Wrightsville Beach thru Thoroughfare Creek

We got up at 5:45 the next morning so we’d have everything ready to leave as soon as it was light enough to see. We pulled out about 6:45.

This shows our anchorage.

Beautiful sunrise as we left Wrightsville.

Big barge with crane near the mouth of the Cape Fear River.

Richard and Connie on Sea Salt.

Bald Head Island Lighthouse.

WHY???



Redneck condos at the North Carolina/South Carolina border

Pretty!

...Sorry, but this is just ugly.

I liked the color and angles of this house.

 

This sign says it all. There are rocks along the sides of the Waccamaw River near Myrtle Beach. If you get out of the channel you have a chance of hitting them. Be careful.

Here at the rocks

And here are more.

The chart calls this vortex. What is it? Have the aliens landed in Myrtle Beach?

We plan to spend the night at Calabash Creek tonight. We have been researching diesel prices, hoping to get a good deal. We found a place in Georgetown that had diesel for $3.99 a gallon with a $0.30 a gallon discount if you got over 50 gallons and spent the night. So… we decided we’d head there. Sea Salt and Rocking B decided they’d fuel there too. We called the marina and found out that they were full since there’s an old boat show there Saturday. So we decided we’d get there Monday. The marina called back and told us they were short on fuel and the new delivery would cost $4.00 with the discount. Not such a great deal now. So… Richard called around and found us another deal. Diesel at $3.99 with a 30% discount and a free night for us, since we were getting so much. Great for us! The other boats would be half price for the slip and the discount on the gas. Richard did a great job negotiating our deal. Thanks Richard!

 

So we went to Grand Dunes Marina at 5:00 pm. Ken found out there was a Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse at the marina and made plans to eat there. Now he knows I’m cheap so he decided he’d treat us to celebrate Shay’s Social Security birthday, even though it was in June. We argued and fussed but he would not listen. He ended up paying for all three couples. The meal was delicious and we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We all left stuffed. Thanks Ken and Margaret!

We had a shower around 6:15 so we had to get up and close the windows. We got up about 7:00 to get ready to leave. We filled up our water tanks, rinsed off the boat, fueled up, and then left the marina about 9:25 am. Rocking B and Sea Salt did the same and the caravan was going again.



Now what do you do here? This marker is in the center of the river.

Just a little place on the Waccamaw River.

Is it me or does this marker look a little "busy"?

Rocking B

Waccamaw scenes

Is this a marker or a bird nest? Hard to say.

Water lilies



Our anchorage at Cow House Creek.

So pretty!

Rocking B at Cow House Creek

These are bird houses for ducks

Sea Salt at Cow House Creek

These leaves are attached to the bottom of the creek

Turtle

Shay dog sitting at Wacca Wache Marina

This is one way to see the river, but I like mine better.

 

Birds

Escape

October 19^th, we are trying out a new anchorage today. Richard and Connie have stayed at Cow House Creek and recommended it to us. So we anchored there. It is a little narrower than we would prefer, but we will stay here at least tonight. Maybe tomorrow we will try out another anchorage, one that has the highest rating along the ICW.  We have been invited to Rocking B for spaghetti tonight. After dinner, we are dinghying to Wacca Wache Marina to listen to music.

The “Wacca Wache dingy service”, aka Ken picked us all up and took us to Rocking B. We had a great meal, spaghetti with homemade sauce, toasted garlic bread, and a great salad. Another stuffed night. Then the dinghy service took us to the marina for drinks, dessert, and music. We enjoyed the music and the company.

We stayed up until the boat did it’s “swing thing in the current” to make sure everything was ok. I’m not sure if Richard was up, but I know that Shay and Ken talked around 11:00 pm about swing room and that kind of stuff. It really is amazing to be sitting perfectly calm and in a certain position and in a few minutes you do a 180 degree turn. One minute we were facing Rocking B and the next we were facing Sea Salt. The wonders of the ocean.

The next morning we and Rocking B took a dinghy ride to the marina. We let the girls go for a walk then back to the dinghy. We met Vic and Gigi from Salty Turtle at the marina. They stopped for fuel and are headed for Butler Island. A guy at the marina told Shay we could go up the river and go into a creek that would take us around another island. So we took off and explored. It was beautiful. The ride was a long one but we enjoyed it.

After our ride we all moved down the river to Thoroughfare Creek. It has high ratings as an anchorage and we wanted to spend some time there. It is beautiful. Me, Shay, and Ken took a dingy ride and went to the beach. We met some people that told us these islands once had rice plantations on them. We plan on exploring the lagoon on the other side of the beach tomorrow.



Chartbook showing Thoroughfare Creek.

Rocking B at Thoroughfare Creek

Sandy beach at Thoroughfare

 

The other side of the sand bank, there is a large lagoon here.

We ate on Sea Salt tonight. We had toasted cheese sandwiches and homemade minestrone, and scones. Another great meal. We are in trouble, because tomorrow we eat on Escape.

What a great looking boat!

 

I cleaned up the boat for our guests then we all went exploring in Bouncing B, the dinghy from Rocking B. When we looked at the charts, we could see what looked like canals, so we went to see what they looked like. There were some houses, but we didn’t see many people.
 


Water lily

We explored the creek past our anchorage and kept seeing what looked like birdhouses. Well, you know these guys, they had all kinds of ideas about what they could be, bat houses, insect houses, fly traps to poison the flies… They are houses for ducks, we asked someone.
 

 Back to the boat to finish dinner. We had chili beans, coleslaw and mashed potatoes with onions, jalapenos, and cheese. We had zucchini bread for dessert. We talked about plans for tomorrow and decided we’d go to Georgetown, SC and anchor for 1 night. It will be a short day and that will give us time to explore the town and be ready to leave the next day.

Starting South 2012 MCYB to Wrightsville Beach

We left MCYB on Friday October 12^th. We had been very busy getting stuff ready to leave. We got up at 4:00 am and were ready to pull out at 5:00 am. Yes, it was dark. We slowly made our way to the inlet to check out the conditions. They were great. There were 2-3 foot waves with 11 seconds between them which made them gentle.

We had a course in for an outside passage so we started on the route. Shay told me to take a nap so I laid down. I told him I wanted a sunrise picture and kept asking him if it was time to get the picture. He told me to go to sleep and he’d wake me for the sunrise. Well, I got the picture. 

Ocean sunrise 2012

The conditions stayed great. We put out our fishing rods and started catching something big and strong. It was hard to reel in the fish. They kept fighting and when they saw the boat they went deeper. Well, we finally got the first one in and it was a little tunny. They are not good to eat so we got rid of it as soon as we could. We ended up catching a total of 8 of these fish. And threw them all back. We decided we’d stop fishing since that was all we were catching. They were fun to catch since they were fighters but not any good to eat.

These fish really put up a fight!



Tinny tuna

Shay called Dwayne to get some advice and he told him he needed to get below the little tinny. So he put on planers to get the lure lower in the water and it worked. We caught a big Spanish mackerel. Of course, we kept him. Shay cleaned him and we put him on ice.

My husband catches me dinner. He is a good provider.

Not my best dolphin shots.

We had a good trip and got into Wrightsville Beach at 4:30. We anchored and called Bad Bunny and invited them to eat fish with us. Of course, they were delighted to have another home cooked meal.

The next day we went to shore and walked around and then visited our friend Terry and his girlfriend, Kathy at his boat, Glass House.  We met Terry at Marathon. We sat around his boat for a while then visited the Arboretum. It was beautiful and we had a great time. Back to his boat to tell more “fish tales”, and then out to dinner and eat wings and burgers. We enjoyed our visit.

Us at the Japanese arch.

Terry and Kathy at the koi pond.

Fish

Is Shay trying out a new fishing technique?

Big mushrooms!

Wouldn't you love to have this playhouse in your backyard?

Statue of kids climbing a tree in front of a tree.

This is a butterfly bush like we had at our house.

 

This butterfly was actually a drum. Yes, Shay had to play it.

Beautiful bridge to the koi pond.

...And of course there was a Loch Ness Monster!

Serenity fountain

Terry and Kathy on his boat.

Sunday morning, October 14^th, we went for another dinghy ride to Terry’s boat then we went for a dinghy ride around the harbor. We enjoyed it so much that we let Dave from Bad Bunny take our dinghy for a tour. They have a sailing/rowing dinghy and it takes all the fun out of putzing around. Dave had been baking and we got a loaf of delicious zucchini bread. As soon as we got back to the boat, we had some with butter. It was great, moist and tasty. Thanks Dave!

We had visitors from another DeFever named Escape. They anchored near us and on their way to shore they came by for a visit. We invited them aboard and had a great time visiting them. They are still working people and are weekend boaters, but they have big plans for later.

Terry called and invited us over for dinner on his boat. We had a great time with them again and enjoyed pork on the grill, salad and grilled potatoes. Kathy had made pumpkin muffins and we took some zucchini bread, so we were all stuffed. It was dark so we had a leisurely trip back to the boat by starlight.

Lauren is back in Wrightsville and we have plans to see her today. Yeah! We cleaned the strataglass and then wiped up the decks since everything was damp from dew. After lunch, we went for a walk around “Wrightsville’s great loop”. It’s a 2.5 mile route that a lot of people do.

By the time we finished, Lauren was getting out of class and came to the boat for a visit. We got caught up on her school stuff and had a good visit. It’s supposed to storm this evening so we ate an early dinner at Tower Seven. Its half priced fajita night, so we all had chicken fajitas. They were good and Lauren took my leftovers for a snack after her dance practice. It’s from 9:30 to 11:30 so she’ll be ready for a snack. But she can’t dance, she has a sprained ankle and has to sit on the sidelines and learn the steps. We plan on seeing her again Tuesday and Wednesday since we are leaving on Thursday.

We had a pretty good storm but thank goodness it didn’t last long.

On October 17^th, Margaret and Ken, from Rocking B got to Wrightsville Beach. They had spent the night at MCYB and came down on the outside. We all had pizza on our boat and enjoyed catching up. We made plans for Lauren to take us shopping Wednesday, when she got off work. So Shay and Ken did their West Marine run, then the girls did our thing. We let Lauren decide where we were going for dinner, and she picked Carraba's. Ken was delighted, since he said they had the best mussels he had ever eaten. We had trouble with our waiter, Ken told him we wanted “an abundance” of the spices for dipping our bread in and he kept bringing a smidge. So…we combined the smidges into a “great abundance” and got what we wanted. He was not one of our favorite people.

Ken and Margaret and the girls getting to Wrightsville anchorage.

...See the girls are there, making sure the anchorage is ok.

We hugged Lauren bye and told her we’d see her at Christmas. Gosh, that seems like a long time away.

We put up the dinghy and got things ready for an early departure. Our friends, Richard and Connie, from Sea Salt, arrived at Wrightsville Beach late that night. They had had problems with their boat and had a very long bad day of travel, but decided to leave with us the next morning.