Lake Murray, SC

A couple weeks back I headed out for another weekend of sailing and camping. I had originally planned to head back to Lake Marion again, but got a late start so halfway there I decided to try Lake Murray, which is just west of Columbia, SC. Lake Murray turned out to be a great lake for sailing, The weather was pretty heavy that first day with avg 15 knot winds with only a few gusts coming in but those that did were pretty heavy.

A fair bit of heeling even with just the main up

The whole day ended up being a close reach which I actually enjoyed quite a bit. Beam reaches are just too easy! I had the rail close to the water most of the day since my main sail is very full which works well in light air, but ends up causing a lot of heel. I started to put in reef points but haven't set the grommets yet. At one point after I had rolled out the genoa (I'm not much for caution), a good gust caught me which put the coaming all the way in the water and made me take on about ten gallons of water! Which pointed out the need to enlarge the cockpit drains. And got my feet wet. Fortunately my beer didn't spill so disaster averted. I also wanted to practice heaving to and learned that my boat will heave to quite nicely in strong winds which was good to know. I spent a fair bit of time looking for a good place to camp and finally found a quiet cove that already had a fire pit and settled in for the night.

The following morning was quite pretty and after a couple cups of coffee and some oatmeal I was ready to go. Unfortunately, the wind was not ready to cooperate.

What took about 3 1/2 hours to get out to, ended up taking the better part of almost 12 hours to get back. The wind had died overnight for the most part and shifted so I was back on a close reach which is no fun in light shifting winds. Only had a small trolling motor but worse I hadn't put back in the larger batteries so I was stuck trying to gather what wind I could and paddling to get somewhere. Ugh. You can see in the track below the straight line out and the much less fun track back. And the glassy conditions at times on the lake in the picture above. Ah well, it was still nice to get out and learned a few more tricks and made it back so all in all a good weekend.

Sailing on Lake Marion - Day 2

Day two started with a beautiful sunrise. I made some coffee with the JetBoil french press and got going. Still no rudder but the wind had shifted a little and lightened up some so it wasn't hard to get out and get going. Mainly steering by my position on the boat occasionally hanging over the side to get it to turn windward. Without a rudder I had a lot of lee helm which was a hassle. After a nice long close hauled reach trying to steer through the stumps to the deeper water on the other side I got into a weird situation where I could not get the boat pointed. I finally rolled up the genoa and that helped balance things out although I did lose some speed. After a couple wasted tacks going nowhere, I got it settled into a nice groove and managed to get a couple good long tacks and then got a nice wind shift headed back to get up to the bridge.

The one long tack from Vance back across the lake looked like this and was the best part of the day. Note the lack of a tiller. I just sat with my back on the cabin occasionally leaning a little left or right to adjust my heading. The engine there became just for show since it wouldn't run after a bit, just started leaking gas. I was guessing that the float in the carb got stuck or some such. I am definitely going back to the trolling motor because it has been nothing but trouble.

I was ghosting my way under the bridge close hauled and just about through the second span when a gust of wind came up and grabbed the front of the boat, smashing the bow. Yay. Got a pretty good bit of damage to a spot that had already been repaired once prior to me, so now I get to repair it again for real. Slightly ironic in that I have a rub rail I am working on that will look nice ad would have been great protection for that but oh well. On the other side of the bridge the winds got flukey which are a real pain to deal with when you are steering by jumping around the boat. I did get a good wind for a while but I started figuring that it was going to be tight making it to the landing by dark and if the wind died I wasn;t going to make it. So I bailed out at a boat ramp with a nice beach next to it. Tied the boat off and got to enjoy a nice 8 mile run back to my car. Well I probably ran about 6 of it and walked 2, took me about an hour and 15 minutes or so. Well I did want to get some exercise this weekend.

All in all, it was quite an adventure. What is it they say, "It's not an adventure until something goes wrong." I was happy that despite all the setbacks the boat did get me back home in one piece and I learned quite a bit about the boat and how to sail it. I'd actually sail Lake Marion again. It was a nice wide lake, the camping was beautiful and there were plenty of spots to camp. The cypress trees are vary nice. I'd launch closer to 95 to avoid the hairy sections and try to generally stick to the south side where the main channel is (the blue line in the google earth pic above) to avoid the hazards.

The rest of my pictures are up on picasaweb at https://picasaweb.google.com/110586701752725030552/LakeMarion

Hunting Island State Park continued

I did have my other camera with me so I managed to get a few more pictures the next day hiking around the island.





This was behind my camp and would get about a foot and a half deep at high tide.





Hey look, a deer. They were all over the camp and neighboring islands. Someone told me there were 12 deer altogether and the staff would move them around, but I'm not sure I buy that.







All in all, I had a fantastic weekend. It was supposed to rain the whole time, but I guess Fate decided to give me a break and the weather was perfect. Couldn't have asked for more.

Hunting Island State Park

Decided I needed some beach time, so got the weekend free. The original plan was to go to Charleston, but then started thinking about a state park near Beaufort, SC that I used to visit when I lived there. So I headed off to Hunting Island State Park. Got in around 8 or so and set up camp. I loved the spot I got, down a little trail and over a little rise which separated me from the rest of the campground. Here are a couple of pictures of my camp.




Those pictures are from the next morning, I set up camp in the dark. Which would not have been bad, except I had orginially planned on taking the motorcycle down and had packed everything there. I moved everything to the car since it was supposed to rain all weekend, but forgot to grab one thing from my motorcycle bag, my flashlights! Luckily I had a headlight for my bicycle with me so I was able to muddle through.

So I headed into town to grab dinner and got downtown around 9:15. Beaufort actually has a decent downtown these days but being a small town, every kitchen closed at 9pm! So I ended up eating at Outback, which is always decent food, but I really dislike eating at chain restaurants when I am traveling. Really, what's the point?

I thought about heading downtown, but while looking for food I had scouted around but really didn't see a crowd I wanted to hang out with (either too young or two old). So I figured I would head back out to Hunting Island and get some sleep, but on the way back I passed a little dive bar called Weezie's that looked like it was hopping so I turned around and pulled in. A decent bar band was having a CD release party, and it ended up being a lot of fun. They even had Sierra Nevada on tap! Couldn't have asked for anything more.

Got out kayaking the next morning when I finally woke up. Stopped off at a sand bar and got some decent pictures there and traveled up the lagoon.













Headed up the lagoon, I got a few more pictures but mostly just kicked back and enjoyed being out on the water.



The next two are of the biggest egret by far I had seen. You can see in the second picture how much bigger he was than the typical egrets.





Tragically, that was the end of the pictures using that camera. When I got back, there was an incident involving a dock, a strong tidal current, and a little stupidity on my part which meant I went swimming and my camera got a little wet. I blame it on my lack of sleep the night before.

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful, took a bike ride, a little nap, dinner at Steamers on Lady's Island and a quiet evening.