Noonan wrote:fly by night wrote:Thanks to all for the
info. I had my Montauk in the Kiawah River this summer, but didn't have my bottom machine on the boat so I didn't try going through the flats. I will definitely give a try some other time.
What about this year?
I saw this post and decided to make the loop again this Sunday before pulling my 25' Revenge-Cuddy out of the water.
I didn't do a very good job documenting everything, but I suppose I could pull a GPS track off of my chartplotter if someone so desires.
Anyway, we hit the flats area around 2 hours after high tide. The tide forecast wasn't a remarkably high tide at 5.36.
Someone has either attempted to mark a channel or mark the oyster beds, but I didn't find them very informative...(you can barely see them in the below picture)
I don't mean to get all zen in this post, but the majority of this route's channel follows a logical flow. If you've spent enough time in the lowcountry, you'll likely be able to point out the channel of a river or creek without a chart, sounder, or markers. The markers here attempt to show where some less-than-logical oyster beds are, but if you take a narrow view of the route that led you to this point...and continue on that path, you'll likely be just fine.
Still, I showed about 3' of water at the lowest part. I may have not taken an optimal route, however.
Regardless, until you've got this area memorized, I'd certainly advise idle-speed.
The flats re-converge into a creek (still Kiawah River, officially...I think) that passes under Kiawah Island Parkway. This part of the river isn't without hazards, but it is mostly deep at 10'+ in most areas.
It's almost always easier to leave an inlet than it is to return to one, so I recommend routing so that you depart from Captain Sam's Inlet rather than trying to read the breakers trying to enter. As is relatively typical of a sandy inlet, the center of what appears to be the channel will often be shallow, and you'll need to divert south as you exit the inlet/pass the breakers.
We were gifted with a beautiful day, and it was no rougher in the ocean than it was in the river.
And just for fun here's a .gif of Captain Sam's Inlet I made using Google Earth historical data. The northern spit of land has been proposed for development, and I made the gif to illustrate the frequency/scope of its changes a few years back.
http://i.imgur.com/X7niet9.gifv