Georgetown, South Carolina

November 30, 2006
written at Thoroughfare Creek, SC (near Bucksport, SC)

Old houses in Southport, SC

Kristen eating ice cream in Southport, SC

Hans at the computer in Southport


SC/NC border

An inlet to the Atlantic.

We’re anchored tonight in the most undeveloped section of the ICW that we’ve come across in the past 2 weeks. Granted, we had to motor through hours upon hours of sprawl (see development blog entry) before getting here, but it’s well worth it. It is completely silent, except for the birds and mosquitoes, and we were able to go ashore to Sandy Island to hike around, which is co-owned by the SC Department of Transportation and the Nature Conservancy. Our neighbors tonight are a couple from Quebec on a 40 foot steel sloop. The woman mentioned that she was having trouble with her English and her ability to understand the bridge tenders over the VHF, but Kristen reassured that we’re all having problems understanding the bridge tenders who speak fast and with a rather heavy southern accent that is often hard to decipher over the radio.

Hans motoring through a bridge.

The only pontoon bridge left on the ICW.



Yesterday we had an unintended short day of only 30 miles. Whisper and Boris are capable of getting us over 50 miles in the daylight, but we’re having trouble contending with opposing tides which set our speed down at least 2 miles an hour (about 25% reduction in speed!). We also lose some time waiting for bridge openings. But, at least we’re not racing with anyone. We anchored last night in Little River, off the town of Callabash, SC (or is it NC, it is hard to tell on the chart). We went exploring in the nearby salt marshes and then made our way to town. It is an interesting place with some derlict tourist fishing boats tied up to rickety piers and about 10 restaurants in a matter of one mile. We may have stumbled upon South Carolina’s biggest deep fried tourist trap. We didn’t succumb, and dinghied back to Whisper to cook up some shrimp and grits. Fabulous.

We left the anchorage at dawn and spent the morning motoring through patchy fog until the sun came out in full force around 9:30AM. We’ve been waking up at 6:15AM or so and are generally moving before 7AM. The majority of the morning was spent passing housing developments, both new and old.

aerial tramway traveersing the ICW.

Around 10AM we motored through the infamous “Rock Pile” section of the ICW which is renowned for outcroppings of rocks reaching out to the edge of the channel. It turns out, however, that it was mostly hype, and while there were indeed rocks bordering the ICW, you would have to be half drunk to run your boat into them.





Kitkat spent the whole morning in the sun before retreating to the clothes locker to rest after her hard morning.
Around 11AM, shorts were dug out of the recesses of the clothes locker and we fully enjoyed the 75 degree weather post-Thanksgiving!




We entered the Waccamaw River this afternoon which was a welcome change after the Myrtle Beach area. The Waccamaw is almost completely undeveloped marsh and mangrove land with a couple marinas here and there, but mainly just oaks with Spanish moss.

We arrived at our anchorage around 4:30PM and after exploring, had a dinner of bacon spaghetti (some may call it spaghetti carbonara), red wine and truffles.



Tomorrow we’ll head to Georgetown to pick up some mail and then we’ll be off towards Charleston.