Change on the fly

This is a very intense life we're living. Every day is different. We get up when the sun rises, usually in a different place than the day before. We were never early risers but there's something to be said about seeing the sun rise while you lift the anchor and head to a new destination.
Sometimes we have beautiful and easy days of motoring (there are few opportunities to sail on the ICW). Some other days we have very busy and, at times, stressful days.

Every night we plan what we want to do the next day. That involves listening to the weather forecast, planning the route we'll follow, finding out the state of the currents and tides for the area so we know what time we should leave, and, lastly but not less important, finding a well-protected anchorage. But route planning is the easy part! The hardest part is the execution. Some times the day goes as planned, sometimes we need to adapt as we go.

Just the other day, as we were approaching Shallotte Inlet (in southern North Carolina), we started hearing all these calls on VHF Channel 16 from boats running aground in that area. With 6 feet of draft and at low tide, we didn't want to risk it. People were running aground in 5 feet of water! The problem was there weren't many options for dropping anchor before getting to the problematic area. And when I say there weren't many, I mean there was just one tiny place. Fortunately, we were able to get to that place and spend the night there. The next morning we crossed the inlet at high tide and avoided the drama and stress of motoring over skinny water.

Another example of this last-minute change of plans happened a couple of days later when we were on our way to Georgetown, South Carolina. We were a little bit tired so we wanted to have an easy day. We planned to only do 25 nm and get to Georgetown. But as we got closer, the day was so nice that we decided to skip it  and head closer to Charleston. So we quickly planned the routes on the computer, imported them on the chartplotter, and kept going on our merry way.

As we got closer to Charleston the next day we almost had to change plans quickly too. We had to cross a bridge with a charted 65-foot clearance, and our mast rises 62 feet over the water. Most of the bridges have height charts at the bottom, indicating the current clearance. Being extra cautious as we are (enter chicken clucking sounds), we always check the height charts because the tide obviously affects the clearance of a bridge. The problem is, not all the bridges have height charts. And when they do, they're not that big and therefore are not easy to read, even using binoculars. As we were approaching a bridge at high tide, we started rapidly evaluating alternative plans that would avoid crossing that bridge. The height chart seemed to read 61 feet of clearance. We almost turned back to wait for low tide. But after getting a little bit closer we saw the clearance was in fact 63 feet and we were able to cross the bridge without any issues.

I was always used to having to adapt to changes quickly at work. But never have I applied it to my personal life as we're doing now.

Here it's how it goes: We see a bridge far away, and start looking for the clearance charts.

The bridge gets closer and sometimes we still haven't read the charts.

There it is! Couldn't they have make it a tiny bit bigger????

Not mistaking the clearance now as we pass by. But even if we know this, sometimes we pass it thinking at the same time  "OMG! OMG! OMG! We're not going to fit!!!!" It looks tight from down below.