Mackay and Cowen Creeks
October 25-27, 2024
Prologue:
Our windlass was old and prone to burning out. It was so old that we couldn’t get parts and had to engineer repairs for several years. Each time it stopped working, John had to haul the anchor and chain by hand – heavy, wet, and often muddy work.
John purchased a new windlass this month and after lots of cursing and contortions, got it installed.
Taking Lailia out and anchoring for the weekend was a perfect test of the new windlass. The weather right now is perfect, too, with cooler nights and warm days so we don’t need to run a generator because we won’t need air conditioning to sleep.
We left the marina around 4:30 on Friday and motored across Port Royal Sound.
This anchorage is in a creek just west of Pinckney Island. Days are a little shorter so we anchored as the sun was setting.
The water here is smooth and it’s fairly quiet. Hilton Head has rules about commercial lighting, so it’s also pretty dark.
There really aren’t words for how peaceful it is watching the stars and listening to dolphins while anchored.
Saturday morning was just as calm and peaceful.
After breakfast we saw something completely unexpected. We watched a deer walk along the shore and then swim across the creek.
On Labor Day weekend we anchored in Cowen Creek but didn’t get to explore it much, so after a leisurely breakfast we headed back across Port Royal Sound.
The sound was calm with very little wind. We took advantage of the calm and headed out into the ocean for just a bit.
John had the headsail up for about 20 minutes; it was slow going at 2.5-3 knots. That speed wasn’t going to give us enough time to explore Cowen Creek and drop our anchor before dark, so we dropped the sail and motored.
We anchored in a remote spot where we saw a pair of eagles who were also enjoying the sunset.
Cowen Creek is a possible spot for Lailia if we have to find a spot in a hurricane. It’s got good holding and won’t get battered with big waves (unlike the river ).
We had a short ride back to the marina this morning. The map shows how far we got into the creek’s twists.
Epilogue:
The new windlass is finicky about letting go of chain – it won’t allow an easy free fall of the anchor (our old one let us just drop it and it would fall until we manually stopped it). John will need to do some research, lots of cursing, more boat yoga, and some repair work. It does work really well getting the anchor up, though, so there’s a partial win.
Life on Lailia 