She completed repairs late that spring and returned to Port Royal on 14 June. She performed blockade duty at several points along the coasts of South Carolina, Georgia, and northern Florida, but most frequently at Ossabaw Sound between Ossabaw Island and the Georgia mainland about 15 miles due south of Savannah, Georgia. That remained her primary duty station well into 1864. On the night of 3 June of that year, a Confederate Marine boat force under the command of First Lieutenant Thomas P. Pelot, CSN, succeeded in boarding and capturing "Water Witch" in Ossabaw Sound after a brief scuffle which cost the Union ship two killed and 12 wounded. (13 officers and 49 men were captured). Confederate losses were 6 killed and 17 wounded. Doubly ironic is that one of the Confederate fatalities was a black man - a river pilot named Moses Dallas - while one of the Union fatalities was black landsman Jeremiah Sills. The only Union man to escape was a "contraband" named Peter McIntosh.