Beautiful Sailing, Beautiful Beaufort, Post 25-17
- sondrawinter
- Apr 27
- 5 min read
Updated: May 8
Saturday, April 19 through Friday, April 25, 2025
Brunswick, GA to Charleston, SC
166 nautical miles (191 statute miles)
This week we head north and have lunch with the prior owners of Utopia!
Overnight Jump to South Carolina!
Saturday morning, we left Brunswick Landing Marina and had one of our best overnight passages on Utopia. The trip started out with three docking maneuvers in winds of 12-15 knots. First, we managed to get out of our slip unaided, leave the fairway and spin around so that we could dock into the wind at the fuel dock, where we filled up our diesel tanks.
Leaving the dock was not too stressful as we pulled away and traveled south towards the Sidney Lanier Bridge. Once clear of the bridge we cut off the engine and spent two hours slowly tacking our way out of the St. Simons Sound towards Jekyll and St. Simons Islands. The forecast indicated that the winds would fade away throughout the day, so we thought that our tacking in the Sound was going to be our only chance to sail.
The engine came back on for about an hour while we were in the long shipping channel that extends a good ways out into the Atlantic. At seven miles offshore, we turned north and shut off the engine again and had the good fortune to keep it off until we reached the Port Royal Sound Inlet up in South Carolina!
Light winds came from behind Utopia and she easily made headway at half the true wind speed. In fact, anytime the winds got above 9 knots, we had to find ways to slow down so that we would not arrive at the inlet before sunrise. It was a lot of fun adjusting the sails to either speed up or slow down the boat and I found that it made my solo shifts at the helm pass by quickly.
Although the chartplotter did freeze an hour into my first three-hour night shift, the electronics and autopilot worked like a charm, so I just used a navigation app on my phone until Jimmy came up to start his shift. Well, except for the occasional times that the autopilot randomly stops piloting the boat… Hopefully these instrumentation issues will be fully resolved before leaving Charleston.
About 25 hours after leaving the slip (107 nm/ 123 miles), we caught a mooring ball near downtown Beaufort, South Carolina.
Beaufort, South Carolina
The town of Beaufort was a nice place to stop for a few days. I was immediately hit by the charm of this town as soon as we stepped off of the dinghy dock. It was Easter Sunday and there were a lot of people wearing their easter clothes enjoying the beautiful spring weather along the waterfront. Even in a fatigued state of the overnight passage, we really enjoyed our little waterfront walk.
Houses from Beaufort's Point (Click images for larger size)
During our stay, we walked across the bascule bridge that Tom Hanks ran across as Forest Gump, to visit our first Publix since our stop in Fort Lauderdale last January, we shipped our radar to Raymarine, and strolled the historic district.
Special Guest Appearance
Jimmy and I were treated to an afternoon spent with the prior owners of Utopia, Diane and Frank. We had only met them in person once, on the day the boat survey was conducted just before we purchased Utopia. I remember them being kind, but we were all in transaction mode that day. After we took ownership, Frank was more than willing to share his knowledge about Utopia through many emails and text messages along with a phone call or two. He had said back then to reach out to them when we pass through the Hilton Head area.
Now, nearly four years later, we finally made it to the area. Jimmy and I were pleased that they were still interested in meeting up with us once we arrived in Beaufort. When we met up at a local restaurant we immediately greeted with a friendly welcome, followed by conversation that flowed naturally. It appeared that both parties enjoyed hearing the other’s stories, including some amusing stories about mishaps onboard Utopia.
After a post lunch stroll through downtown, we all piled onboard our little dinghy and headed over Utopia. Jimmy and I really enjoyed our time with Diane and Frank, and they seemed pleased with the visit out to see their old girl.
More ICW Fun
April 24: 32 nm / 36 miles
April 25: 27 nm / 31 miles
From Beaufort, we spent two days heading north up the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) to Charleston. Most of our ICW experience has been in Florida, and this section is very different. Aside from the obvious change in flora and fauna, there is a marked difference in population along the banks of the ICW, and the route is very circuitous. In Florida, we primarily follow the waters between barrier islands and the mainland. In South Carolina, the ICW moves from river to river connected by many cuts. Over the two days we traveled on eight rivers and three cuts with light boat traffic.
There is strong current in some places, and we needed to be aware of a few shallow cuts along the way. In fact, we bypassed the narrow and shallow Ashepoo Coosaw Cutoff since traversing it would require very close timing of a high tide. Luckily in this area, we just continued down the Coosaw and turned up the Ashepoo where the two meet, adding on 5 nautical miles to the day.
The scenery is primarily sawgrass, woods and the occasional large waterfront house. Boat traffic consisted of very few sailboats and trawlers, some small fishing and crabbing boats, a couple of barges and one cruise boat before reaching the busy area outside of Charleston. Our mid-point anchorage was on a river just off of the ICW where we had the entire area to ourselves. I believe we have not had an anchorage to ourselves since our first Bahamian anchorage in The Berries back in January.
Our two-day, drama-free trip up the ICW wrapped up with settling into a slip at a marina west of Charleston. The marina is on a river that can have some strong currents, and we arrived about 45 minutes before slack tide. Although slight, the current was still noticeable once we entered the fairway which led to my bumping up the throttle and entering the slip just a tad hot. With some reverse throttle, a dockhand and Jimmy’s work, plus a little luck from a spare fender hanging off the stern pulpit, we got Utopia safely into her new slip.
Post 25-17 | Links for the previous and next post can be found below.
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