Our destination for today is Calabash Creek, 30 miles southwest and just over the South Carolina border -- we have been in the Inner banks of North Carolina for 13 days and were ready to move on to another State -- it would feel like real progress.
The creek would also position us well for the next day's itinerary, transiting "Pine Island Cut", a 28 mile long stretch of the Intercoastal blasted through solid rock in the Myrtle Beach area. The guidebooks are all very clear -- unlike the rest of the Intercoastal, if you wander out of the channel in the cut, you aren't going to have a soft grounding in mud or sand; more likely, you'll rip a gash or even through your hull on the underwater stone ledges. To make things even more interesting, near the beginning of the cut is the "Rock Pile", an especially narrow 4 mile section, so narrow that the guide books all recommend you do a radio call before you enter it to make sure no commercial traffic is coming the other way -- so narrow you can't safely pass a bigger boat without risking ripping your hull on unseen underwater stone ledges -- OK, they had our full attention.
But that is tomorrow's challenge -- today is a much simpler journey down what's left of North Carolina. Largely wooded with some vacation homes lining it, the trip was pretty featureless -- not even a swing bridge to break up the monotony. The current did become foul for the last hour or, so the trip got prolonged some. And, the day was sweltering hot and muggy -- you could feel that the sky was just itching to shed some of that moisture -- it seemed certain that thunderstorms would be in our future.
We arrived at the creek in early afternoon and scoped out the anchorage -- it was a small basin behind a mark just off the Intercoastal -- might have fit a couple of boats. It was empty when we got there, so we dropped our hook -- we were home for the evening -- time to take a swim and try and fix the knotmeter.
The current was still ripping through the anchorage, so after putting out a downstream safety float and Sue rigging a line on the side of the boat to hold onto while I worked, I got into the water -- it was a murky brown (more tannin), but with a some help from Susie adjusting the hull position of my "hold onto" line, I was able to get to the right spot and spin out the sand that was clogging the paddle wheel (I actually saw grains come out - H'ray, that should do it)!
The evening's entertainment was thunderstorms -- lots and lots of thunderstorms. We were totally surrounded by them. Sue and I sat on deck with a front row seat for over an hour watching the show all around us -- spectacular multi-armed lightening would jump from cloud to cloud; huge angry-looking bolts would strike downward from the clouds to the earth; thunder was constantly rumbling in the sky around us, sometimes quite loud and feeling very close. Yet with all this fury around us, we sat in an island of calm -- nary a bolt of lightening or a drop of rain came near us ! And the price of admission was "free" :-)
The creek would also position us well for the next day's itinerary, transiting "Pine Island Cut", a 28 mile long stretch of the Intercoastal blasted through solid rock in the Myrtle Beach area. The guidebooks are all very clear -- unlike the rest of the Intercoastal, if you wander out of the channel in the cut, you aren't going to have a soft grounding in mud or sand; more likely, you'll rip a gash or even through your hull on the underwater stone ledges. To make things even more interesting, near the beginning of the cut is the "Rock Pile", an especially narrow 4 mile section, so narrow that the guide books all recommend you do a radio call before you enter it to make sure no commercial traffic is coming the other way -- so narrow you can't safely pass a bigger boat without risking ripping your hull on unseen underwater stone ledges -- OK, they had our full attention.
But that is tomorrow's challenge -- today is a much simpler journey down what's left of North Carolina. Largely wooded with some vacation homes lining it, the trip was pretty featureless -- not even a swing bridge to break up the monotony. The current did become foul for the last hour or, so the trip got prolonged some. And, the day was sweltering hot and muggy -- you could feel that the sky was just itching to shed some of that moisture -- it seemed certain that thunderstorms would be in our future.
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| Oysters on pilings -- shellfishing areas, mostly "closed" to us, lined this section of the Intercoastal |
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| Windswept trees, a common sight along this section of the Intercoastal |
The current was still ripping through the anchorage, so after putting out a downstream safety float and Sue rigging a line on the side of the boat to hold onto while I worked, I got into the water -- it was a murky brown (more tannin), but with a some help from Susie adjusting the hull position of my "hold onto" line, I was able to get to the right spot and spin out the sand that was clogging the paddle wheel (I actually saw grains come out - H'ray, that should do it)!
The evening's entertainment was thunderstorms -- lots and lots of thunderstorms. We were totally surrounded by them. Sue and I sat on deck with a front row seat for over an hour watching the show all around us -- spectacular multi-armed lightening would jump from cloud to cloud; huge angry-looking bolts would strike downward from the clouds to the earth; thunder was constantly rumbling in the sky around us, sometimes quite loud and feeling very close. Yet with all this fury around us, we sat in an island of calm -- nary a bolt of lightening or a drop of rain came near us ! And the price of admission was "free" :-)
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