Southport NC to Isle of Palms - 2017
--Blogpost written by Bob
Stay Over Day in Southport NC
Last night we attended the skipper's meeting on weather and navigation by Hank of Carolina Yacht Care. Hank does a thorough job of going over the weather prediction and the navigation trouble spots encountered south of Southport.
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| Southport Marina before sunrise on November 11. The ICW is in the far background of this image. |
In the morning, I added sticky notes on our ICW flip charts with the information obtained last night in the skipper's meeting.
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| One of my many low-tech sticky notes on our ICW flip charts. |
I also added waypoints for an alternate route around some trouble areas between the Ashepoo and Coosaw Rivers in South Carolina.
We had lunch at Fishy Fishy Cafe on the waterfront in Southport and we did some grocery shopping for provisions for the next week or so. Overall, it was a relaxing day.
At the end of the day we met Paul who is running a motor boat from New Jersey to Charleston SC. He stopped at Southport Marina on his way. He burns 50 gallons per hour (in two 600 hp engines) of diesel fuel at cruising speed. Of course, it only takes him 6-1/2 hours to get from Southport NC to Charleston SC on the outside--it will take us a week on the ICW. (We typically burn 2/3 gallon per hour of diesel fuel in our 30 HP engine.)
Southport NC to Barefoot Landing SC
We had to plan this leg around the tides, particularly the tide when passing by Shallotte Inlet on the ICW (which has extensive shoaling). I have a history of grounding at this inlet but we managed to avoid grounding here the last two times we passed by this inlet by working around the tides and using all the available information to avoid shallow water.
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| I see every sunrise and every sunset. This sunrise (in Southport NC) has to be the prettiest I've seen on this trip so far. |
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| s/v Rainy Days at the transient dock at Southport Marina at sunrise on November 13. |
We left Southport Marina according to plan--actually, 30 minutes ahead of plan, at 8:45 AM. We are passing by two ocean inlets today which cause severe shoaling of the ICW: Lockwood's Folly and Shallotte Inlet, both in southern NC. We are timing our departure so that we pass the worst of the two inlets, Shallotte Inlet, at mid-tide and rising.
We arrived at the first of the two problem areas (Lockwood's Folly) slightly ahead of schedule and the tide was just 0.7 feet above low tide but we made it through just fine. We arrived at the second of the two problem areas (Shallotte Inlet) just a little ahead of schedule. Lining up buoys R80A, G81, and R82 perfectly kept us in deep enough water. There was a sailboat aground between G81 and R82 because he veered just outside the straight line--it doesn't take much of an error here to be aground.
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| Sailboat aground where Shallotte Inlet crosses the ICW. TowBoatUS was providing assistance in getting off the sand bar. He was just a little outside the deepest water. |
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| Little River Swing Bridge is opening for us and one other sailboat. This was the first opening bridge in South Carolina. |
We entered the "Rock Pile" at MM 347--where the ICW leg was constructed by blasting through rock, leaving rock ledges along the way. We had to stay in the center of the channel to avoid the rock ledges. We called a security on Channel 16, advising other boats that we were coming through since there is little room to pass another boat in this area.
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| Barefoot Swing Bridge is opening for us and a couple of other boats coming north. This was the bridge that opened for us today. |
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| s/v Rainy Days tied up to Barefoot Marina's transient dock as the sun is going down. |
We arrived at Barefoot Marina at about 3 PM, over an hour ahead of our plan because we had a very favorable tidal current most of the afternoon. This is unusual for us to have slips three nights in a row. After arriving, I changed oil (at 495 engine hours), topped off the coolant reservoir (it was about a cup low), and checked the transmission fluid level (it was fine). I also changed the diaper under the engine--this catches any engine or transmission leaks and we can also identify the leak by color of the fluid that remains on the diaper.
Barefoot Landing to South Santee River
We decided to make 66 miles today and use all the available daylight since shoaling was not an issue for most of the day ahead. (We'll save the shoaling for Wednesday morning when we start out near high tide.)
We left our slip at Barefoot Marina (MM 354) at 7:00 AM, a little later than I wished because of the long day ahead of us (58 miles). For awhile we followed a C&C 37.7 (s/v “Sequel to...”) which is very similar to our boat. We move faster because of our new prop—so, we soon caught up and passed him.
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| The Socaste Swing Bridge closing after we went through. Most of the opening bridges in South Carolina are of a similar vintage. |
After about an hour into our travels, a deer jumped into the ICW and swam across. Last year, it was a bear swimming across the Alligator River—this year it’s a deer.
The deer was too far away for me to get a photograph.
The first portion of today’s trip was in a man-made canal. The remainder of the day was in a deep river-like body of water. We didn’t have to worry about shoals today.
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| Even though we were in the center of the ICW, our chart plotter showed that we were moving over land. It is hard to believe with all the technology we have that we still have errors like this one. |
The canal led into the beautiful and winding Waccamaw River. Most of the way down this river we had a 1-1/2-knot favorable tidal current and we were moving along at 8.1 knots. This may not sound like much but it results in a 20 percent boost in boat speed.
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| Motoring down the beautiful Waccamaw River was one of the highlights of our day. We motored 28 miles on this river to Georgetown SC. |
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| The bends in the Waccamaw River make it interesting. As we proceeded down this river we were nice and toasty warm inside our cockpit enclosure. |
After negotiating another canal, we anchored for the day just off the ICW in South Santee River (MM 420) at 3:30 PM. We traveled 66 statute miles today in 8-1/2 hours for an average boat speed of 7.765 mph (6.75 knots). We shared our anchorage with two other sailboats.
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| A view looking back to the ICW from our South Santee River anchorage. |
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| We were blessed with another beautiful sunset--this one from our anchorage on the South Santee River in SC. |
South Santee River to Isle of Palms
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| A nice home along SC's ICW with a long pier into the ICW. |
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| s/v Rainy Days tied up in a 60-foot slip in Isle of Palms Marina. |
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| I caught this shot of a seagull as he was changing his flight path to avoid hitting our shortwave antenna. |
Coming into a slip at Isle of Palms Marina was kind of like coming home since we stayed here one month last season when we were waiting to get re-powered. We had lunch at the restaurant on site and then took much needed showers. Right now, we actually feel human.
Our next blogpost will be published from Beaufort, SC in a few days. Stay tuned...
Thanks for following our blog!
Bob, your blog is well organized and informative.
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