July 24

We got up early this morning.  Another one of those 'alarm clock' mornings.  We were up at 06:15, gone to the showers, had coffee and cereal and were ready to shove off about 07:45.  We knocked on Wayne & Nancy's boat about 07:30 to say our goodbyes for now.  We hope to hook up with them again in the fall on our way back south. 

We actually have a bit of timing to worry about right off the bat this morning.  About six miles from the marina is the first opening bridge we have to deal with.  it opens on the hour only.  So, we need to be there by 09:00, or we will have to wait an hour.  We motored across Charleston Harbor, with flat seas and no wind.  There were only a couple of little fishing boats out there that early on a Sunday morning.  We entered the ICW on the east side of the harbor, and arrived at the Ben Sawyer Bridge about five minutes before the scheduled 09:00 opening.  After waiting a few minutes, the bridge opened, and we were on our way.  The first ten miles or so were between the mainland and the Isle of Palms.  Isle of Palms is a barrier island that was totally destroyed by Hurricane Hugo in 1989.  Everything there now is new since then.  And there is a lot there now.  The beach side is lined with luxury vacation homes, and the ICW side has nearly as nice homes lining it, all with docks out to the water, most with boat lifts for small powerboats.  The other side here is called Goat Island, because until the 1960's, a man and his wife and their herd of goats lived here as hermits.  After they died, the land slowly has become developed, but not to the luxurious level as Isle of Palms.  The house here are more modest, although they all have the docks with boat lifts. 

Once past Isle of Palms, the scenery was pretty boring.  Not ugly by any means, but just flat marshy land as far as you could see.  Given that the weather offshore was not favorable for sailing, I guess even boring scenery while motoring flat is better than no scenery offshore while motoring into 7 foot seas.

One highlight of this leg was that we passed another sailboat going our way.  It's name was Tusen Takk.  We had seen it in the marina in Charleston and noticed it because it's hailing port was Houston.  As we passed, we spoke to them on the radio.  Turned out they had left Watergate Marina in the Clear Lake area a little before we did.  They were taking their time with their trip to the Chesapeake, thus we caught them.  As we were talking to Tusen Takk, we approached a dredge working in the channel.  He did not answer me on Ch16 of the VHF, so I went wide, outside the marked channel, in about 5.5 feet of water to go around him.  Tusen Takk remembered that in the ICW, commercial traffic uses Ch13, and he spoke to them.  The dredge said it was ok to come right close to him and stay in the channel, which they did.  Gotta remember the different VHF channel usages in each state.  They do differ.

We planned to anchor tonight in Georgetown, SC.  There is an anchorage right off the main drag of the town.  We pulled in around 17:45 and dropped the hook amongst about a dozen other anchored boats.  One or two were modern sailboats, while the rest were in various states of disrepair, although the worst looking ones were lived aboard.  The anchorage is well protected, and there is a nice breeze.  After a nice dinner aboard, we retired to bed with just a fan and the natural breeze.  We slept very well as the anchorage was dead calm once night fell.

GPS N 33-21.860 W 79-16.980  Miles made good this leg 66. Total miles covered 1600.

July 25

We are up at 07:00.  After coffee and breakfast, we are ready to go, except our sewage holding tank is full.  Poor planning on our part.  We should have had it pumped in Charleston knowing we would be in the ICW for eight days.  Offshore, you can legally pump it overboard, but in the ICW that is a no-no.  We tried calling the two 'marinas' in the harbor, and they apparently are not open until 08:00.  So, we head out of the harbor and around the corner to the Georgetown Landing Marina where we know they are open and they have a working pumpout.  It is a little over a mile to this marina.  We pull up to the fuel dock, and they wheel down a portable pumpout device.  You could tell that this was amongst the dock kid's least favorite things to do.  He plugged the pump in, while I hooked it to the boat.  He turned it on and nothing happened.  He tried a different plug, and still nothing.  He finally radioed the office and they sent down a different cord.  Then it pumped.  But after a minute, the hose into their big tank popped off, spraying sewage all over the dock.  This really made the dock kid's day, even though none got directly on him.  I shut the pickup valve, and he killed the pump.  He then got some rubber gloves from the fuel spill kit that was on the dock, and hooked the hose back up.  We finished the pumpout without further incident, although he stood way back from the pump just in case. 

By the time we got underway from there, it was 09:00, and we had to backtrack a mile to go north again in the ICW.  This part of the trip was also pretty boring.  It is more scenic than yesterday, because a lot of it is on a natural river, as opposed to a ditch dug just to be the ICW.  There are trees and critters along the way.  We saw many Osprey's in their nests along the shore.  Many of the ICW channel markers had huge nests built atop them, which obscured the solar panels and the sign boards. 

We had met a new acquaintance via the website, who keeps a boat about five miles from where we plan to anchor tonight.  We had exchanged e-mails, and then gave him a call as we were approaching the Little River Swing Bridge which is just before the marina where they keep their boat.  Their marina does not have adequate depth for us to stay there, but we agree to tie to the fuel dock and say hello.  Richard and Patsy were waiting on the dock to take our lines, and we got secure.  We went inside with them to have a beer and chat.  They are part-time cruisers, who go for several months a year, and live here the rest of the time.  We had a brief but enjoyable visit with them, and then shoved off to get to our anchorage.

The place we chose to anchor tonight is Calabash Creek.  The Waterway Guide says it has a bar at the entrance which is five feet at low tide.  Of course, we are arriving not only at low tide, but at an unusually low tide.  We get to the entrance and promptly run aground.  I was able to back off pretty easy and moved further toward the edge of the marked channel.  This time I ran aground sooner than the first, and harder.  I was unable to back off.  After trying a few minutes, I put the engine in neutral.  At least we knew we were at low tide, so in a couple hours, the water would come up again and we could get off.  But, that would be close to dark, and I was not keen on entering this unknown area after dark.  After sitting about five minutes a barge came into view on the ICW.  I hailed him on the VHF to tell him I was aground and would not be moving or getting in his way.  He made some remark about the fact that there was no water where I was.  I didn't need to be told that.  It is amazing though how one foot of water looks exactly the same as twenty feet of water when the water is brown and cloudy.  The barge asked me if I wanted him to slow down, and I said no, keep on coming.  It then occurred to me that even though his wake would theoretically push me further aground, maybe if I had the motor going full throttle in reverse when the wake lifted us a little, we could back off.  Sure enough, an inch at a time, we backed off as the wake bounced us. 

Now where to go though?  I did not have a backup plan for another anchorage further up the ICW.  We motored on north, and realized that in a few miles, we would come to the Sunset Beach Pontoon Bridge.  This is the last pontoon bridge on the East Coast, although there are a few still working in Texas.  A pontoon bridge means the center section floats on pontoons, and when it needs to open the whole thing is dragged aside by some cables to let the boats pass.  It is a slow and obsolete process.  Well, as we approached the bridge, we found another sailboat anchored in the channel awaiting the on-the-hour opening.  We had been warned by Richard and Patsy that this bridge cannot open at extreme low tides, so we didn't know what to expect.  I hailed the bridge and asked him if he was going to be able to do the 19:00 opening.  I almost hoped he would say no that he wouldn't be opening until morning.  That would have meant I could anchor right there in the ICW and wait until dawn.  But, he said 19:00 looked good, so we circled about for fifteen minutes until 19:00.  While waiting, I hailed the other boat, The Reverie, on the VHF to ask them where they planned to spend the night.  He told me he knew of another spot to anchor.  I explained our dilemma and asked if he would mind us following and anchoring in the same place.  He said no problem. 

At 19:00, the bridge opened and we took off.  The Reverie was a little faster than us, so they got about a half mile ahead of us by the time we got to the anchorage.  The anchorage was in the Shallotte River entrance, just out of the main ICW channel.  We were in about eight feet of water, and the tide was as low as it was going to get, so I felt ok.  This anchorage is less than a mile form the shoreline and there was a strong onshore breeze blowing.  We showered on the aft deck as soon as it was dark and hit the sack.  We started off sleeping in the cockpit.  About midnight, I had been bitten a few times, and decided to go below.  I slept well until about 03:00, when Barb came down and woke me.  She thought we were closer to The Reverie than when we anchored.  I came above and agreed, and felt the anchor drag a little as we swung.  The current had turned us around 180 degrees from where we started.  I decided we better move to avoid hitting the other boat.  So, as quietly as we could, we raised anchor and moved further away from The Reverie.  We dropped the hook again, and it seemed secure, except that the combination of wind and current had us pointing one way, but pulling on the anchor the other.  For the rest of the night, until dawn, I laid in the cockpit awake watching what we did and listening for the anchor dragging. 

GPS N 33-54.829 W 78-22.244  Miles made good this leg 74. Total miles covered 1674.

July 26

At dawn, we made coffee, had cereal and hoisted anchor about 07:20.  Since we have already passed the pontoon bridge, we have no bridge timing concerns today.  We are about thirteen miles closer to today's destination than planned, but agree that we will still stop in the originally planned place.  This will make it a short day and we can enjoy the afternoon. 

The scenery along this leg is all the same.  Nice houses with long docks coming out through the marsh to the water's edge, where they have a boat lift.  Some of the houses look like they are nice family homes, and some are obviously vacation mansions that belong to people with more money than sense. 

We made pretty good time all day, but when we got into the Cape Fear River, we accidentally timed it perfect.  The tide was coming in, so we had a two knot boost for about five miles up the river.  Once we turned out of the river, back into the man-made cut of the ICW, we were hit be a strong opposing current and a lot of turbulence.  This was because the river has one tide, while at the other end of this two mile cut is another opening to the sea with a different tide.  At the end of this cut, where the ICW resumes paralleling the coast, there was a convenient fuel dock.  We pulled in there, filled up, and got some more ice.

Our stop for today is just a few more miles.  We are stopping in Wrightsville, in a protected body of water between the ICW and the barrier island.  From the Waterway Guide, I expected this to be a relatively quiet and remote place.  Boy was I wrong.  Wrightsville, is a big vacation beach town.  The barrier island is lined with big vacation homes, the area between the anchorage and the ICW is all developed, and there is constant boat traffic through the anchorage.  Unfortunately, this boat traffic is jet skis, water skiers, and other fast powerboats who have no concept of going slow through a bunch of anchored boats.  Hopefully it will calm down after dark.

Shortly after arriving in the anchorage, we heard another boat hail Tusen Takk on the radio.  After they finished their conversation, I hailed Tusen Takk also.  I asked if he remembered me passing him a couple of days ago.  He asked if I was looking for the sailboat Tusen Takk, or the trawler Tusen Takk.  I said the sailboat.  This guy was the trawler, but he had seen the sailboat in Charleston a couple of days ago.  I explained the mix-up and we visited for a few minutes on the radio.  He told me Tusen Takk meant 'A Thousand Thanks' in Norwegian.  I told him I knew it was Scandinavian, but didn't know what it meant.  And what are the odds of meeting two boats in three days with an unusual name like that? 

Since we were anchored before 14:00, we put the dinghy in the water and went to see a little of the town.  From the free municipal dinghy dock, we walked about a block to the beach.  It was brutally hot though, so we dipped our toes and went in search of a bar.  We found that almost all the eating and drinking establishments don't open until 17:00.  I guess they figure everybody is at the beach before that.  We did find a dump;y bar that was open and went in for a cold one.  It was just after 16:00, and we asked the bartender where was open that had food.  He recommended the sports bar across the street.  We went over there, and had another cold one and burgers.  From there, we stopped at the grocery store next door, picked up a few things and then dinghied back to the boat. 

Did I mention it has been brutally hot all along the east coast?  We tried to stay in the shade, took a dip in the water, and wrote the logs. 

For those of you worried about the cat, he has been doing fine on this leg.  He still doesn't like it when we are underway.  Sometimes he stays below, and sometimes he actually sleeps in the cockpit with us.  But, once we stop for the night he gets normal again.

May have to run the A/C tonight.

GPS N 34-12.450 W 77-47.900  Miles made good this leg 47. Total miles covered 1721.