We Moved!

The longer than planned stop in Southport had me wondering if we would ever make much progress south.  The sudden battery replacement project certainly took longer than it should have (but it seems everything does on a boat).  Once that was complete, the weather turned sour and that kept us sitting even longer.  But we finally came up with a plan that seemed do-able.

The theory is we will head south from Southport on the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) for the couple days when the weather wasn't supposed to be all that good.  That should get us to Georgetown, SC where we can hopefully make a run on the outside to get us down to Florida.  So, this morning we untied the dock lines and pointed the boat south once again.

Given the relatively short days and limited good weather, it has been difficult to plan anything based on tides.  The rule of thumb is pretty much we depart between 7 and 8 am and trudge our way down the ditch until 5pm or so. But today even the tides seemed to be somewhat helpful as we were able to make 6 to 7 knots most of the trip.

Here are a few of the sights, in between rain storms, from the trip...

The admiral, dressed for the weather

Lots of people around Holden Beach

Guess that was a bad day fishing.

Guess staying at the dock isn't safe either.

Tourism is big business here.

One part of the trip I was particularly worried about is an area known as the Rockpile.  It is a section of the ICW north of Myrtle Beach that has a reputation for eating boats. My understanding is that this man-made section of the ICW was dug through a lot of hard rock.  Since blasting through rock is an expensive and time consuming process, this section is rather narrow.  A narrow, jagged rock lined channel sounds fun doesn't it?  Well, it wasn't nearly as bad as I've heard. The only real problem here would be meeting another wide boat coming the other way...and there are so few people on the ICW right now, it really isn't a concern.

Danger, big jagged rock canyon submerged below.

Not exactly a wide channel.

In the Rockpile I found something my aviation friends should recognize.

Soon after we left the Rockpile, we made it through one last bridge and our home for the night at Barefoot Landing marina in north Myrtle Beach.

Guess it is time to check the weather and see if we can continue the trip tomorrow.  Keeping my fingers crossed that we will be able to go.