Monday, 11-16-2015, 0455. No wind. Strong late ebb tide.
Dark as the inside of a cow.
Why so early?
We want to be in Charleston as early as possible to get into
the Charleston Maritime Center (Marina), rent a car and visit an ailing cousin.
That means passing through the Ben Sawyer Swing Bridge before
0700 when a mandatory closure goes into effect until 0900 to accommodate rush
hour traffic. We need to be close to the bridge early enough to ask for passage
and give the bridge troll time to open and close the bridge
before 0700.
We are 1.12 nautical miles away up a narrow creek with
shoaling at the entrance. We need to go slow enough to react quickly in case we
touch bottom or hit something or are attacked by marauding monarch butterflies.
I use four knots as a base line which means it will take seventeen minutes to
get to the bridge. Throw in an extra five minutes to weigh anchor and get the boat
positioned to depart and we have a twenty-two minute trip.
Since we should arrive at the bridge at 0645 that means we
need to leave the anchorage at 0623, certainly no later than 0630.
So we are leaving our anchorage during a time called nautical
twilight by planetary scientists. Normal folk call it just plant twilight.
Those pesky planetary scientists though recognize three distinct twilight
phases. Astrological twilight marks the end of night proper and on this day in
November it starts at 0526 and ends at 0555 when nautical twilight starts,
which ends at 0625 when civil twilight starts, which runs to 0651, when the sun
comes up.
What the hell! Planetary scientists are way cool.
To make this simple, let me just say we are leaving our
anchorage before the sun comes up.
Night time on the water can be very confusing and
disorienting. For one thing, it’s night time. A full moon helps,
but on a moonless night, unless an object on the water is lit up it is
virtually invisible, even big boats. Forget seeing fixed obstructions, crab pot
buoys, small boats, floating debris or erant Jimmy Buffet parrrott head gear.
Undaunted by all this math we turned on
our navigational lights, which consist of a red light to port, green to
starboard, white to stern and a steaming light forward (which denotes a boat
under power at night). This array of
lights show differently from different aspects so that other boats can deduce
our direction relative to theirs, as we can theirs.
For example, if you are seeing a red and green light, that
boat is headed directly at you. If the green light flickers out and you are
only seeing the red light (port side) the boat has made a turn to its starboard and
is moving across you path from left to right. If it continues to
turn you will pick up the stern light which tells you the boat is going away at
an angle. Once the red light goes out and you only see the white stern light
the boat is going straight away.
Commercial vessels have this light array other
ancillary lights to denote other vital information, like whether it is pushing
or towing another vessel, or the kind of vessel it is, fishing, tug, pilot,
container or tanker, or whether Miley Cyrus is aboard. Stuff like that. A
mariner has to know these light arrays in order to safely navigate at night and
take advantage of any Miley Cyrus sightings.
We weighed anchor at 0623 on a strong ebb tide that pulls
the bow around to point precisely at the mouth of Inlet Creek. We can just
make out opposing shores of the creek as we ghost out at 3.5 knots. So
far so good. The compass, depth finder and GPS are very helpful.
We intersect the main stem of the ICW, take a right and are
pointed at the bridge, lit up like the national Christmas
tree. But we have no idea what is between us and it except for
blackness. But every minute it’s getting lighter as we move from navigational
twilight to civil twilight. Finally features start to come into view, a dock
here, an unlit day mark there.
We continue on, arriving right on time. We call the bridge troll to announce our arrival and intent to pass. He acknowledges
our request and says, “Bring it on”. As we motor slowly forward another boat,
Egret, behind us, a little late, because he is probably a no good, Canadian
bum, calls to announce his intent to pass and apologizes for his lateness. The
bridge troll asks if we can wait a bit so he only has to open the bridge once
and of course we say sure, not wanting to piss off a bridge troll first thing
in the morning. So we have to turn, motor away from the bridge for a few
minutes and then turn back until Egret catches up.
But everything works well and right at 0655 we passed under
the bridge and make our way toward the Charleston harbor just as a brilliant
sun comes up, marking a shattering transition from civil twilight to full
daylight.
All is well as we pass a container ship and other early morning
boats. Fort Sumter appears to port, out the harbor further, where on April 12,
1861, confederate artillery fired on the union garrison at the fort, marking
the start of armed conflict of the Civil War, which was anything but civil.
Over 750,000 people died in that horror which ended on May 9th, 1865.
It took a long time for the people of South Carolina to
remove the confederate flag from statehouse grounds in Charleston, a flag which
has become in most people’s minds a symbol of racial hatred and
oppression. To her credit on July 9th,
2015 South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley ordered that to be done, but not
before a racist devil entered the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church at
110 Calhoun Street in Charleston on Wednesday, June 16, 2015 and murdered nine
black people during a prayer meeting.
We are going to visit that church today to pay our respects.
Smooth sailing
No comments:
Post a Comment