Friday, April 16, 2021.
Weather: Temp: 66/52, Humidity: 92/32%, Top Wind: NE10 ?? mph, Precip: none, Miles Traveled: 60
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The Georgetown marina basin was nice and calm, with hardly a ripple on the water. We pulled our lines at about 8:30 and tootled our way out the channel.
And then, we were out in windy Winyah Bay! Wowza! Where did THIS come from?! There was big wind from the north, which apparently we were well protected from in the marina basin. Thankfully, it was coming straight at our bow as we headed north and it was blowing such that there weren’t really big waves. The front windows stayed in the closed position, and even then we had on long pants and fuzzy jackets.
Ah – I remember this stretch! The cyprus swamps of South Carolina. I remember reading that historically, this area was used for significant rice farming!
This picture was strictly for the illustration of the straight out flag! Yep – the wind was blowing!
By about 11:00 the wind was dying down and the channel was getting more narrow, so things got more comfortable. The colors of the different greens were really pretty.
But the color of the water was like seriously strong tea!
Here’s proof of our windy day attire. 😉. And this is with the windows closed!
If you look close, you might be able to see the three turtles on the log in the water.
Thankful for our navigation plotters, because there are a lot of different branches of water to pick from. We had a pretty big boat following us for most of the day, and it was cool watching them come around the corners behind us. (But did I get a picture? noo 😕 )
We saw several big giant nests in old snag trees. I heard the squeaky cry of a bird that wasn’t familiar…. Oh yea- that funny sound is a bald eagle! I turned around to look just in time to see his white head, wide wings and big furry legs sticking straight out for a landing. I hear osprey so often that I know their cry, but it didn’t occur to me that the squeaky one was an eagle.
This cracked me up. It looks like an outhouse on stilts, with a No Wake Sign. Is this for the fisherman’s emergency? It had a ladder… and I’m sure the seat is open to the river below. 🥴. HA!
We called to have the Socastee (sock-ass-tee) Swing bridge opened for us. The same boat that left the Georgetown Marina right behind us was still behind us, so there were two of us to pass through. After we were through the bridge, the other boat called us on the radio to chat. He’s a local to Myrtle Beach, coming home after four months in Florida. He asked where we were from and where we were headed. He was really a nice friendly guy and knows this area very well.
By about 2:00, we were coming into civilization as the channel found it’s way into the southern Myrtle Beach area. The channel along much of the rest of the day was like a man-made channel with big berms on the sides where houses have been built high above the water level.
Some of the homes are huge and beautiful!
Yes, there are golf courses here to go with the big fanciness.
I loved this one! We decided that these big beautiful mansions didn’t need docks, because their zillion dollar yachts are in a marina being taken care of by a crew somewhere. 😉
And then we found ourselves in the entertainment district of Myrtle Beach! It seems so odd that the ICW runs right along behind all of these places! This looked really fun; a multi-level go-cart track!! Too bad it is so far from our marina!
The water is even darker here, and it actually looks red along the shore.
This is Lulu’s. It is owned by Lulu Buffett (Jimmy’s sister). We’ve been to one of her other restaurants in Orange Beach Alabama.
I don’t have any idea what kind of alien telephone this might be. It was at the airport. 🤷♀️
The only place that we had to pay special attention was going through what is called “the Rockpile”. It is a narrow part of the channel that has rock ledges on both sides. You can’t see them through the dark colored water, and you don’t want to leave the center of the channel! In fact it is suggested, and the boat behind us did, make a ‘securite’ announcement on the VHF radio to advise other boaters that you’re entering the rockpile. Since there is a bend in the channel, you can’t see the whole distance, and you don’t want two big boats meeting each other in here.
We needed to have one more bridge opened for us before we would get to our marina – the Little River Swing Bridge. We were probably a mile away and saw it opening for a south-bound boat. Dang! This area is no-wake, so you can’t just zoom up to the bridge to make the opening. Fortunately and very unexpectedly, the bridge stayed open for us! It took us several minutes to get there, and I’m sure the cars waiting were really frustrated. At least there were two boats to go through, not just us. And this bridge is just a local road because there is the big tall bridge road right behind it for the major traffic.
We found our way into the Myrtle Beach Yacht Club and then had to try to find our slip. C-39.. OK – exactly where is the C-dock? I spied with the binoculars Dock A, B… ah C! And then… which fairway do we go down? I went down on the bow to be ready for my job, and tried to read the slip numbers. I could see 51-49 at the end of the dock. OK – so maybe this fairway takes us down the odd numbers? Good guess.😁
Captain did a nice job turning us around and backing in. This is a huge marina as you can tell from these two pictures.
We reserved two nights here because tomorrow was forecasted to be really rainy. Plus, we heard that the next place that we want to go didn’t have space for one of our looper buddies to extend their stay through the weekend. So we might as well stay put here for two nights and move on Sunday. Oh – and I pan fried up those scallops that I bought in McClellanville the other day. OOhhhhh, they were so good!
This was our 60 mile day. We’re getting spoiled with short travel days. By about noon, we were both thinking – dang, we’re only half way there!? 🙄
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Saturday, April 17, 2021
Weather: Temp: 70/57, Humidity: 75/41%, Top Wind: SE10 mph, Precip: NONE, Inches Traveled: O – didn’t even leave the boat!
Seriously? It did not rain a single drop. Dumb forecast!
This was entirely a day without photos or excitement! We did more boat chores like cleaning all the windows inside and out, up on the flybridge and down on the living level. The electronics wizard worked on a few things up on the fly bridge helm. Navigator looked ahead at weather and places to stay, and made some reservations for the next few days. There is supposedly big wind coming on Wednesday. Right – if it’s like today’s rain, Wednesday will be beautiful! We’ll see.
Tomorrow we’re going to a new place we’ve never been, and we’ll be welcomed into a new state. Stay tuned for more adventure!
Looks like you guys are enjoying your platinum loop.