Thursday, February 18, 2021

fourteen sounds, lights, food, parking

I am learning of more sounds on the way from Charleston to Jacksonville.  My original source, Henry Plummer, showed 11 sounds on his hand-drawn chart from The Boy, Me and the Cat.  Mentioned in my post about that is a twelfth sound, the very small Buttermilk Sound.  Webb also pointed out Calibogue Sound, next to Hilton Head, was not included in the list.  And just a couple a days ago, looking at maps online, I came across Wadmalaw Sound.  So I believe now there are 14 sounds.  Maybe it is not a good idea to navigate using 100+ year old hand-drawn charts.


Checking gear I found one of my anchor lights no longer worked.  I like to have two on board so had Amazon send a new one.  GPS, GoPros and SPOT have all been checked to make sure they have up-to-date software.


This morning I drove to a high-end grocery store in Norfolk and spent too much money on bags of nuts and dried fruit for homemade trail mix.  Peanuts, almonds, pistachios, cashews and wasabi peas make up the nut trail mix.  Dried strawberries, mango, pineapple are in the fruit version.  Look closely and you will see also jelly beans in each kind of mix.  This was a suggestion from my Appalachian Trail friend.  Another suggestion he had, for cold evenings or mornings, was hot chocolate.  An excellent idea and I bought a box of eight pouches.


Speaking of GPS, I finally figured out how to read the current predictions on my Garmin GPSMAP 64S (no one has ever called me the sharpest hook in the tackle box).  Put the cursor on the little diamond shape with a "C" in the middle of it and click once.  That gives the location.  A second click brings up the forecast current for that point.  Having that data available will be very helpful.


A storage facility on James Island today confirmed that I have two parking spots reserved, one for the jeep, one for the trailer.  It is about a 15 minute drive, I believe, from the Wappoo Cut Boat Ramp where I hope to launch.   As I look at tides and currents down the ICW I see that one of the strongest currents I could face, is just to the west on Elliot Cut which connects Wappoo Cut to the Stono River.  Emphasis on the word "could" as I just need to time my launch to have little or no currents, or possibly a current to help carry me on my way.

2 comments:

  1. I just finished "The Boy, Me, and The Cat" last night. It certainly didn't sound like a pleasure cruise. More like 8 months of hard work punctuated by moments of terror.

    Unfortunately, the version of the book that I bought had no pictures in it at all, but apparently, there is a different version with some of Mr. Plummer's photos and drawings.

    I did find this website that gives a little more history about Mr. Plummer and his sons and the trip, and also a few pictures, including one of his son Henry and the poor cat, too:

    https://wavetrain.net/2010/08/11/the-boy-me-and-the-cat-the-first-snow-birds/

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  2. I was fortunate enough to get the editions with photos, drawing and even some photos of the original book. Amazing to me what they did, and how they did it with an upbeat view of whatever came their way. Steve

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