Captain's Choice blog: The Carolinas to Georgia

With all the rain Friday, Nov. 2 in Beaufort we were pretty much boat bound and after the rain came the winds. It was really howling overnight and the sounds coming from the sailboat behind us had us wondering if they had Halloween sound effects in their masts. Once again the winds were suppose to calm a little as the day went on and since we had already planned to travel the intracoastal instead of the ocean we left Beaufort and traveled 44 miles to the anchorage at Mile Hammock Bay, just outside of Camp Lejeune in 10'of water. People say that sometimes when you stay there you can hear the blasts from training missions, we heard a couple late afternoon but that was it. This ended up being a very popular anchorage with 22 boats (mostly sailboats) in the bay.
We also saw a lot more hurricane damage along this section of the intracoastal...docks, roofs and some boats that still have not been repaired.
Knowing there would be a lot of activity first thing Sunday morning with everyone leaving the anchorage we pulled out just at sunrise to beat the crowd. This definitely worked in our favor as only 2 other boats left before us and a short time later we could hear all the chatter on the radio with this boat passing this one and that one. We got in line behind 2 shrimp boats for most of our 70 miles of travel Sunday. There aren't a lot of anchorages along this section of the intercostal but we did have one picked out just south of Southport, NC. We knew the water getting into the bay would be skinny (shallow) but once in the depth improves. The low water alarm sounded and there was a local boat coming out of the area and they said it had shoaled in from the storms... with that we called St. James Plantation Marina and got a spot for the night.

Mother Nature helped with a rinse overnight Sunday and by the time we were ready to depart the rain had stopped. The forecast was for isolated thunderstorms, as we left we just hoped we would make it to our destination, Osprey Marina in Myrtle Beach, SC 59 miles away without getting wet. We got lucky...a few sprinkles on an otherwise cloudy, humid 75 degree day. Suddenly the weather is above average and not below average prompting us to put the gloves, hats and winter jackets away (for now).
As we passed the state boundaries from NC to SC Monday I mentioned to Mark that I couldn't believe how many more palm trees we were seeing and golf courses. South Carolinas intercostal is just dotted with courses and even though the weather was threatening there were many people out on the links. As we got into the Waccamaw River I noticed a toilet on the back porch of a very nice home, pointed it out to the captain and said gee that's weird. Then we passed a couple of other homes where there was stuff everywhere and when you looked into the houses you could tell they had very little furniture, if any at all. Then we saw the sand bags and dumpsters and it was disheartening to see that these people were still dealing with the flooding that had occurred from the Hurricane. You could see mud/water lines on houses that were at least 6' from their foundations...we couldn't help but empathize with these people after seeing the destruction. The water still looks high to us and the charts show they are still about 3' higher than normal water height.

They say when you set your clocks back you gain an hour of sleep...the thing I know is it gets lighter earlier and darker earlier. It hasn't changed our internal clocks as we are up and going at sunrise everyday and boater's midnight is much earlier than midnight, I can tell you that! When we left the marina at 6:30 am Tuesday we only saw one other boat with their lights on...everyone else must still be on daylight savings time.
There is an area at McClellanville that has low water at low tide and it looked like we would hit this area right at low tide. With that in mind we stopped short and dropped the anchor in South Santee River, a 40 mile day. Most of these anchorages are amongst marsh lands so they don't offer a lot of protection from the winds (which were about 15-20 mph) but it offered good holding in 8' of water. The good thing about the winds are they help keep the bugs away and it was 80 degrees, so a breeze was welcome. There were 2 other boats anchored here and this anchorage allowed us to go through McClellanville Wednesday close to high tide.
The tides really intrigue me...we are dealing with tide swings in the 8-9' range so when we are at low tide the topography is so different. We see crab pots laying on the ground, mud piles, all things you never see at high tide.

We've decided to take what the weathermen say with a grain of salt. We still look at the forecast, which was t-storms for Wednesday and Thursday and it has rained at night both Tuesday and Wednesday, but when we get up in the morning if it's not raining we head out. Although the last few days have been cloudy, threatening, and just plan blah we have been lucky and only had mother nature drop a few sprinkles on us.
We left South Santee River Wednesday and traveled 80 miles to Toogoodoo Creek (just around the bend from Hilton Head) and anchored in 10' at low tide with one other boat. The creek is wide and we were lucky to have dolphins swimming around and no bugs. The rain stopped early morning allowing us to get another early start on Thursday where we anchored in 10' again at low tide in Bull Creek, mud bottom, good holding after traveling 73 miles. This was a busy anchorage with small fishing boats and water toys going by until just after dark. Then it was so quiet we could hear the owls in the nearby trees.

Welcome to Georgia! We left Toogoodoo under cloudy skies, high humidity, 65 degrees and threatening skies Friday and headed 18 miles (a very short day) to Thunderbolt Marina in Savannah. We stayed here when we looped and they have a courtesy car so getting here early was the plan so we could head out to the grocery store before the other boats started docking. On good authority (our daughter Allison) we dined at 17Hundred90 Inn and Restaurant, it was delicious and the restaurant is very quaint and supposedly there are 3 ghosts that haunt this establishment. Of course there is all kinds of folk lore of haunted buildings in Savannah. Savannah is one of our favorites on the East Coast with it's southern charm, moss hanging from the trees and delicious food!