Skull Creek Marina on Hilton Head island - on their damaged docks

Of all things, a sunrise, we do occasionally get up early 

The advantage of  B and B Seafood other than the fresh shrimp is that it's right before the Ashepoo Coosaw cut off. It remains one of the shallowest stretches of the ICW. The shallowest part of the route was right at the southern exit, it dipped to 4.9 MLW just before deepening into the bay. Inside the cut off it was down to 5.1 MLW in places. There's more detail in my Active Captain post. One more thing, I always reduce my numbers to MLW by taking the nearest tide station and adjusting the depths as if I came through at a 0.0 tide. So if you come through when the nearest tide station shows 2.0 ft above low, then you can add 2 ft to all of the MLW readings.

No height boards at McTeer bridge with 2.6 ft of tide

I see some postings that say they came through at low tide and saw, for example, 6 ft of water. How can they see 6 ft when I see 4.9 ft? Well, looking at the date of their passage I looked up the tide that day and found that the low tide of the day was still 1.0 above a 0.0 tide. So just saying, "I came through at low tide and saw XX" isn't enough. The low tide for that day could even be a drain tide below datum! All depths should be reduced to MLW (which is really MLLW but that's another story)  by adjusting the depths for the soundings per the nearest tide station. Knowing the MLW reading, you can adjust what you expect to see by adding the tide level yourself.

You would think that concrete docks would be pretty durable, not in a hurricane. Note the foam interior

We're at Skull Creek Marina tonight. They sustained extensive damage from Matthew and lost their entire fuel dock, the one by the office that usually docked the transient boats. They had room for us but our dock had no power. They had concrete docks that didn't survive any better than the wooden ones. We passed under the McTeer bridge but they had no height boards, six fender boards were showing with a 2.6 ft tide.

On Friday we hope to make the passage through Hell Gate and find a spot later that afternoon, perhaps Kilkenny Marina which is not much but is a stop over halfway to Jekyll Island. We'd like to make it all the way to the Wahoo River anchorage but that's over 60 Nm, a bit much, Kilkenny is closer.