December 05, 2000 -- Sapelo Here We Come!

December 5, 2000 -- Sapelo Here We Come! We raised the anchor at 1154 GMT this morning. The winds were blowing out of the north west, less than 10 knots. We noticed, again, that there are just an enormous number of dolphins in and around the Port Royal Sound. It is just absolutely amazing! At 1320 GMT, while nearing the Sea Buoy we talked with the USCG Cutter Matrona. The boat was doing something out by the sea buoy. We think that it is the buoy tender out of Charleston. Anyway, they hailed us right after we made our turn to head further south. They wanted to ascertain our intentions when they noticed we had already turned! At 1339, we had the funnest panic event ever. Mike looked over to starboard and saw a whale. Of course, he shouted, "WHALE!" I turned in time to see the tail and the remnants from the whale's spout. Mike went flying inside to turn the stereo on (while thinking of Lynn Pardey beating pots & pans to scare them away) while I stayed at the helm since I was already there in order to perform evasive maneuvers if necessary. Mike turned on the stereo loud to provide additional noise to help keep the whales away. After all, as the Coast Guard says, "Running into whales is not good for either the whale or the vessel." As soon as we calmed down and were sure that there was no imminent collision possibility, we called the Matrona to find out if we should report the whale sighting. They told us yes, and we could give our report to them if we wanted to. I gave them the approximate position of the whale sighting and the direction it was headed. They then asked us several questions about what the whale looked like. I calmly explained that we really didn't get past the 'oh my God there's a whale' to see any thing else. It took the radio man several minutes to come back to us. He asked me to repeat my last statement. I refined it and explained that everything happened to fast for us to get a clear look, other than to determine that it was definitely a whale. At 1420, Mike asked me if we did indeed have a heating pad. He then went in search of it. From that point on, we were sailing by heating pad! Throughout the rest of the day, we had west winds between 10 and 15 knots. This placed the wind in our sail area which allowed us to maintain speeds above 8.5 knots for most of the trip. At 1816, we heard our whale warning announcement! At 1918, we heard our whale announcement again, but this time it sighted the position we gave and gave the official Right Whale sighting number of 1010! Then, we headed into the Sapelo Sound. We followed where the deep water indications were on the chart and almost ran aground. At one point, we had 3.1 feet of water under the keel! But, we made it over the low spot and dropped anchor at 1955 GMT. After we got settled, we called Sea Tow Brunswick to get additional information on the Sapelo Sound. They called us back on the VHF radio a little bit later and gave us some guidelines to try. They also suggested trying to contact a shrimper or fishing vessel on channel 09 or 10 when we leave tomorrow. He said that they are usually very helpful, when you can get a hold of them