Yesterday we transited through the Neuse, Pamlico and Pungo Rivers.  We spent the night before last in a remote anchorage without cell phone connectivity, and the same was true last night.  Today we will transit the Alligator-Pungo Canal and the Alligator River.  We had planned to anchor tonight in a bay off the Alligator River near the southern shore of Albemarle Sound, but the winds tomorrow are unfavorable on Albemarle Sound.  Thus we will cross today and maybe spend the night on a free wall in Elizabeth City.

The worst boating conditions we have ever experienced were on the Neuse River in the stretch we transited yesterday.  The winds were very light yesterday, and consequently the sea conditions were easy.  We take that stretch very seriously given our experience.

We stopped yesterday afternoon for a couple hours in the town of Belhaven, NC.  Our sinks and showers on the boat drain directly overboard, but our heads (toilets) go into a holding tank that must be pumped out periodically.  It had been almost four weeks since we had a pumpout, and while the holding tank wasn’t full the disagreeable effluvia that arose from the tank vent encouraged us to get it done.  Thus we made a short stop at the public docks in Belhaven to make our donation to their treatment plant.  Belhaven was seriously damaged in last year’s hurricane, and it is starting to return to normal again.

During the transit yesterday we went through a narrow canal near Hobucken, NC which is the home of R.E. Mayo Seafood.  We didn’t stop there this trip, but it is a great place to buy fresh shrimp.  We did pass several large towboat/barge(s) in the narrow canal, which is always an interesting experience.

Tonight we are in Pungo Creek.  This is a great anchorage, and we are sharing it with three Canadian sailboats.

Yesterday we traveled through the USMC Camp Lejeune base.  This included passing through a live fire range that wasn’t in active operation.  The old military vehicle hulks are riddled with weapon penetrations, a testament to the skill of our Marines.

We also passed through the area where Hurricane Florence came ashore last year.  Many rooves have been repaired, but many also still have blue tarps covering them.  There has been a great deal of progress since we passed through going south last fall, but by no means is the work completed.

We anchored last night in the South River, a tributary to the Neuse, and just southeast of Oriental, NC.  This is a great anchorage with room for hundreds of boats.  We are here with one Canadian sailboat tonight, and he is more than a mile from us.

There is a cemetery ashore here with the graves of a British ship crew who perished in a storm some years ago.  We probably won’t go ashore to see it this trip.  One more reason to come back.

We must apologize to our many friends in New Bern, NC.  We won’t be stopping this year as the USCG just announced a closure of the Neuse River Bridge for emergency maintenance.  We will be thinking of you, and hope to see you next spring.

After attending Chris’s Masters Degree graduation ceremony we intended to get underway yesterday.  Unfortunately the forecast was for winds gusting to 25+ knots and thunderstorms.  Based on that we stayed at the marina for another day.  The weather gods didn’t get the memo on the thunderstorms, but the winds didn’t disappoint, and we were glad to have stayed put.

We departed St James this morning, transiting Southport, the Cape Fear River, Snow’s Cut and the NC barrier island section of the ICW.  Southport is an attractive town from the water (and probably from the land also).  The Cape Fear is a major shipping channel, and can be very rough if you experience wind blowing opposite to tidal current.  By dawdling just long enough this morning we avoided that, and had tidal current and wind in the same direction.  It was an uneventful passage.  Snow’s Cut is a man-made channel with sometimes ferocious current.  It also has a famous rock at marker R162 that people like to hit with their propellers.  We didn’t do that, and were pleased by that miss.

After Snow’s Cut we cruised along the ICW just inside the ocean barrier islands.  The wind today was onshore at about 10-15 knots, and we found it quite chilly in spite of the 74 degree F temperature.  There used to be several bridges we needed to have opened along this stretch, but with new bridge construction and a low tide we only had to open one at Wrightsville Beach.  As an impossible coincidence we arrived there within two minutes of its hourly opening, and didn’t have to stop.  That has never happened before, and we usually need to hold position in a narrow waterway with lots of wind and current, and big expensive boats on both sides of us.

Immediately after the bridge there is a shoal island complete with plastic palm tree that has always amused me.  People are always hanging out on it.

Tonight we are anchored in Mile Hammock Bay.  This is a small bay on the USMC base at Camp Lejeune.  The Marine Corps allows boats to anchor here but you can’t go ashore.  There are about 10 boats in the anchorage tonight.

Tomorrow we will go on through Morehead City and Beaufort, and will try to anchor off the Neuse River.

On Wednesday we departed Myrtle Beach in the late morning and moved north through an area known to cruisers as the rock pile, and then into North Carolina.  We arrived at a well protected marina at St James Plantation where we will leave the boat for a few days.

When the Army Corps of Engineers created the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) about a hundred years ago they had to blast a channel through the rocks north of Myrtle Beach.  They made it plenty deep but not very wide, and it has hard rock ledges that are submerged at high tide.  Consequently we prefer to pass this section near low tide to be able to see the edges of the channel, and had the additional benefit of passing through the shallow NC inlets later in the day on a rising tide.  The edges of the rock pile could do significant damage if one meets a tug pushing a barge and you had to move to the edge of the channel.  Thankfully that didn’t happen.

After passing the rock pile we moved into North Carolina.  This stretch of the ICW is fairly close to the ocean, and is separated only by the developed barrier islands.  Many people build long docks out to the edge of the ICW for water access.  Some of these must be very expensive undertakings.  They also often build their houses elevated to survive hurricane storm surge, a common occurrence.

Finally on Wednesday we passed through two ocean inlets, Lockwood’s Folly and Shallottes Inlet which are known for shoaling problems.  Lockwood’s was dredged over the winter, and is an easy passage for now until it shoals again.  We had read of problems others had in running aground recently in Shallottes next to a dredge that is in operation.  We passed this dredge within 5 feet, and had no problems.  I did not get a photo while passing the dredge (I was kinda busy), but I did get a shot of the ocean entrance at Shallottes.

We left the boat in St James Marina to attend to some personal business.  We’ll start out again on Sunday.

Today we left Georgetown, SC and went up the Waccamaw River, through Socastee, and into Myrtle Beach.  This part of the ICW is a low stress, easy trip.  No serious shallow or difficult spots, and I think it is much like the rivers in the Midwest and southeast US.  It is also quite scenic.

This river seems to have an abundance of ospreys.  Just about everywhere they are chirping at us as we pass by.

Along the way we passed the Wacca Wache Marina, home of our friends Tom and Brenda Lahey.  They are on the loop ahead of us, and we hope to catch up to them in the next month or so.  Their marina had three Army vessels tied up that look like WWII landing craft.  These boats (ships?) passed us later in Myrtle Beach and waked us pretty good.

In Socastee the river severely flooded for several weeks last year after Hurricane Florence.  Flood waters were high enough at Wacca Wache that the floating docks would have floated off the top of the pilings if not for the marina crew that nailed boards onto the tops to extend them.

I have always been amazed at some of the things you see along the waterway.  This structure is just south of Bucksport, and appears to be a biffy on pilings in the river.  It’s too shallow for us to get over to it, but I am always amused by it.

Tomorrow we will cross into North Carolina, and transit the known shoaling spots of Shallotte’s Inlet and Lockwood’s Folly.  These were dredged last year and are supposed to be improved.  I’m not optimistic as Mother Nature often has other ideas, and we are playing by her rules.

 

We left the Isle of Palms anchorage early today with the hope of getting through the shallow spots at McClellanville with some tide help.  When we got there it was half tide and falling.  We got through, but barely.  Had we been a half hour later we would have been aground.

Along the way today, like most days, we saw quite a bit of wildlife.  Of note, we saw an eagle sunning himself, and also numerous alligators along the banks.  The gators didn’t like our wake, nor our presence, and would climb out onto the banks or disappear and not come up until we lost patience.

By midday we reached Georgetown, SC, a small coastal city near the mouth of the Great Pee Dee and Waccamaw Rivers.  We needed fuel, and a short day for a change, so we got a marina slip for the night.  Georgetown has the feel of a small town with streets lined with live oaks and active tourism and fishing industries.  This is my kind of place.  Small town values, friendly people, and direct access to the ocean.  We celebrated by visiting the local seafood market where extra large fresh shrimp direct off the boat sells for $5.99 a pound.  Shrimp scampi for dinner, one of Marilou’s favorite dishes.

Tomorrow we will go up the Waccamaw to somewhere near Myrtle Beach.  The Waccamaw drains a fairly large watershed, and is a winding and deep river with large trees to the water’s edge.  Fairly common for this part of the country, and always a scenic trip.

Today we left the anchorage on the South Edisto River and transited through Watts Cut, Dawho River and the Stono River.  Some of these spots are known for shallows at low tide, and they did not disappoint.  Watts Cut, in particular, had an abundance of horse flies to add misery to our existence.

After transiting the Stono River we went through Elliott’s Cut into Charleston.  This area has fierce currents, today running at about 5 knots.  I read on another facebook page of someone who went into the Cut and lost an engine.  He got turned sideways and was washed back down the waterway into the calmer river below.

After the Cut we emerged into Charleston.  We did not stop, but it is a beautiful city from the water.  Fort Sumpter is still guarding the harbor entrance.

Tonight we are anchored in a tidal creek just off the ICW north of Isle of Palms.  Tomorrow we plan an early start to hopefully get through McClellanville at mid tide.  It is, again, a known trouble spot with shallow water.

I got my laptop back in operation this morning.  Hooray!

Yesterday we departed Hilton Head, passing Parris Island and Beaufort, SC (pronounced Byou-fert), and past the USMC air base north of Beaufort.  Parris Island is a primary USMC recruit training base, and their water tower proudly says ‘We Make Marines’. 

After passing Beaufort we saw a set of aircraft (maybe drones) doing skywriting.  We were surprised to see there was an air show going on at MCAS Beaufort.  The ICW was clogged with anchored and rafted boats through that section, keeping us on our toes to avoid running into one of them.

We anchored last night in the South Edisto River.  No one around for miles, and we spent a restful night. 

We plan to transit through Charleston this afternoon, and will anchor north of Isle of Palms.

Today’s blog post is a little different than a discussion of where we have been.  But I will do that too.

Today we went through Hell Gate and the Ogeechee River into Savannah, and crossed into South Carolina.  Tonight we are on Hilton Head Island.  It was a lousy day to travel on the water with winds 20+ knots and long fetches through the sounds.  Thankfully our boat is stable and we are becoming used to this situation, so we pressed on.

The highlight of the day (for me) was being in the homelands of the Gullah people.  This is a group of former slaves that refer to their language as GeeChee, and to themselves as Gullah.  They were brought to America after being enslaved in West Africa by British companies because of their knowledge of cultivation of a strain of rice.  This rice strain (West African Rice) was viable in this region of the US, and consequently the slaves’ skills were valued here.  Because malaria and yellow fever were endemic in this region, and the slaves had some resistance to the diseases, the whites stayed in Savannah and Charleston and allowed slave overseers to manage the rice cultivation.  Consequently the African traditions were preserved in the Gullah culture.

After the Civil War (referred to in this region as the ‘War of Northern Aggression) the former slaves were left abandoned, and could continue their culture without interference.  This preserved their culture into the 21^st century.

One of the main homelands of the Gullah was an island called Daufuskie.  We passed this island today with photos below.  It is across a narrow channel from Hilton Head Island, which is well developed, but Daufuskie still is only minimally developed.  Cars are not present on the island, nor are roads and other infrastructure.  I value that remoteness.

The next photo shows the separation between Daufuskie and Hilton Head, looking southeast out Calibogue Sound entrance.

We had planned to anchor again tonight, but because of the winds we elected to come to a marina.  We are in a private development called Windmill Harbor.  This development has a manually operated lock system that brings the boats to the level of the harbor.  The photos below show some of this evolution.

Tomorrow, if the winds cooperate, we plan to continue north to one of my favorite stops on the east coast, B&B Seafood.  This is a dock that services shrimp boats, and their product is for sale at very low price.  Grilled, fresh shrimp for dinner tomorrow!!!

What these photos don’t show well is the rough conditions on the water behind us.  We had beam seas for some time with spray over the outside decks.  Coming into the entrance to the docks was pretty sporty, but we got through without embarrassing me.

We are happily underway again.  We departed Brunswick this morning, and are anchored in Kilkenny Creek tonight.  This is a remote area in what seems like endless salt marshes.  Really friendly people though, and for the most part they lead a lifestyle based on the water resources.

As I said, the salt marshes seem endless.  These are interrupted with small islands called hammocks where a few trees can grow.  Some people build dwellings out here, and this is truly off the grid living.

We will continue north again tomorrow.  We have to wait for the tide at a spot called Hell Gate.  At low tide there is only 3-1/2 feet of water, and we would be hard aground.  Ideally we want at least half tide, and rising in case we do have a problem.  Being aground on a falling tide goes very badly very quickly.