Our Travels

Spending an extra day in Beaufort threw us off by a day. We knew we’d now be arriving at Zimmerman Marine Holden Beach on Saturday afternoon with no one there to catch a line. We thought we somewhat knew how to aim for slack tide. Oh, how wrong we were. There was a 25-knot wind running against the not-at-all-slack tide. The ICW channel runs at exactly 90-degrees to the few slips at Zimmerman Marine. All we have to do is turn in and tie up to any empty slip. Convenient, right? (Ha!) So, headsets on, Todd’s at the helm on the flybridge and I’m on the walkaround with line in hand, prepared with the instruction of, “Okay, Honey, when I get her close to the dock (which was not even the full length of the boat), you toss the line to snag a cleat or a piling, anything, to pull her in.” Right. On it. Wait. How much does this boat weigh, again? Deep breaths all around, we gave it a try. No go. Not happening. Couldn’t get her swung in there. The wind and current fighting with all they had kept us from getting even close. So, he took her back out into the channel, brought her about, and we prepared to try again. Still nothing doing. Back out into the channel, bring her about, try again. How about stern in? No. Back out into the channel, bring her about, try again. How about approaching from the other direction? No. Back out into the channel, bring her about… You get the drift. Oh, and the channel is fairly narrow here, and I did mention it’s Saturday afternoon, so every time we had to turn this 60′ around, we blocked the traffic in the channel. After nearly an hour, in the headsets, I can hear Todd sadly muttering about not knowing what else to try, and he can hear me desperately praying for God to still the current just for a few minutes. Probably gave God a pretty good chuckle. The folks on the opposite shoreline with their camera phones seemed to be chuckling. The diners at Loulou’s Restaurant that we repeatedly passed as we came about seemed to be chuckling. After many unsuccessful attempts and the loss of both the bow and stern thrusters, an angel (I swear, sent by God), who was at Zimmerman Marine doing landscaping, JW, took pity and came to our rescue. Now we had someone on the dock to whom I could at least throw a line IF we could get close enough. Got it! Amazingly, JW was able to wrap a piling with barely enough line to go around and hold her against the current until Todd could leap down onto the dock and help fight to literally muscle her in. He had to leap because we were bow in and the short dock didn’t reach the whole length of the boat, thus preventing us from using the normal stern doors that are nicely level with the dock. Sheesh. Thank goodness we have an upper door from which he could make the jump. (Note: this left me on the boat with no way for Todd to climb back aboard. Now I start praying for Todd and JW to tap their inner he-man selves [or for Thor to show up] so the boat doesn’t end up back out in the ICW with only me aboard.) At any rate, after almost 90 minutes, we finally got her in there, secured the lines, put out the step stool so I could also get off the boat, and headed straight over to LouLou’s for martinis. Do you know they didn’t even give us a discount for the floorshow??