30 December - Day #28. Tomorrow there's a blue moon so the tidal range is near maximum--8' here in southern SC. This makes the 1.5 mile long Field's Cut, already infamous on the ICW, all the more challenging. Among its charms are rapid tidal flows, very shallow water, and of course, there's no maneuvering room because it's hallway narrow. Naturally we arrive at the gauntlet just before low tide. Several hundred yards into the Cut we see a sailboat aground. He asks us to wake him, i.e. to go by quickly so our wake will give him a few seconds of altitude to try and free himself. We offer to pull him off but he decides to wait for the tide to rise. Definitely a safer decision. What's left of the ebb is pushing us down the Cut so if we do go aground it'll be all that much more dramatic. The Cut's southern exit is by far the shallowest section. At idle, but with the tide pushing us at 5kts, we skim over a bottom which is just a foot under our keel. Safely at the dock in Sail Harbor Marina, Savannah, GA. 46nm today/670nm total. DBH
