Slept in 'til 5:30 when the cats "went off." Food is their only snooze button. I'll get the boat ready for a 7:30 departure to ride the tide to the 10:00 opening of the Sunset Beach Bridge...the last pontoon bridge on the ICW. Beautiful sunrise, and with a full moon in the west. I walk around the "complex" which is actually quite nice albeit dated. A beautiful view of water in every direction.
We shove off with the help of Capt. Sid near high tide around 7:30 and push to make the 10am opening of the Sunset Beach Pontoon Bridge, which opens only once an hour. With the reversing currents at some of the inlets it's a bit hard to time whether and where we will get the help...the tide tables are not always right, and they're a bit off now. We make the bridge with just a little time to spare, despite a cadre of little boats with guys pulling up nets seemingly right across the channel. We hear True Loev call the bridge to see if he can make the opening too...he's easily a mile off with headsail up, and with another couple boats steaming to make the opening. The bridge is old, weird, and takes a while to open, and then the tender needs to drop the cable to the bottom before boats can go through. Oh, and the closed clearance of the bridge is 0', so even a kayaker has to wait for an opening. True Loev looks like she's going to make it. The bridge opens and we go through with a few other boats. We look behind for True Loev, who will undoubtedly pass us in short order since she cruises faster than Cat Lady, but the bridge is closing. True Loev looks like she's in the weeds south of the channel, and the other sailboat is in the channel seemingly waiting for her. They didn't make the opening, and True Loev doesn't look in the right place at all. I think to call them, but they beat us to the mic... "Tow Boat US, Tow Boat US, this is sailing vessel True Loev, over." When they respond and switch to another channel, we switch and listen. They snagged one of those infernal fishing nets, hopelessly stalling out their progress, and the light wind pushed them out of the channel and into the bank. And, worse, it's a falling tide so if the can't get someone or something to pull them off quickly, they could be stuck there, possibly at some ungodly angle, until the tide rises past the current level. Could be several hours, or a month? Well, there are tricks with a keelboat: take the halyard from top of the mast to the rescuing boat to heel the sailboat so the keel goes horizontal, reducing the draft of the boat effectively, depending on the type of keel it has.
A beautiful, sunny day in the high 60s and Jan & I are in shorts and tee shirts. Skinny rivers with occasional ocean inlets that can be a little tricky, but rarely are. The side currents can push you out of the channel at these inlets if you don't pay attention...so you just have to pay attention. The rest of the rivers and cuts are lined with tacky Myrtle Beach vacation homes and tacky piers with tacky boats with tacky names like "Beer Hunter" and tacky lawn ornaments in the yard. Even (or maybe especially} the multi million dollar homes are tacky. A little slice of South Florida here in South Carolina.
We enter "the Rockpile" which is touted as the most treacherous part of the entire ICW trip. And it is, if you can't keep your 15 ft wide boat within a 150 ft. channel! Okay, to be fair, the channel looks like it's 300-400 ft wide and the part that's not the channel is jagged rock ledges below the surface of the water that will take your paint off, and the rest of your hull with it...and let's say a tug pushing a 75 foot wide barge is coming the other way. Well, we plugged in Rockpile on the iPod and rocked out with Nick & Dave. No tugs came the other way. We traversed Tacky Canyon.
Then we hit the upper Waccamaw...one of the most gorgeous parts of the trip. A cypress swamp forest heavy with spanish moss...even more impressive than the Pasquotank. We had planned to stay at a marina we visited before, and liked a lot, but the day was just too beautiful, and we suspected that the predicted lower 40s would be wrong again for tonight. We anchored in Prince Creek which navigably connects back with the Waccamaw. No other boats anchored up the point we decide is the spot. It's very deep and not very wide and with a strong reversing current, but two anchors, one upstream, one downstream, and connected tightly at the bow will keep us right in the same spot in the river, swiveling on a point. We let the cats roam the decks. It's eerily beautiful...the water the color of cola with leaves of all colors floating by at 2 knots. Fish jumping, birds fishing and calling...all that crap. A little nip to the air, but a gorgeous, clear evening and night. No bugs to complain about even with the calm. The waning full moon rises through the trees. Something big splashes into the water on the bank. We need "Deliverance" on DVD.