Pretty Little Butterfly

Sunday 11-15-2015 0830 Calm winds, 57 degrees F.

We left our anchorage on Awendaw Creek at 0830. At 0915, in the vicinity of Casino Creek, we pass a Marco Company dredging operation. Much of the ICW is man-made ‘connector’ canals which must be dredged pretty constantly, because guess what, nature puts sediment anywhere it damn well pleases.

Dredging is a grand scale, bottom sucking operation involving long line, thirty-six inch plastic pipe strung out over a required distance, with boats vacuuming the bottom and pumping the sediment to an upland storage location where it erodes back into the channel thus assuring job security in perpetuity for Marcol.

Marcol Dredger

Some of the material is used to replenish various Atlantic beaches which are constantly eroding because, need I remind you, the geomorphological forces of nature don’t give a shit about where we want beaches. But we need our beaches so obese white guys can slather themselves with ineffective sun screen, drink ice cold PBRs and leer at the pretty, bikini clad, tattooed babes walking in the sand trolling for young hot hunk guys.

And so cynics like me can drive boats up and down the ICW.     

0930 we pass a large flock of a hundred or more double crested cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus) doing what appears to be a whole lot of nothing. Which of course is not true because they are engaged in all kind of survival behaviors including, first and foremost, fishing. As you might conclude from your own experience in life, eating is important. Often they can be seen holding their wings out to dry because their creator, in her infinite wisdom, did not install water proofing oil glands like she did in other more fortunate birds. And yes, many birds are just hanging out, jockeying for position in cormorant society, looking for a girlfriend. You know, stuff we do.    

We pass a small, single handed sloop running wing and wing, a technique that employs the boat’s main sail to one side and the head sail to the other, so the boat look like a magnificent bird slowly and purposefully flapping its way along.

1015. We get an uplifting and much appreciated call from one of my favorite people on the planet. Joe (Whitey) McCue. Joe and I have been adventuring together through the chaos of this life for more than forty years. Adventure on Joe!

And just after Joe’s call, which must have been a portend, we were visited by a splendid monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) who had winged itself onto Flicka, where it flitted about and came to rest on Emily’s sleeve. It rested for a moment, took flight again and then bounced about on the port lazarette. Appearing to be somewhat distressed, it finally came to rest near the stern.

Everyone knows about the life history of these magnificent creatures. For millions of years, the eastern North American population has migrated  southward in late-summer and fall from the United States and southern Canada to a particularly small area in central Mexico, covering thousands of miles, with a corresponding multi-generational return north in the spring. How the hell does this delicate creature do this?

Not only is it able to navigate that distance but just imagine the physical stamina required. And ponder this. Many individuals die on the migration, but not before they lay eggs. The progeny from those eggs pick right up where their parents left off and continue the grand migration northward until they, or their offspring, finally come to be in the very spot from which long gone individuals left the past fall headed south to their sunny warm Mexico mecca. Except that in these modern days that mecca is threatened by logging operations and other human activities. So watch every monarch you can. Someday the one you see may be the last of its kind.

What happened next is the astonishing part of this story.  

The ever present Captain Emily just happened to be drinking (I’m not making this up) a Jumex brand mango nectar juice. She poured some of the juice into a bottle cap and carefully slid it into sniffing range. That beautiful creature perked right up, plunged its prodigious proboscis into the tantalizingly tasty energy rich nectar and sucked and sucked and sucked.

Pretty Little Butterfly

As suddenly as it started feeding it quit, bounced around a bit in the stern licking its little butterfly lips and suddenly took to strong directed flight. I imagined it to have bent its wing in salute to Emily as it sailed away.

I also imagined that at the end of the day it joined its flutter of south bound buddies and joyfully exclaimed, “Man, you just won’t believe what happened to me today!” 

After that all we could do was smile at one another as we glided along the narrow Harbor River, passed Capers Inlet, the Isle of Palms and Breach Inlet and finally to a beautiful anchorage on Inlet Creek, just a few miles from Charleston, which is where we are bound tomorrow.

We pulled into this pretty little creek early, to rest and prepare for our stay in Charleston.

Early to bed, early to rise.

Got to be at the Ben Sawyer Swing Bridge at 0645 to catch the last opening before 0700 to 0900 mandatory closure for rush hour traffic.

Good night all.

Sunset over Inlet Creek