My Seventh Circumnavigation 2021 I have been called a serial circumnavigator. Among other things. I do like to go around in circles, and so on a Tuesday morning in late February I walked down from our condominium on South Carolina’s Hilton Head Island overlooking Skull Creek Marina where my Moore 24, GANNET, is docked, at 9 AM to prepare her for another epic voyage, my seventh circumnavigation. Well, really not so epic. The first six were around the planet. My seventh would be somewhat more modest: around Hilton Head Island. Getting ready took a while. GANNET is no longer self-sufficient. When really voyaging I can leave and return to the little boat with nothing more than the devices I carry in my messenger bag. No longer. I’ve removed as much from her as possible, including the Jordan drogue, clothes and most food. I had to fill water containers, stow equipment and food, fit the Torqeedo and check that it started. It did. Fit a tiller pilot. Put the Velocitek in its mast mount. Move the anchor and rode deployment bag from the bow to beneath the forward hatch. Remove the mainsail and the tiller covers and the covers for the compass and the depth finder. It takes almost as long to prepare for a daysail as to prepare to cross an ocean, which is one of the reasons I cross oceans more than I daysail. In all it took me more than an hour, but at 10:30 I was ready. I undid the line to my new pile float and realized that I had placed the bracket on which I intended to hang it too high on the piling. I tried tossing it up there two or three times and gave up and dropped the loose end in the water. I pushed GANNET out of her slip. The wind was northwest at 8 knots, pushing her back in, but the tide was ebbing which partially neutralized that, and I leapt on board and put the Torqeedo in reverse until we were clear enough to go forward. We were heading around Hilton Head Island counter-clockwise. The northwest wind was behind and perfect. I unfurled the jib, feeling resistance from one of the lead blocks on the furling line that I need to replace, set the Autohelm to steer, stopped the Torqeedo and tilted it out of the water. It had been on for seven minutes and its work for the day was done. Water began to ripple past the hull as I brought in fenders and dock lines. Past the marina Skull Creek runs south for almost two miles. I’ve only sailed this way once before and that was when I left Hilton Head for Panama two years earlier during my previous circumnavigation. I was careful to stay between the Intracoastal Waterway markers. The water in the channel is twenty and more feet deep. In places just outside it is only one or two feet deep. Familiar restaurants on the shore seemed to fly past. Dockside. Hudson’s. The wind was on the beam and gusty, heeling and rounding up the little boat sometimes more quickly than the Autohelm could respond. At the turn at the marker at the bend to the west, we came hard on the wind. I sheeted in the jib and took the tiller myself. Two power boats had just come under the bridge and were heading toward us. I hoped they understood sailboats well enough to know that if I were headed I would have to cut across their bows. I had no room to tack away. But I was not confident that they did. GANNET was heeled well over and making six knots under her small jib alone. Smooth water. The wind held steady. Fine sailing, but I was relieved when I could ease the sheet and fall off for the opening beneath the center of the bridge which is the only way on and off the island. Mast height on GANNET is not a worry. A small power boat was tied to a bridge piling with a man on board fishing. A brief lull in the bridge’s wind shadow and we were through. A curving half mile past the bridge the channel turns south again. I don’t know where Skull Creek ends and Calibogue Sound begins. Perhaps at the bridge itself. With the wind now on the starboard quarter I set the mainsail and our speed rose again to six and seven knots. And then GANNET went out of control, rounded up and headed for a nearby shoal. I glanced down and saw that the plastic end fitting on the tiller pilot arm had broken. I grabbed the tiller, got us under control and when the sound opened wider, turned GANNET into the wind, loosely hove to, and slipped into the cabin where I grabbed another tiller pilot, returned to the cockpit and swapped the old one out. Back on course the sailing was glorious. Good wind. Smooth water. Warm sunshine. February. My plan had been to anchor somewhere near the south end of the island, but we were off Harbor Town at noon and no sailor wants to waste good wind, so I decided to keep going. We passed Hilton Head’s South Beach at 12.30. Evanston, Illinois, where we also live also has a South Beach. At that moment it was covered by two feet of snow. A woman walking on the beach waved at GANNET. I waved back for GANNET who was busy sailing and unfortunately has no hands. Hilton Head Island is eleven miles long and shaped like a shoe running northeast-southwest. We were rounding the toe and heading up the sole of the shoe which is an almost continuous hard white sand beach that is Hilton Head’s chief tourist attraction. However you don’t make a sharp turn and you don’t sail close to the shore. Shoals extend out two to three miles. The channels are marked, but I kept close watch on the depth sounder and our position on the iSailor chart in my iPhone. Finally we were able to make the turn to the northeast three miles offshore. As soon as we did the wind went behind us and died. We drifted for a few minutes before a slight exhalation filled the sails and GANNET began to slip along at two to three knots. At least there were no waves to collapse the sails. The Atlantic was as flat as had been the sheltered water on the landward side of the island. I wished for more wind, but at least we were moving, and there are worse places to be on a sunny winter afternoon than on a small sailboat gliding across smooth water. As the hours passed I watched the shore a couple of miles to port and two ships a few miles to starboard heading for the Savannah River and began to consider where I would spend the night. GANNET’s outboard is an electric Torqeedo. I like it for several reasons. It breaks down into three parts and is easy to mount and remove from the transom. It is quiet. It is clean. It precludes my having to carry gasoline and oil on board. It’s battery can be charged from GANNET’s solar powered electrical system. But it has drawbacks in that it is expensive and has limited range. Just what GANNET’s range was at that moment I did not know. I had three Torqeedo batteries on board. One was ten years old and hadn’t be used in a long time and might be dead. The other two were probably good for 6-8 miles each powering at 2.5-3 knots in smooth water and not against wind or tide. At 5 PM we were nearing the north end of Hilton Head Island and the entrance into Port Royal Sound. Sunset would be at 6. I could certainly lower the Torqeedo back into the water and power into the sound and anchor there for the night, but the Atlantic Ocean was as smooth as a good harbor and I was reasonably certain that the night would be calm. Ten minutes before sunset we were in 35’ of water a mile and a half off the northeast corner of the island and a half mile south of a buoy marking the dredged channel into the sound. I went forward, pulled the Spade anchor and deployment bag onto deck and anchored. As I made my way aft I was facing east. The nearest land was Bermuda eight hundred miles away. I figured it would provide sufficient shelter and went below to turn on the masthead anchor light and pour myself a drink which I took on deck with Boom 2 speakers and sipped and listened to Bach. Dinner was freeze dry beef stew bought three years earlier with the water heated on the JetBoil stove. Old times. At sea I sleep on the windward pipe berth. Well we were technically at sea, but neither berth was to windward and I had removed the berths to have the covers replaced, so I retired for a quiet night on the v-berth. A few years earlier the eye of Force Five Hurricane Matthew passed near where we were anchored. Timing is almost everything. Secure in the lee of Bermuda, which has an unusually long wind shadow, GANNET barely moved during the night and I slept well. I woke a couple of times and went to the companionway where I saw the island where it should be and the green buoy where it should be. The sun came up but the wind didn’t. I ate my invariable sailing breakfast in the cockpit. I had brought a bottle of grapefruit juice with me, but my other provisions—instant coffee; uncooked oatmeal; whey protein power; trail mix; dried fruit; powered milk—had been on board since at least before I had GANNET trucked from San Diego to Hilton Head the previous Labor Day weekend, and probably much longer. They were all as tasty as ever, though some might disagree. Through a bright, sunny, pleasant morning I waited, mostly reading Jonathon Raban’s BAD LAND in the cabin to stay out of the sun, going on deck from time to time to watch bubbles drift past on the outgoing tide and futilely look for any sign of wind. I decided that if there were no wind by noon, when the tide would turn in our favor, I would lower the Torqeedo and power into the sound. While my course the previous day had lots of curves and turns, I calculated that I had covered twenty-four miles and that I had ten more to go to GANNET’s slip. I had no pressure of time. No need to be back in the marina that day and could anchor in the sound and wait for wind on Thursday. I just didn’t feel like staying where I was any longer. A few minutes before noon I was kneeling at the stern preparing to tilt the Torqeedo into the water when I felt a breath on my back. I turned and saw a line of darker wind ruffled water to our south, left the Torqeedo as it was, and made my way forward and raised the anchor. It came up clean. Hilton Head’s long white sand beach must extend offshore. After lowering the anchor and rode deployment bag onto the v-berth, I raised sails and GANNET began to gather way. For the first mile our course was north, then in the sound, northwest. Wind on our beam steadily increased to twelve and fourteen knots, and moved forward when we turned. Still smooth water, only 6” ripples. More glorious sailing at 6 to 8 knots. Several rivers pouring into Port Royal Sound and the tides have carved out forty and fifty foot depths, but there are isolated and mostly unmarked shoals. I am beginning to know these waters, but I continue to pay close attention to the depthsounder and the charts on my iPhone. GANNET dashed along. The contrast was great between this and the afternoon before and the eighteen hours we sat at anchor becalmed. GANNET sails so well in almost any wind, but she does need some. As we neared the red and green markers at the mouth of Skull Creek, the wind was blowing fourteen knots directly out. I didn’t feel like short tacking the last 1.8 miles in the Intracoastal’s channel around a bend in the creek, so I furled the jib, lowered the Torqeedo into the water and started it, and lowered the main. A sand spit to the north of the creek entrance was covered with birds: sea gulls, cormorants, and one pelican. While GANNET’s two foot freeboard does not offer much windage, her ultralight weight does not carry far, and the headwind slowed us. A few other boats passed, mostly power, but a few sail. Those on board waved at the old man on his little boat. I’m sure they thought how nice it is that he still gets out on the water. The old man waved back. As we rounded the curve and pointed at the marina I put out fenders and dock lines and we powered slowly into GANNET’s slip, tying up at 2:30. Circle completed. GANNET’s second circumnavigation and my seventh was by far the most uneventful and the most pleasant. Amateurs seek adventures; professionals seek to avoid them. We had no undesired adventures. We did have a fine time.

My Seventh Circumnavigation

2021

I have been called a serial circumnavigator. Among other things. I do like to go around in circles, and so on a Tuesday morning in late February I walked down from our condominium on South Carolina’s Hilton Head Island overlooking Skull Creek Marina where my Moore 24, GANNET, is docked, at 9 AM to prepare her for another epic voyage, my seventh circumnavigation. Well, really not so epic. The first six were around the planet. My seventh would be somewhat more modest: around Hilton Head Island.

Getting ready took a while. GANNET is no longer self-sufficient. When really voyaging I can leave and return to the little boat with nothing more than the devices I carry in my messenger bag. No longer. I’ve removed as much from her as possible, including the Jordan drogue, clothes and most food. I had to fill water containers, stow equipment and food, fit the Torqeedo and check that it started. It did. Fit a tiller pilot. Put the Velocitek in its mast mount. Move the anchor and rode deployment bag from the bow to beneath the forward hatch. Remove the mainsail and the tiller covers and the covers for the compass and the depth finder. It takes almost as long to prepare for a daysail as to prepare to cross an ocean, which is one of the reasons I cross oceans more than I daysail. In all it took me more than an hour, but at 10:30 I was ready. I undid the line to my new pile float and realized that I had placed the bracket on which I intended to hang it too high on the piling. I tried tossing it up there two or three times and gave up and dropped the loose end in the water.

I pushed GANNET out of her slip. The wind was northwest at 8 knots, pushing her back in, but the tide was ebbing which partially neutralized that, and I leapt on board and put the Torqeedo in reverse until we were clear enough to go forward.

We were heading around Hilton Head Island counter-clockwise. The northwest wind was behind and perfect. I unfurled the jib, feeling resistance from one of the lead blocks on the furling line that I need to replace, set the Autohelm to steer, stopped the Torqeedo and tilted it out of the water. It had been on for seven minutes and its work for the day was done. Water began to ripple past the hull as I brought in fenders and dock lines.

Past the marina Skull Creek runs south for almost two miles. I’ve only sailed this way once before and that was when I left Hilton Head for Panama two years earlier during my previous circumnavigation. I was careful to stay between the Intracoastal Waterway markers. The water in the channel is twenty and more feet deep. In places just outside it is only one or two feet deep.

Familiar restaurants on the shore seemed to fly past. Dockside. Hudson’s. The wind was on the beam and gusty, heeling and rounding up the little boat sometimes more quickly than the Autohelm could respond. At the turn at the marker at the bend to the west, we came hard on the wind. I sheeted in the jib and took the tiller myself. Two power boats had just come under the bridge and were heading toward us. I hoped they understood sailboats well enough to know that if I were headed I would have to cut across their bows. I had no room to tack away. But I was not confident that they did.

GANNET was heeled well over and making six knots under her small jib alone. Smooth water. The wind held steady. Fine sailing, but I was relieved when I could ease the sheet and fall off for the opening beneath the center of the bridge which is the only way on and off the island. Mast height on GANNET is not a worry. A small power boat was tied to a bridge piling with a man on board fishing. A brief lull in the bridge’s wind shadow and we were through.

A curving half mile past the bridge the channel turns south again. I don’t know where Skull Creek ends and Calibogue Sound begins. Perhaps at the bridge itself. With the wind now on the starboard quarter I set the mainsail and our speed rose again to six and seven knots. And then GANNET went out of control, rounded up and headed for a nearby shoal. I glanced down and saw that the plastic end fitting on the tiller pilot arm had broken. I grabbed the tiller, got us under control and when the sound opened wider, turned GANNET into the wind, loosely hove to, and slipped into the cabin where I grabbed another tiller pilot, returned to the cockpit and swapped the old one out. Back on course the sailing was glorious. Good wind. Smooth water. Warm sunshine. February.

My plan had been to anchor somewhere near the south end of the island, but we were off Harbor Town at noon and no sailor wants to waste good wind, so I decided to keep going.

We passed Hilton Head’s South Beach at 12.30. Evanston, Illinois, where we also live also has a South Beach. At that moment it was covered by two feet of snow. A woman walking on the beach waved at GANNET. I waved back for GANNET who was busy sailing and unfortunately has no hands.

Hilton Head Island is eleven miles long and shaped like a shoe running northeast-southwest. We were rounding the toe and heading up the sole of the shoe which is an almost continuous hard white sand beach that is Hilton Head’s chief tourist attraction. However you don’t make a sharp turn and you don’t sail close to the shore. Shoals extend out two to three miles. The channels are marked, but I kept close watch on the depth sounder and our position on the iSailor chart in my iPhone. Finally we were able to make the turn to the northeast three miles offshore. As soon as we did the wind went behind us and died.

We drifted for a few minutes before a slight exhalation filled the sails and GANNET began to slip along at two to three knots. At least there were no waves to collapse the sails. The Atlantic was as flat as had been the sheltered water on the landward side of the island. I wished for more wind, but at least we were moving, and there are worse places to be on a sunny winter afternoon than on a small sailboat gliding across smooth water.

As the hours passed I watched the shore a couple of miles to port and two ships a few miles to starboard heading for the Savannah River and began to consider where I would spend the night.

GANNET’s outboard is an electric Torqeedo. I like it for several reasons. It breaks down into three parts and is easy to mount and remove from the transom. It is quiet. It is clean. It precludes my having to carry gasoline and oil on board. It’s battery can be charged from GANNET’s solar powered electrical system. But it has drawbacks in that it is expensive and has limited range. Just what GANNET’s range was at that moment I did not know. I had three Torqeedo batteries on board. One was ten years old and hadn’t be used in a long time and might be dead. The other two were probably good for 6-8 miles each powering at 2.5-3 knots in smooth water and not against wind or tide.

At 5 PM we were nearing the north end of Hilton Head Island and the entrance into Port Royal Sound. Sunset would be at 6. I could certainly lower the Torqeedo back into the water and power into the sound and anchor there for the night, but the Atlantic Ocean was as smooth as a good harbor and I was reasonably certain that the night would be calm.

Ten minutes before sunset we were in 35’ of water a mile and a half off the northeast corner of the island and a half mile south of a buoy marking the dredged channel into the sound. I went forward, pulled the Spade anchor and deployment bag onto deck and anchored. As I made my way aft I was facing east. The nearest land was Bermuda eight hundred miles away. I figured it would provide sufficient shelter and went below to turn on the masthead anchor light and pour myself a drink which I took on deck with Boom 2 speakers and sipped and listened to Bach.

Dinner was freeze dry beef stew bought three years earlier with the water heated on the JetBoil stove. Old times.

At sea I sleep on the windward pipe berth. Well we were technically at sea, but neither berth was to windward and I had removed the berths to have the covers replaced, so I retired for a quiet night on the v-berth. A few years earlier the eye of Force Five Hurricane Matthew passed near where we were anchored. Timing is almost everything.

Secure in the lee of Bermuda, which has an unusually long wind shadow, GANNET barely moved during the night and I slept well. I woke a couple of times and went to the companionway where I saw the island where it should be and the green buoy where it should be.

The sun came up but the wind didn’t.

I ate my invariable sailing breakfast in the cockpit. I had brought a bottle of grapefruit juice with me, but my other provisions—instant coffee; uncooked oatmeal; whey protein power; trail mix; dried fruit; powered milk—had been on board since at least before I had GANNET trucked from San Diego to Hilton Head the previous Labor Day weekend, and probably much longer. They were all as tasty as ever, though some might disagree.

Through a bright, sunny, pleasant morning I waited, mostly reading Jonathon Raban’s BAD LAND in the cabin to stay out of the sun, going on deck from time to time to watch bubbles drift past on the outgoing tide and futilely look for any sign of wind.

I decided that if there were no wind by noon, when the tide would turn in our favor, I would lower the Torqeedo and power into the sound. While my course the previous day had lots of curves and turns, I calculated that I had covered twenty-four miles and that I had ten more to go to GANNET’s slip. I had no pressure of time. No need to be back in the marina that day and could anchor in the sound and wait for wind on Thursday. I just didn’t feel like staying where I was any longer.

A few minutes before noon I was kneeling at the stern preparing to tilt the Torqeedo into the water when I felt a breath on my back. I turned and saw a line of darker wind ruffled water to our south, left the Torqeedo as it was, and made my way forward and raised the anchor. It came up clean. Hilton Head’s long white sand beach must extend offshore.

After lowering the anchor and rode deployment bag onto the v-berth, I raised sails and GANNET began to gather way.

For the first mile our course was north, then in the sound, northwest. Wind on our beam steadily increased to twelve and fourteen knots, and moved forward when we turned. Still smooth water, only 6” ripples. More glorious sailing at 6 to 8 knots.

Several rivers pouring into Port Royal Sound and the tides have carved out forty and fifty foot depths, but there are isolated and mostly unmarked shoals. I am beginning to know these waters, but I continue to pay close attention to the depthsounder and the charts on my iPhone.

GANNET dashed along. The contrast was great between this and the afternoon before and the eighteen hours we sat at anchor becalmed. GANNET sails so well in almost any wind, but she does need some.

As we neared the red and green markers at the mouth of Skull Creek, the wind was blowing fourteen knots directly out. I didn’t feel like short tacking the last 1.8 miles in the Intracoastal’s channel around a bend in the creek, so I furled the jib, lowered the Torqeedo into the water and started it, and lowered the main.

A sand spit to the north of the creek entrance was covered with birds: sea gulls, cormorants, and one pelican.

While GANNET’s two foot freeboard does not offer much windage, her ultralight weight does not carry far, and the headwind slowed us.

A few other boats passed, mostly power, but a few sail. Those on board waved at the old man on his little boat. I’m sure they thought how nice it is that he still gets out on the water. The old man waved back.

As we rounded the curve and pointed at the marina I put out fenders and dock lines and we powered slowly into GANNET’s slip, tying up at 2:30. Circle completed.

GANNET’s second circumnavigation and my seventh was by far the most uneventful and the most pleasant. Amateurs seek adventures; professionals seek to avoid them. We had no undesired adventures. We did have a fine time.