Cruising World – August 2019

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60

he Chesapeake Maritime Museum in St. Michaels,

Maryland, invited me to speak at its annual Mid-

Atlantic Small Craft Festival, and I agreed. St.

Michaels is 600 nautical miles north of Gannet’s

slip at Skull Creek Marina on South Carolina’s

Hilton Head Island. I wanted to sail up. The

problem was that my speaking dates were in early

October. I would be sailing at the height of the

hurricane season.

I prepared Gannet, my Moore 24, in early September, and then I

waited. Hurricane Florence was a thousand miles

to the southeast heading for the Carolinas. A

mandatory evacuation was ordered for the entire

South Carolina coast. But was lifted for Hilton

Head just before it was due to go into effect.

HURRICANE NO. 1

Hurricane Florence came ashore early Friday

more than 200 miles to the north and brought

only moderate wind and rain to Hilton Head.

Hoping to ride trailing south winds, I waited

until Monday morning and pushed Gannet from

its slip into a gray dawn.

The marina is 2 miles from where Skull Creek

enters Port Royal Sound. I raised sails and cut

the Torqeedo, but our speed dropped below

2 knots, so I turned the electric outboard back

on and motor-sailed at 3 knots to the mouth of

the creek, where I removed the Torqeedo and outboard bracket

from the transom in smooth water. A wise decision because the

south wind increased to 20 knots apparent, roughing up the

sound as we beat our wet way 8 miles to open water with 3-foot

waves breaking over the foredeck.

Finally we were able to turn east-northeast and ease sheets,

but with the wind south-southeast, only to a beam reach. Gannet

was still taking waves and heeled 30 degrees, and the tiller pilot

was working too hard, so I put a reef in the main.

Our route naturally divided into three parts: Hilton Head

east-northeast to Cape Hatteras at 350 miles; Hatteras north

to Cape Henry at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay at 100 miles;

and then Cape Henry to St. Michaels north for another 100

miles. I put in four waypoints all well offshore: off the entrance

to the shipping channel into Charleston; the edge of Frying Pan

Shoals off North Carolina’s aptly named Cape Fear; the edge of

Diamond Shoals off Cape Hatteras; and Cape Henry.

Averaging better than 6 knots, we passed Charleston at 2000

that night. Lights of nine ships were visible to the west of us, and

I knew that on this sail I would never enter the monastery of the

sea. I am a creature designed to go out across oceans, not along

coasts. This time I would seldom have the ocean to myself—land

always on one side, ships on the other.

After a night of decreasing wind and a rainy morning, the next

afternoon saw us pass a mile west of the platform on the tip of

Frying Pan Shoals where the video of the American fl ag being

shredded by Florence was taken. We were in 89 feet of water

29 miles offshore. The contrast couldn’t have been greater than

four days earlier. A pleasant, sunny afternoon—10 knots of wind

and 2-foot waves. I have been in hurricane-force winds at least

eight times but always in deep water far at sea. I cannot imagine

the waves such wind must create on shoals.

Another atypical aspect of this sail was that I almost always

could receive NOAA weather forecasts on my handheld VHF.

Usually I have no access to outside weather information, so I

look to the sea, the sky and the barometer, in each seeking signs

of change. The NOAA forecasts were of mixed value, sometimes

being actionable, sometimes causing unnecessary worry.

Though he was fortunately able to avoid hurricane

conditions on this adventure, Webb Chiles is no stranger

to riding out storms at sea aboard small boats.

BY WEBB CHILES

During an active storm season on the East Coast, this intrepid solo

sailor takes advantage of a break between weather systems to make a run in

his Moore 24 from Hilton Head, South Carolina, to attend the Mid-Atlantic

Small Craft Festival in St. Michaels, Maryland.

“I tacked from port

to starboard at dawn

when we were 35 miles

east-southeast of Cape

Hatteras. It was a day

of brutal beauty—wind

20 to 25 knots, gusting

30; dark-blue sea; 6 -foot

white-crested waves

slamming into and over

Gannet.”

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