BEAUFORT, NC TO MYRTLE BEACH, SC
26 October 2010 | Little River, SC
Cheryl
It's been several days since I have written in the blog. When we left Beaufort, NC we anchored out the next two nights - Mile Hammock and Wrightsville Beach. Both were good anchorages. The Mile Hammock anchorage is right next to Camp Lejeune (military base). They must have been practicing since we heard lots of explosions for several hours. Wrightsville Beach anchorage is right in the town. Popular spot to anchor, there was at least 15 other boats also anchored there. We took the dinghy to the town dinghy dock and walked around, had not very good Mexican food.
After we left Wrightsville we stayed the night at St. James Marina in Southport NC. Problem with not writing for the blog within a day or so of each new location I am starting to forget the details of the places we have been. Don't remember a single thing about St. James!!
We are now in South Carolina at the Coquina Yacht Club just outside North Myrtle Beach. We planned on staying here two nights but have decided to extend for another day to do some boat maintenance projects. Nice marina with reasonable price - $1.05/foot with Boat US members. Sunday night we took a taxi to Fat Harold's. Fat Harold's is well known in this area for what is called Beach Music and Shag dancing. It has been about 15 years since I lived in SC but still love Beach Music and watching people Shag. We came back to the marina early to watch the Vikings play Green Bay on the TV in the yacht club lounge. Yesterday we rented a car and just did the typical touristy walking around Myrtle Beach. It rained off and on all day which gave us an excuse to make several stops to have beers/cocktails (like we need an excuse!).
The last week on the ICW has been a little unnerving (to say the least) due to all the boats who love to zoom by causing our boat to drastically rock and the shallow water areas. The water goes from 15 feet to 4 feet in the blink of an eye, lots of shoaling areas particularly around inlets, junctions of other rivers and drainage ditches. Anyone going through this area I would highly recommend carefully reading the navigation sections of the cruising guides which provides info on the known shoaling areas. We have the ICW Waterway Guide which is very helpful. Unfortunately, one area not noted in the guide is where we landed in 3 ½ feet of water (luckily sand bottom)..........stuck and unable to get off it. We hailed on the radio a passing power boat and for the first time ever actually asked for a wake (hoping it might push us to deeper water). They did give us a pretty good wake but we were still stuck. So, we had two options - wait for high tide or call TowBoatUS. Since high tide was not for another 4 hours we elected to call for a tow. The towing guy was there and had us in deeper water in about a half an hour. I highly recommend having unlimited towing insurance for the ICW. The cost for just one tow ($13/foot and $168/hour) exceeds the annual cost for unlimited towing insurance. For the next 20 miles we will be going through an area on the ICW called "The Rockpile", definitely do not want to go aground there.