Little River, SC to Georgetown; McClellanville, SC to Charleston, SC

Day 1 Little River, SC Mile 346.0 to Georgetown, SC Mile 402.9
Mattias had my personal sympathies the entire day as he had "shitty" start to the morning. It was the day after Thanksgiving. While most of the U.S. was out doing their Christmas shopping, Mattias was pumping out the toilet holding tank. Unfortunately, while I was adjusting some screw thing inside, he was unscrewing the valve outside and a weird pressure created a spray of waste all over his face and clothes! Disgusting? Definitely! I felt so bad for him I promised him anything he wanted all day!
After he cleaned up, we had an interesting journey the way to Georgetown. We traveled through the Waccamaw River which is beautiful. Mattias must have studied the navigation book really well because he went down to take a nap and left me at the helm for a good part of the 25 mile River route. I looked at the nav book and saw that he trusted me with 20 foot depths and a few 2' shoals to look out for so he could dream easy. It was fun to be alone at the wheel for a while without my "backseat driver" offering advice!
In Georgetown, we anchored alongside Patience but didn't raft this time. The anchoring went well.
Day 2 Georgetown Mile 402.9 to McClellanville, SC mile 430.0
We departed Georgetown at 9:30 a.m. for a short trip, 28 miles, to McClellanville. It was a brisk layering of clothes sort of day. Lot's of wind, currents and cross current on the creeks. The high tide was extremely high. By the time we got to McClellanville it was nearing low tide and got stuck as we were rounding the corner to the small channel to the marina. Fortunately it was only in soft mud and Mattias backed us out and took the corner again. We arrived at this rusty marina, home to about 25 shrimp boats that turned out to be one of our favorite stops. Pictures show the sleepy town of McClellanville with hanging moss in the trees and homes with historic name plates out front. Our family was a novelty of sorts to a larger family reunion happening in town. We were even invited to their party but declined in order to go to the only restaurant in town! The nearest grocery store is 30 miles away but the restaurant we ate at was featured on the Travel Channel and boy, the food was delicious! We tried a heaping plate of steamed oysters in shell, some crawfish tails, flounder, shrimp, sweet potato fries, marinated cole slaw and a homemade key lime pie for dessert!
Day 3 McClellanville Mile 430 to Charleston, SC mile 469.3
Mattias was up at 6 a.m. and got the boat ready for take off by 7 in order to make high tide. He brought in a steaming cup of coffee and said I could sleep...oxymoron...who can sleep with that lovely smell of coffee next to their head?! I was soon up and then the girls. Mattias enjoys being on his own in the cockpit sometimes and that lets me referee battles below! I got the girls ready and joined Mattias by 10 a.m. after making fried egg sandwiches for breakfast and then baking blueberry muffins for still hungry girls. The tide was really high today as there was a flood warning in the Charleston area. The current was with us and then against us pulling and pushing the boat. Once we got in to Charleston harbor it was windy again. We found the Charleston City Marina no problem and our little 33' foot Windfall is dwarfed by these Mega Mega Yachts docked here.
We had a late lunch of fresh shrimp purchased the day before. Our friends, Heesook, Don and Christopher dinghied over from their anchoring spot and joined us before we all set out on foot to tour Charleston. We got to the historic district near College of Charleston and cute, trendy shops by dinnertime and stopped for a pizza snack. Home now and resting.
More later,
Carrie

Happy Thanksgiving!

Southport, NC to Myrtle Beach, SC

Day 1 Southport, NC Mile Marker 309.3
We decided to spend an entire day in Southport North Carolina. It was a pleasant little town with darling historic houses that I would like to have photographed. We took the dingy to the town dock to meet our friends for coffee. After coffee we took the kids to a little park and departed separately. Heesook took her Christopher and our Liv and Hanna to the library; Mattias went back to work on the boat and Don and I walked a few miles to the Walmart Super Store as we both needed provisioning as we intended to anchor out the next stops. We thought it was strange that such a nice town had cute gift shops, restaurants and marinas but only had a Walmart for grocery option. By the time we were done shopping it was after 3 p.m. We taxied back to our boat; Mattias and Hanna took Don and his loot back to his boat and Mattias stayed a little too long for coffee. On the return trip, Hanna and Mattias got stopped by the Coast Guard and Mattias got a nice warning as he didn't have a flashlight, whistle and was not wearing his lifevest. He said he learned a nice lesson there!

Day 2 Southport, NC Mile Marker 309 to Myrtle Beach, SC (Crossed to the South Carolina border!) Mile marker 346!
Mattias and Don had talked by radio last night to determine navigation plans. The ICW route was showing spots of shallow and shoaling areas, bridge openings to wait for etc. and we decided that we would try to go "outside" on the Atlantic Ocean instead. So up early and engines running at 7:15 a.m. We went out with outgoing tide and with the waves of open water meeting the tide it created terrible chop. We had an outgoing current of 1.9 knots, there were whirlpools, riptides and one spot looked like boiling water spouting up. At one point, a big wave crashed over the bow and we took in water through the hatch below. Turns out the girls had been goofing with the hatch and didn't latch it properly after being told dozens of times not to play and we didn't check before taking off...so, their beddings were dripping, soaking wet. The lifelines on the boats were decorated with brightly colored Ikea sheets of bugs, flowers etc. Looking like a gypsy boat cruising down the ICW! The only things we lost in the event were the kids two Leapsters and of course, 2 brand new game cartridges purchased at WalMart the day before! Another oops!
We decided to turn back and take the ICW route after all. Patience, our friend's boat, went on and radioed to say only 5 minutes after we turned in it was calm and serene. We didn't want to proceed on the ocean side as Hanna was looking and not feeling so well. We didn't want to scar and/or scare the poor girl for life!
The ICW proved to be okay after all. Mattias carefully navigated thru the iffy spots. He likes the challenge I think. We met up with Patience here at a marina since the anchorage spot was too shallow for either of our keels. The dockmaster is a nice chatty boater lady who warned us of fire ants but said the only alligator was removed some time ago!
We are grilling and having pot luck tonight on our boat.
More later,
Carrie

P.S.
Remember the couple in distress at sea? We saw them and their boat at the marina in Southport and their boat again at a poor anchorage spot on the way to Myrtle Beach. The dock lady said there will be casino cruisers passing by them all night! We can't believe they are still at it, and that the wife is putting up with the strife her husband has put her through!!! Crazy people everywhere!

P.S.S.
Photo shows how the South Carolinians are already decorating for Christmas...and it's not even Thanksgiving!

Some travel photos!

Here's a nice picture of Patience going thru a bridge. Note the armada of sailboats following. We all have to wait to get the masts under the bridges. Traveling in a line is what it's like on the ICW--just the power cruisers crashing by us some guys creating huge waves to knock us over, esp. if you are in the cabin! Another picture shows that the houses are getting bigger and fancier the farther South we get!

About the Blog

I have really enjoyed getting our experiences down in this blog fashion. I am so used to typing like a banshee that I could hardly imagine writing in a journal the old fashioned way. I am thankful to Pamela and Liesa for encouraging me to get this started. As we have had so many days and experiences, I'm sure something would get lost somewhere if I hadn't started this. I know of a few friends and family who regularly read this and received one anonymous comment just now from a posting that I had held onto until photos could be uploaded. The reader requested photos to have captions...well, just to be clear, after many years of digital photography, our family just invested in a camera! So to request captions on a blog is like asking Bill Clinton to dinner! There was some gap in photos, but hopefully, we'll have more time to upload the photos or at least have better connections to get them to coincide with the text. In most cases, you'll have to read the text and make

Morehead City, NC to Southport, NC

Day 1 Mile 203.7 Morehead City to Mile 244.5 Mile Hammock Bay near Swansboro NC
We left Morehead City at close to 10 a.m. We passed the potentially dangerous Camp Lejeune firing range where, lucky for us, there was no firing practice activity going on. If there was firing, we would not have been able to travel the ICW in that area for several hours but I did call ahead to the Coast Guard to confirm.
We met up with Patience at Mile Hammock Bay and anchored/rafted along side them.
When we got settled in to our spot, we still had the VHF radio tuned into Channel 16, the International hailing and safety channel. All of a sudden there was this very frightening distress call to the Coast Guard. The woman calling was not able to speak English well, was in panic mode and not listening to the Coast Guard's questions. You could hear a man in the background shouting over the woman's repetitive pleas for help. Was something wrong with the boat? Was the guy beating her? You could hear him saying the "f-word" as she clicked on and off asking for help. Over the distress, you could not understand what was happening. Finally the Coast Guard was able to discern after the husband finally got on the radio, that they were trying to reach an inlet. It was obvious the sailboat they were on was in the Atlantic after they had given the Coast Guard the latitude and longitude for positioning.
We all gathered on Heesook, Don and Christopher's Patience listening together. We decided that we had all remembered the couple as an Asian woman/White man that we had seen in the locks some days earlier. Even then, they were having boat problems and getting shouts from the lock master to get his boat in or the gate with close on it! Mattias said, that guy doesn't know what he's doing. From the distress call, Heesook, being Korean, could recognize the woman was also Korean and she got permission from the Coast Guard to speak Korean to the lady in distress to help calm her down and get her to answer clearly to the questions being asked. As Heesook spoke the best Korean she knew, you could sense the relief from the lady. It was truly a hair on the arms raising, tear jerking experience.
Long story...the husband came on and said, no they weren't in distress, he was trying to find an inlet from the ocean that would take his 4' draft and his wife was "freaked out" not handling the waves very well- he needed to get her in to shore. After several attempts, the Coast Guard finally got them to understand the only inlet they could go to where they wouldn't go aground was Masonboro inlet, some 27 miles away from where they were. Okay, trouble was, now it was after 6 p.m., dark and getting colder. The guy repeated the distance and said "that'll take us 7 hours!". Again, the Coast Guard reiterated the inlet they could safely go to. So the guy signed off.
Day 2 Mile 244.5 to Mile 283.4 Motts Channel at Wrightsville Beach, NC.
So yesterday, we finally saw dolphins again. This time I snapped a nice photo of the guy/gal as it was swimming right on our wave, right next to the boat for some time. It even splashed us with water from the blow hole! So fun!
We lost a little time today waiting for a bridge to open. We had some time before bridge number 2 opened so stopped at a marina for fuel, for the kids to play and ate lunch on our boats while we waited. We had some time so the dockmaster guy said we could shower at his marina which was a pleasure after anchoring for some days...were we all looking or smelling that bad?
We anchored/rafted at Motts Channel with Patience this night. They dropped 135 feet of chain to anchor us both. Our boat is not particularly prepared to anchor ourselves--we don't have a chain, or long enough rope or even a winlass to pull up the anchor. Mattias is not used to anchoring because in Sweden, you don't use an anchor, but just tie up to a rock! We were joined by many other sailboats in this Channel. We had dinner on our respective boats and Heesook, Don and Christopher came for movie night. We watched Ratatouille.
Right before dinner, we heard Don shouting from his boat for us to tune into Channel 16. We were shocked to hear the same Korean/American couple on the radio with the Coast Guard, this time hailing the Coast Guard on a may day! We were baffled....thinking that they had still been out in the Atlantic for something like 24 hours later than their original call the day before. Unbelievable!! They had discarded the Coast Guard's recommendation from the night before and now had grounded their boat in the Cape Fear area that is known for significant shoaling, supposedly taking in water. The Coast Guard had asked if all passengers had their life vests on. We couldn't hear the response. She asked if the water was coming in like a garden hose or fire hose. We couldn't hear the response. Next, she suggested that the wife get out of the dingy and back into the sailboat. Chatter between the US Coast Guard and TowBoats Us or SeaTow (they are like AAA on water) went back and forth. It was determined that the TowBoats US could reach the couple sooner than US Coast Guard. So, about 15 minutes later, TowBoats US got to the couple who were 200 yards from shore, grounded. As the Coast Guard asked the TowBoat driver questions, he conferred with the Coast Guard that the lady was in the dingy, floating in the ocean, unattached to the boat! Un-f'ing believeable!! So, the couple was transferred to the US Coast Guard and moved to a marina in Southport where we were heading next day. It created more conversation this night!
Day 3 Mile 283.4 Motts Channel at Wrightsville Beach, NC to Mile 309.3 Southport, NC
We had an early start again today. Actually, Mattias got up early and we were started by 7:30 to get to Southport early. We checked into the marina early afternoon. I noticed, (safety nut that I am), that no one wears their life vests in boats her in NC, not even kids! How does that work?
Mattias will blog our experience on the water today. The writer of this blog had a migraine and took meds and rested for most of the afternoon while Mattias and girls took the dingy for lunch with Heesook, Don and Christopher. They played on the beach afterward. I did laundry after the migraine subsided.

More later,
Carrie

Oriental, NC to Morehead, NC--Dolphins!!

We got a later start today than normal as Mattias bought the outboard engine yesterday and tested it this morning. We also had to get to the store for more supplies and Mattias went to the marine store for some extra fuses that had burned out. The Burley came in handy again to cart around the groceries and gas for outboard etc. when attached to the complimentary marine bike.
So we departed Oriental at around 12:30 after lunchtime. Did a choppy short hike through 2-3 foot waves thru the rest of the Neuse River and it evened out once we got to Adams Creek. Our journey from Adams Creek to Core Creek was only about 3-4 hours long but once we got to Adams Creek, and into Core Creek we were joined by several dolphin. There are expansive shallow spots including one where a sailboat had grounded and Mattias could not join us in the entertainment or excitement as he was trying to navigate around us moving around the boat getting a closer look trying to avoid grounding Windfall! The girls and I had fun though. I tried to take photos but the dolpins were too fast as they went up and dived down and of course, my camera battery died. Better luck next time!
We arrived to Morehead Creek Yacht Basin close to dark and needed a toilet tank pump out something fierce. Our friends on Patience have anchored some 5 miles south but we are too late to meet them this evening and will meet up with them tomorrow.
I will try to get these photos posted tonight of the past few days if possible.
More later,
Carrie