On Monday, we got a bright and early start motoring down the ICW. Our stopping place that night was going to be Carolina Beach, not far from Wilmington. We pulled into the anchorage and found what appeared to be a nice spot in about 10 feet of water. At high tide. When we woke up this morning, it wasn't high tide anymore and our adventure began...
The anchor came up easily and I turned the boat toward the channel to leave. I glanced down and noticed the sounder read "5.6ft". Hmmm... That's kinda shallow. Oh well. I looked up and continued toward the channel. All the sudden, the boat seemed to "climb" as the keel crawled up a sandbar and the sounder read "3.6ft". Now, 5ft draft sailboats don't operate well in 4.6ft of water, which we were now in. I spun us around and began trying to find a way out of our predicament.
On our boat, the depth sounder transducer is in the very bottom of the hull, about 8 feet ahead of the leading edge of the keel, which is angled toward the rear of the boat. Since this is about 1ft below the water line, you add 1ft to the reading to get the true depth (so 3.6ft is actually 4.6ft of depth). This is useful, allowing me to use the depth sounder like a blind man's walking stick, trying to find deep water before actually getting stuck in the mud. You have to go really slow though, and weave back and forth.
As we puttered around the shallow anchorage, trying to find a gap, I began to wonder if we were going to be stuck here for several hours waiting for the tide to come back in and free us. Fortunately, the floats that we assumed to be crab-pots were actually home-made channel markers. Skirting these allowed us to escape! We were free! Now on to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina!
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