly any other boaters out and the scenery was gorgeous. Salt marsh flats and large islands full of live oaks, slash pines, and palm trees.

The water was glassy late into the morning and the overcast sky made it feel like it was near sunrise well past 10 a.m.

We currently have about seven and a half feett under the boat. We have a three and a half foot draft. Just making our way through this little cut here.

It’s been a pretty nice cruise. No boaters today. Which from yesterday is a complete 180. Yesterday it was just recreational boaters all day. Some of them were not very aware of other people. Today has been super nice.

Mostly just natural beauty around us. It’s been a lot more cruising that we like. We’ve had so much current in our favor today.

We’ve been cruising at about 1,000 or 1,100 RPMs to save some fuel. We’re still going almost eight knots. There’s a few spots where we had to fight the current.

I bumped it up to 1,200 or 1,300 just so it could stay between five and a half and six knots. It was pretty slow in a couple spots. It’s pretty interesting to hit some of the current when you have the current in your favor.

You hit the current that’s against you in some of the little cuts. It kind of moves the boat around like you’re going through a bridge. It’s pretty cool to see and feel.

We’re in Elliot Cut and the current is pretty wild. It’s almost like rapids. I mean, you can see the waves right here and it’s constantly turning the boat back and forth.

It knocked us down to 4.5 knots. We were going 7.5, so it’s knocked us back 3 knots. What is that? 5 miles an hour-ish? Pretty crazy.

It’s really pushing us around in here. So, I’m having to give it a little more fuel so I can fight it. It looks like it’s a natural bottleneck and so that’s what happens when you get something like this.

Very cool. There are some boat docks where you can drop your boat down in the water. I can’t even imagine what it would be like with this current to get your boat on the dock to lift it up.

Or then when you drop your boat and you back up, just like, oh my! I mean, it is cooking through there. That’s pretty cool. When you’re going through a cut like that, you really need to keep your bow pointed into the current.

If you let it get away from you to one side or the other, it’s just like wind. When you’re dead on to it, it really helps go around your boat and kind of center your boat and keep you tracking. And I had to keep the nose pointed exactly where I wanted to go because the current kept trying to push the nose out a little bit.

We’d hit a little patch and we’d want to go this way, we’d hit a different patch and we’d want to go that way. Because all the water is hitting in there and it’s all very turbulent because it’s bottlenecked down. So the pressure’s increased.

So, give it a little more fuel and then keep the nose pointed straight. If it gets too far to one side or the other, like if it gets too far over here, it doesn’t matter how much rudder you give it, you’re going to end up, the bow’s going to go too far around and you’re going to be sideways going through there with absolutely no control banging off the rocks.

Now say something positive!

But that’s not going to happen to you because you can just stay calm, keep your nose pointed where you want to go and just pay attention. You’ll be just fine. We’re almost into Charleston.

We weren’t originally planning on going this far today. We were only going to do 40 miles, but we decided to just go ahead and do 60 because we did the first 40 very quickly by less than 1 p.m. I think it was like 12:30 p.m.

So we figured, let’s go ahead and just keep on chugging along. Now it is 3:15 PM. We’re two miles away from our anchorage.

We’ll be in Charleston for the next few days because Elyse’s mom is coming to visit. We spent five nights on the hook at Brittle Bank Park anchorage in Charleston, South Carolina and quickly became spoiled with the very convenient dinghy dock that we used to run errands like going to an Amazon locker, running to Publix for just the essentials and grabbing a few other items. My mom came to Charleston and became the first guest to board Swamp Puppy while she’s in the water.

We enjoyed exploring Charleston together and took on a food tour and spent almost an entire day exploring the USS Yorktown CV-10, the 10th aircraft carrier to serve in the United States Navy. This was our first time exploring the interior of a historic aircraft carrier and it really gave us a deeper appreciation for all the sacrifices made by the Greatest Generation. It was time for my mom to leave Charleston and that meant it was time for us to move on as well.

If you’re headed to Charleston, South Carolina by boat and you’re not looking to stay at a marina, I’d highly recommend the Brittle Bank Park anchorage. If you’re interested in reading more about this anchorage or any of our other Great Loop anchorages, check out our website at GreatLoopWaterway.com. Thank you so much for watching. If you haven’t already, please subscribe and ring that notification bell so you can catch our next episode when we continue north through South Carolina.