It’s Black Friday 4PM. My wonderful visit with Kathy and Jeff has ended, and we are back on board, preparing to leave for Kilkenny GA.
This marina (the one with the lock) is surrounded by beautiful homes and a gorgeous Yacht Club, where we’ll eat tonight.
This is really a lovely part of the world.
The next stretch – through Georgia – promises to be very different. Here’s how one of the Guides describes it:
The good news is that Georgia’s coastline is actually rather short compared to its neighbors. We will be in Brunswick GA on Sunday night, and then in Jacksonville Beach the next day.
It’s the day after Thanksgiving. Cloudy and cool. Jeff follows the stock market closely, so we’re watching Squawk Box and enjoying the fact that the Dow broke a new high.
Yesterday, we had to move my boat from Palmetto Bluff because they had other commitments for the transient dock. Kathy and I sailed it over to Hilton Head – Windmill Harbor Marina. It is one of only two marinas in the US that you must enter through a lock. Jeff drove over to pick us up, and he took this video of my boat (which has a 12′ beam) passing through their 16′-wide lock. Thank heavens for bow and stern thrusters – they kept the boat centered in the lock.
The trip took just 1/2 hour by car and by boat.
Tonight I’ll have dinner there – at the SC Yacht Club. Very exclusive. And then we’ll leave for Kilkenny Georgia.
I expect Kilkenny to be quite a study in contrasts: Kilkenny is reportedly rather like a fish camp, with picnic tables at which they serve fried catfish. Yummy.
My stay at Palmetto Bluff has been a lovely interlude. It’s really beautiful here, and everything is done first class.
After an easy trip from Beaufort, we were tied up 10:30. I’m here to spend Thanksgiving with Cathy’s brother Jeff, his wife Kathy, and their son Jeffrey.
Cathy and I stayed at Palmetto Bluff 30 years ago, and at that point it more vision than reality. An Inn on the river, a couple of cute small cottages (where we stayed) and a few new homes. Over the years, it has been transformed into a beautiful development. 22,000 acres. A dozen separate neighborhoods.
Wandering paths with over-arching Spanish Moss
Beautiful homes
And alligators. This 10-footer lives right in front of Jeff’s house.
Jeff and Kathy have built a beautiful home, right on a lake, with a southern exposure.
Like most modern waterfront homes, the ground floor is garages, the living quarters are on the second floor, and the bedrooms on the third. A screened-in porch on the second level, and a deck on the third. There’s a fireplace in the Great Room, another on the porch, and another down at the dock!
We are sitting on the screened porch on a warm, sunny day, watching the alligator. And some fish jumping. There’s not a cloud in the sky, there’s a soft, warm breeze, and Jeff bought me a dozen Perdomo cigars. Heaven.
As with Stan and Susan Harris, I am so happy for Jeff and Kathy. To come to the end of the trail and have a home like this is truly a blessing.
The day began with a cruise through Charleston Harbor, right past the beautiful homes on the Battery.
From there on, it was clear sailing. Fast cruise speed all the way. We covered 82 miles today. Left at 8:30, and we were tied up in Beaufort by 1:30. The only issue was water depth. The recent tides have been unusually high and unusually low. We passed through some stretches with just a foot of water under the keel. Sheesh!
We had intended to stop overnight at Dataw Island, but we blew past it before noon, and we continued on to Beaufort. I remembered it as a cute town, and it looks even better than I remembered. Charming old house, a great retail district of restaurants, art galleries, and upscale gifts shops.
The best feature of the town is a long waterfront park and promenade. Many of the town’s restaurants have patios facing the promenade, and on the other side of the promenade is the marina and the water. Here’s a shot of me and Guinness enjoying the park after a lunch of shrimp and grits!
I realize I look like I’m in pain, but it’s just because I’m fighting with the camera and coaching Guinness at the same time!
It is a spectacularly beautiful day here. A very nice trip and a very nice stop.
I expect a short trip tomorrow – about 35 miles to Hilton Head and Jeff and Kathy Drennen’s home in Palmetto Bluff. If I have any anxiety at all, it’s because the ICW charts do not cover the May River, which is how you get to PB. We’ll just have to “keep ‘er between the buoys” and hope we recognize Palmetto Bluff when we see it.
I think we’ll be OK. PB has a prominent Inn on the river, and an antique cruising boat at the dock. Fingers crossed.
It’s Day Two in Isle of Palms, and I have time for a longer post.
The trip down to Isle of Palms was one of the most interesting segments so far. As you saw from the earlier post, Wacca Wache Marina is on the Waccamaw River, and we traveled through that primordial forest and river approaching and leaving Wacca Wache.
Here’s a photo of the marina. Very simple – a single building that house the marina office, the restroom facilities, and a restaurant.
There are hundreds of boats docked in the cove behind it, but its face on the water is very simple. This photo was taken the morning we departed. The tide was so high the night before that no on could come to the restaurant by car – all the parking lots were flooded. The marina building looked like an island. All the customers arrived by boat. And the catfish tacos were great! And they had Guinness on tap!
Leaving Wacca Wache, the first two hours were beautiful – early morning travel on the Waccamaw.
Once we got below Georgetown, we entered a whole new ecosystem – the low country. We were twisting and turning our way down rivers and creeks, surrounded on both sides by low marshes. No other boats except dozens of small open skiffs with outboards. Coming the other way after a morning hunt. The boat, the motor and the occupants all camouflaged.
Sometimes these creeks were just 300 feet across. But we stayed in the middle and had deep water all the way.
This photo does a pretty poor job of showing what the marshes look like. You just have to imagine that they are on both sides, and that they run to the east and the west as far as you can see. You can also see one of the channel markers.
Here’s a closer photo of a channel marker. For most of the trip, you keep the red triangles to your right, and the green squares to the left. Except at Georgetown, where it reverses. And then reverses back three miles later!
You can also see one of the local private piers. Homes in this stretch tend to be set back a couple of hundred feet from the water, seeking higher ground. Then the piers have to reach out another 100′ to seek deeper water. So there is in effect a 300′ long wooden boardwalk reaching out from the homes.
Anyway, we burst out of the creeks just above Charleston. Isle of Palms acts as a barrier island; the ICW runs just inside it/beside it/behind it.
Stan and Susan came to meet me at the marina, a residential community with beautiful homes and boats. You can see Charleston’s iconic bridges to the west, across miles oof marsh and palmetto.
They have built a wonderful home in IoP. Here’s the exterior: two floors of living space, plus a rooftop deck. Four stories in all.
The interior is the surprise: it was designed to accommodate all the furniture and decorations they loved in New Canaan Ct. Plus some gorgeous custom cabinetry by Amish craftsmen that they have known for years.
In contrast to this warm, traditional interior, the main deck feels contemporary, including an infinity pool.
You can see the ocean directly across the street. The beach is deep, and seemingly limitless, and dogs are welcome to run free (unleashed) from 4PM til 10AM. Heaven for man and beast!.
Gotta go because S&S’s daughter Megan has come for a visit. I remember her from when she was a child. And she is still gorgeous.
We made it safely to Isle of Palms, and it is heaven.
I’m staying with Stan and Susan Harris. We had wine on the boat with a gorgeous view of the marshes, and now we had a great home-cooked spaghetti dinner at their gorgeous house in Isle of Palms.
Too much wine to continue.
Love and kisses to all my followers (The hell with Covid. Kisses.)
By now, I’ve fallen into a pattern, or a habit: we are up at First Light; we leave at Sunrise and travel 4-5 hours, roughly 80 miles per day. More than that is tiring when you’re single-handling.
Leaving early makes sense for several reasons…first, it gives us time to recover if something goes wrong, and it gives us time to enjoy the next town on the route. I began telling friends that I was a 9-to-5 kind of guy: in bed bt nine, and up at 5 to walk Guinness.
The schedule makes sense for another reason: every day around 4PM, I get out the charts and the cruising guides, and I study the next day’s route – mile-by-mile. For the most part, the ICW is well marked, but there are treacherous ares caused by shoaling, and there are a couple of spots where the ICW turns sharply, and if you don’t watch the navigation markers, you’re going to miss your turn. We also check the clearance for each bridge along the route. And it’s also interesting that sometimes the buoy colors reverse from red to green, depending on whether you are approaching an inlet or leaving one behind.
If things are particularly dicey, or if we’re going offshore, this is when we enter the necessary waypoints into the chartplotter.
We also have to create a new Wi-Fi connection as we tie up at each new marina. – Laptop – for the blog – Alexa – for my music – FireTV – for after-dinner entertainment
Tonight it worked pretty well. Sometimes not so much. Alexa is the flakiest.
When you leave Carolina Beach, you connect to the Cape Fear River, which empties through an inlet into The Atlantic. You have a choice: Outside to Myrtle Beach, or Inside via the Waccamaw River, which twists and turns through a flooded forest festooned with Spanish Moss. This photo doesn’t do it justice. I probably should have stopped and composed a great photo…But you can see how the pretty the river is, and the sun, and maybe you can see some of the Spanish Moss. I know most of you have seen SM before, but it’s pretty cool to be right in the midst of it.
But it took a long time to get here. The ICW below Carolina Beach is littered with No Wake Zones that slow your progress to a crawl. We covered 87 miles today. At our fast cruising speed, it would have taken us just short of 5 hours. Instead, it took 6.
Actually, that’s pretty much what I planned on: I told the marina we’d arrive around 2, and we rolled in at 1:59. I anticipated it, but it still made me impatient. I mean, come on…it’s the ICW! It’s like building your house next to I-95 and then complaining about the cars speeding by!
I thought about going outside today, because I knew this stretch had issues, but I figured I wanted to see ALL of the ICW for myself. If I do it again, I may go outside.
But everything’s OK now. My puppy made a lot of new friends, and the restaurant here serves fresh river-caught fried catfish tacos! Yowza!
Tomorrow we’re off to see Stan and Susan Harris in Isle of Palms. We’ll stay two nights, and I’m looking forward to the visit!
We arrived on Friday 11/13, and we are leaving today, 11/20.
It’s 5AM. Yesterday we washed the boat, topped off the fuel tanks, and gave Guinness a bath.
I am showered and shaved, I have a new haircut, and we are finally leaving for South Carolina.
We need some extra time this morning to move all our gear out of Jane’s condo and back aboard the boat. I reckon we’ll leave about 7AM, as usual.
And it’s 20 degrees warmer than it was just two days ago. High of 70 instead of 50!
I expect to cover 100 miles today, and we’re going to stay inside (ICW). Tonight we plan to stay at a marina called Wacca Wachee. Near Myrtle Beach. It’s an old Indian name. Roughly translated it means: “Last night I slept in the garbage disposal.” Hmmmm.
Then tomorrow night, we should be in Isle of Palms with our cousins Stan and Susan Harris.
Because I had to cancel all my marina reservations, slip availability will now be a day-by-day thing. Fingers crossed.
Rod & Guinness' Amazing Adventures 