Author: Chris McLean

February 14-22, 2025

Port Royal and Philadelphia

February weather is strange this year – it’s been cold, warm, foggy, and sunny, and sometimes all four in a single day. 

Warm afternoons are great in Cypress Wetlands because lots of critters are active.

Our marina dock is a good observation spot, too.  Hooded mergansers are really distinctive looking.  They tend to stay in groups of at least two and often four or five.

Sometimes at low tide we are lucky enough to observe a stingray looking for a meal.

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My school district developed a calendar with a short February break this year.  I used this break to head to Philadelphia to do a school visit for International Baccalaureate.  I rarely do visits but I jumped at the chance to go back to my hometown.

The best part of this was dinner with my sister and one of my nieces.

The part that wasn’t so great was the polar vortex cold that kept temps below freezing the entire time I was there.  The fluffy snow that didn’t accumulate was pretty, though.

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Port Royal has a lot of neighborhood celebrations, including a Mardi Gras parade of golf carts.  Folks throw beads and candy, and everyone heads to the local brewery where there are food trucks and musical performances, including one from a local high school.

People are serious about their golf cart decorations.

The high school band was great!

Shellring Brewery is right on Battery Creek and at low tide there’s a sliver of a beach.  Kids were able to play there: throwing rocks in the water, climbing trees, and running around.

It’s supposed to warm up this week (and hopefully stay warm).  Spring really is on its way.

• Happy Boataversary, part 3 (going east to the Bahamas 2022)
• Happy Boataversary, Lailia (part 2, going south-2022)
• Happy Boataversary, Lailia – part 1, 2019 through 2021)
• …and a Jump
• A Hop and a Skip

January 23-26, 2025

Port Royal, SC

One of the best things about snow in the Low Country is how rare it is to have any at all.  There’s no real removal plan besides letting it melt.  There’s no rush to get back to busy, so most folks are staying close to home and enjoying time with their loved ones.

School is closed here because we have run out of state-allocated eLearning days.  Since students must get a minimum of 180 days of instruction each year and teachers only get paid for days we work, we will have to make up this lost time in person.  We are more likely to miss school due to hurricanes (we lost 4 this year) so most of our calendared makeup days have passed.  March 17 is on our calendar as a makeup day – the other day has not yet been decided.  I think many people think that bad weather days are “free days” but they always come at a price.

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Thursday was mostly overcast with heavy skies and only a few hours of above freezing temperatures; snow and ice just barely melted. 

It’s kind of relaxing to chip away at the ice, though.

Thursday was the first day I left Lailia. The ice and snow was textured so walking on it wasn’t too treacherous and John had cleared both a landing space on our finger dock and the ramp to the high dock.

Our heron buddies were active in the evening.  There are two great blue herons that hang out here – and no doubt they need all the calories they can get to help them stay warm.

Someone also was busy creating a snow friend.  It’s so heavy and icy they must have had a time of it.

The parking lot is still a mess and it’s easy to see why the Sheriff’s office is asking people to stay off the roads.

Sunset brought hope – clearer skies are on the way; the sun will definitely help with melting.

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Friday

Overnight temperatures have been below freezing so it takes a few hours each morning until melting begins.

We went out for bagels this morning and took a ride to Cypress Wetlands for the rare opportunity to see how it looks decorated with snow.

I hoped I might see some gators but they were probably tucked under a mudbank brumating.  There were bluebirds galore and only a few wading birds.  In a month or so, this place will be filled with nesting birds

The shadiest parts of the Wetlands actually had a thin skin of ice on them.  The water at the marina moves too quickly and has too much salt to freeze in these temperatures.

Temps will continue to rise this weekend so we should have clear, dry roads by Monday morning and get back to normal.

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Saturday brought warmer weather and a little more melting.  The snow buddy is a good indicator of what’s happening

We also joined all the folks shaking off cabin fever at Shellring Brewery which has a front seat on the best sunset views in town.

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Sunday

The snow is mostly gone from the docks although the hard packed stuff in shady places is still slowly melting.

And, finally, for those who celebrate – Go Birds!  We are Super Bowl bound!

January 21-?, 2025

Port Royal, SC (marina)

One of our favorite things about the Low Country is the mild winters.  Some years we barely get below freezing – and if we do, it’s generally at night with daytime temps in the 50s. 

Every so often (the last big snow was in January of 2018 and the one before that was in 1990 or so) we get a BIG SNOW EVENT.  There’s all kinds of predictions for all kinds of weather and it makes everyone amateur meteorologists.

One of our favorite sources of information just told us to be prepared for a mess.

The snow/sleet/freezing rain start times kept moving, too, so we were sent home early on Tuesday.  School districts have the unenviable task of balancing student and staff safety with maximizing educational opportunities. 

Heavy sleet began at around 7:30pm and continued all night.  The wind was moaning and the sleet was clicking Lailia continuously but we were snug and cozy. 

Every time I woke up, I took a photo of the sleet accumulation from our window.  (I am usually not up so often, but this was EXCITING!)

Five years of living onboard and this is our first snow encounter!

We have multiple heat sources onboard (electric and propane).  Because we like to sleep in a cooler room, we turn them down at night.  Once we were up and working, we turn up the electric and propane to a cozy temperature.

This is the first time we saw our cockpit enclosure encased in ice.

Our deck was coated with inches of icy sleet, which was pretty solidly frozen.  I was disappointed with this texture because I had hoped for light, flaky snow so we could build a snow sailor.

Adventure Man John did some marina sightseeing today while I was in about a million Zoom meetings during our eLearning day.  It’s definitely bonkers to see all this precipitation.

John did some informal snow clearance on the docks – he kicked a lot off so it could dry.  The marina doesn’t have snow shovels or blowers and hopefully all the dockhands stayed off the roads today.

John also cleared the deck above the propane locker so if we need to change out the propane it will be easy to access.  The locker is on the lee side of Lailia, so the 3 inches it accumulated was less than on the windward side.

The ice accumulation on top of the cockpit enclosure was pretty heavy, so John removed that as well.

Emergency Management has asked that folks stay off the roads through tomorrow – anything that melted in the short time temps were above freezing will refreeze.  School is closed tomorrow – we will have a makeup day in March. The weather won’t t warm up until the weekend so we may also be out of school on Friday, although that makeup day may cut onto our spring break.

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We are both very thankful for all the folks who made sure we would be safe and warm during this weather event.  It reminds us of how fortunate we are to have so many caring people in our lives.

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. 

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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.

October 6-19, 2024

Y’all!  We had auroras and a comet in the same week!  Later that week, we watched a rocket after it launched from Cape Canaveral.

In truth, the auroras were a faint purple glow with a naked eye, but through an iPhone camera they were amazing.

In some ways, this was even cooler because it almost seemed like the phone was cracking some mysterious sky images.

We also saw the 80,000 year comet, C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS).  These photos are from the first night it was visible.

We tried to view it through the week as it got progressively higher from the horizon and fainter.

Starlink sent a rocket up – we had some excited dock neighbors watching with us

It seemed like the booster/rocket separation happened right in front of us. 

August 31 -September 2

Port Royal Safe Harbor to Mackay Creek (anchored) to Cowen Creek (anchored) back to the marina

It’s easy to get caught up in the routine – and we have a great weekend routine of going to the beach – but we haven’t taken Lailia out for over a year.

Our generator, which we need to run our air conditioning at night, wouldn’t start.  John has been troubleshooting it without much luck.  What was lucky is someone loaned us a generator!

We left the marina a few minutes after 8 AM.  I had an awful experience on the Port Royal Sound and even though we’ve crossed it several times since then, I’m always thinking about how rough it can get.

Thankfully, it was really flat on Saturday.

No wind meant we had to motor the entire way but it was an easy, short 15 nautical mile, 3.5 hour ride

One of our favorite things about anchoring is watching the sun set.  Once all of the day-boaters left, it was just us, the sky, and peace

Sunday started with a dinghy ride towards the bridge. 

The wind in the video makes it sound as if brakes are screeching.  Dinghy rides are pretty fun but there’s no brakes!

We dinghied to a water access into Pinckney Island National Wildlife Refuge.  The trails here are only accessible by foot and bicycle; I have wanted to explore this place for a while.  It was really, really hot so we decided we’d like it better in the autumn.  We will be back.

We decided to check out another anchorage closer to our marina.  Staging here on Sunday night meant we wouldn’t need to leave as early Monday morning.

This trip was about 14 miles and took us back across Port Royal Sound.

The wind was perfect for us to turn off Lailia’s engine and sail.

The last time we did this was ages ago.  We definitely need to get back out more often.

Once again, we are the only boat in this peaceful anchorage

We’re close enough to Parris Island to hear Taps being played.  Even cooler is that after the last note, a bunch of coyotes howled for a good 30 seconds.  We weren’t able to capture that on video, but we did capture the peace of this anchorage.

Monday morning was a quick, hour ride back to the marina.

The clouds are building and there’s some drizzle here and there.

Anchoring out is like those good friends that you don’t see enough – the time together is so wonderful and timeless that you wonder what kept you apart for so long.  We know we need to prioritize just taking Lailia out (it’s easier than we make it in our heads).

August 5-6, 2024

Port Royal, SC (docked)

We prepared for Debby for a few days.  The forecast is more about torrential rain than any significant wind (although that’s always subject to change).  The major issue is that Debby is supposed to stall right off the coast for several days and just dump rain (potentially 20-30 inches) on this area.

In addition to securing our dinghy and filling out water tank, John prepped us the best by moving Lailia to an inside slip.  We’re a lot more protected from waves here. 

The waves on the outside slip weren’t terrible but they aren’t even an issue on the inside.  Debby’s winds are coming from the east rather than the south, which keeps the waves smaller.

Our school district sent employees home at 1pm on Monday and let us know they would be closed Tuesday and Wednesday.  Students were supposed to start Wednesday.

We had bands of rain most of Monday evening.   We ate dinner and watched Netflix through that.

The only nerve-wracking time was around 9:30 when we started getting alarms about potential tornadoes. 

My coaching partner texted me the weather maps  while John pulled up radar images.

The sounds in the cockpit were bonkers, because the canvas and isinglass amplify the wind and rain.  The cool part is that in spite of all of that, Lailia was steady.

This morning (Tuesday) we woke up to see that we missed another couple tornado warnings while we slept.  That’s good news – we slept well enough to miss all that and bad news – we slept well enough to miss all that.

A lot of Spanish moss blew down last night.  It’s even decorating our car. 

The rain continues and will probably be coming for days.

We’re safe here and so thankful for everyone who checked in on us, offered shelter, and sent good wishes.

April 10-23, 2024

How quickly a routine falls apart! Two days before spring break, I attended training in North Charleston and spent the night away from John and Lailia. Spring break rolled in and out usual Sunday night blogging thing went out the window.

It was a good couple of weeks.

While I was in North Charleston, I had dinner with my college friends, Bill and Deb.

John’s decision to turn Lailia so her bow faces south was excellent. We’re not getting wave slap and sleeping is good!

My spring break schedule means I’m out at different times than my usual early morning pre-dawn trek to the gym.

I get to go to Cypress Wetlands in the early morning. The light and sounds are different from my usual after work walks.

We’re out later in the evening, too, so we get to soak up the gentle last rays of sun.

Spring break also meant I could spend a day at Swan Lake in Sumter with my friend Samantha. We probably saw all 8 species of swans that live there – it’s not easy to tell all of them apart.

The gardens were starting to bloom, too.

There’s even a wetlands walk there.

I stopped to take a picture of the forest and while Samantha thought I was taking a picture of it, I only saw the hawk when it flew away.

Sometimes spring break weather is disappointing but this year it was amazing! John and I got some beach time in.

There’s an osprey nest in the trees at our favorite beach spot.

It was warm enough this past weekend that birds were doing weird things to cool down. Some held their wings in different formations

Some had their beaks open.

There are also so many nests at Cypress Wetlands! I love this little tri-color heron. A few weeks ago I watched these buddies build this nest

This nest is in a small tree away from the main nesting area in Cypress Wetlands. I always check on it when I walk through. I like how this pair just quietly established their spot.

How cool it is to see her eggs!

A few weeks ago, the first great egrets had eggs in their nest.

This week that nest has chicks!

April 1-8, 2024

Sometimes everything comes together: our friend Robert was in Beaufort during the solar eclipse – and we had perfect weather AND I had the day off.

Robert travels the country by road- we last saw him in St. Augustine about 16 months ago. You can check out his cool adventures at https://robertthenomad.com/.

Of course we went to Cypress Wetlands to check out all the birds but the highlight was the eclipse, even though we only had about 75% coverage.

We found a good spot on Little Hunting Island to watch the action.

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The birds in Cypress Wetlands have been really active. There’s lots of mating plumage on display – it’s avian spring break.

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Birds are everywhere, grabbing sticks for their nests and hunting for food.

My most fortuitous sighting was of very young gallinules. These chicks were super-tiny. They’re not the most gorgeous things, but I still think they’re cute. Gallinules are really distinctive birds with big yellow feet and a bright red beak.

Spring here also means that prevailing winds are shifting from blowing from the north to blowing from the south. Our marina slip is exposed to the south wind and waves (although the bridge helps break it up). We turned Lailia yesterday so that her bow is facing the south. This should reduce wave slap on our stern (we sleep right over the stern) and allow easier access to our dinghy davits which were bent by the large waves in the last big storm.

The davit repair will be a big job – just removing the davit will take time. It’s through-bolted, and as always with boat jobs, access will require all kinds of contortions.