Life Aboard: Georgetown, SC and Outside Overnighter

Our sunset the night before we left.

We calculated the tides and current for the Waccamaw from Enterprise to Georgetown and decided we'd leave about 10:00 and get a push down the river. We spent about an hour drying off the decks, cushions, and windows and left about 9:50.

Its a beautiful day to travel- blue skies, fluffy clouds, and gentle breeze. We had a good push part of the way down the river, then were going against the current. What did we do wrong? Well, we got more push than against.

Have I mentioned I love this river?

When we came thru in the spring, this boat was anchored across the river from here. Wonder why he changed his mind?

Wacca Weche Marina has good food and music.

We thought Rocking B was sneaking up on us. But no such luck!

We had a lot of boats traveling with us. Most of them going faster than us, as usual.

We traveled 5 hours at 5.5kts and moved about 28nm. We got to Georgetown about 3:00.

Shay likes the looks of this boat. It's for sale, but not to us!

Stormy Seas waiting at the dock.

As we went into Georgetown, there were several boats in front of us and I was concerned about them taking up our anchorage. I found out Shay had told one of them about our anchorage! Well, no worry. They all went to the dock or anchored near the docks. So we scooted around the anchored boats and docks and had our anchorage all to ourselves! We're not sure why people don't come around the island to our anchorage. Maybe they don't know about it? Maybe they think it's too shallow to get to? Maybe they think it's too noise? Whatever reason, STAY AWAY, so we can have it to ourselves!

Our travels today.

As we anchored, we noticed the steel mill looked closed. In the spring, they announced it would be closing this fall and it has. I'm not sure how many people worked there, but it always looked and sounded busy on first and seconds shift. Georgetown is like a lot of other small coastal cities, it has a lot of empty buildings and houses.

It's quiet over here this year. The steel mill has closed.

Not sure what the clump is in the center of the channel, but it was there all the time we were. We have used this channel to enter our anchorage, not anymore.

We always have lots of bubbles when we anchor here. Not sure why or what.

We had a quiet evening- watching tv, working on travel plans, and checking the weather. We are planning to leave Friday afternoon around 5 pm and go outside to St Helena Sound and then to Beaufort, SC. It's about a 22 hour trip from here to Beaufort. We will get to the inlet about 8:30 am and then head to Beaufort, another 2 hour trip.

If we go inside it will take us two days and we will pass thru some of the skinniest water of our trip. McClellanville has an area that is 3.5' at MLW. North of Charleston has an area that is 4' at MLW. Then Watt's Cut, Fenwick Cut, Ashepoo/Coosaw Cutoff are all problems. You might think, well just plan the trip to go thru these areas at high tide. Yes, that sounds good, but you can't go thru everywhere at high tide unless you wait between places. That could take several days. So since the weather is favorable, we are going outside on an overnighter to avoid these problems.

We checked the weather and it still looks good for an outside passage. We had an easy morning. Worked on blog then started getting stuff ready. We fixed a "ditch bag" with water, food flashlight, handheld GPS and radio, wallets and other stuff we might need if we had to leave the boat in a hurry.

We had grilled burgers for lunch and then started taking up the anchor. It usually takes about 30 minutes here to get all the gunk off the chain and anchor.

We left the marina at 2:15 and headed for Winyah Bay. On the way out we saw a set of steps floating in the water. We heard the Coast Guard call out a warning later about them. All this rain has really caused lots of damage and debris.

Bye Georgetown!

Heading toward Winyah Bay

Georgetown Lighthouse

Folks from the ferry boat walking along the beach. Its a pretty day for it.

You can see how the current is pushing against the buoy, that's what pushed us out!

The water was calm until we got to the inlet and with the wind coming in and the current going out it was rough. We had a push all the way out and that was good. We thought the water would calm down when we got out of the inlet, but talked about heading back in and anchoring inside if it didn't change. Good for us, the water settled down and we continued down the coast. We got up to 9.7kts as we were heading out.

We met Stormy Seas coming back into a stormy inlet!

We wanted to travel at a speed that would get us to St. Helena Sound about 8:00 am Saturday morning. We kept checking our arrival time at the first buoy and adjusting our speed to make that happen.

The sun set about 7:30 pm and we had several hours of dark and then an almost full moon came up. We were glad to have the light, but we had clouds cover the moon later in the night.

We left the inlet with another boat, but it was heading farther south so it was gone in a little while. We saw lots more boats going north and south during the night. We had a big boat pulling a big barge and we made sure we stayed out of his path.

Pretty boat in a pretty sunset!

We both covered watches during the night, but as usual, Shay had more than his share. I kept trying to go to sleep, but can't sleep on demand. It was cold out here! The weather predicted 50 degrees and it felt like it. We both had on long pants, socks, jackets with our hoods pulled up, and Shay had on gloves!

We both saw a beautiful sunrise this morning.

We got to St. Helena Sound buoy at about 8:00 am, just as planned. This inlet is not a well marked as Winyah Bay. The markers do not have lights and they are farther apart. Glad we had the sunlight to help us find them.

Us heading in.

We got a push from the incoming tide almost all the way to Beaufort. We got here at 12:00. We traveled 21.75 hours, went 125.58nm, at an average speed of 5.8kts. We got great fuel mileage, 3.22 nm/g. Since we got such a good push out of Georgetown, we were able to go slow on the outside to make our entrance work out. That meant good fuel usage.

Pretty waterfront.

Here we are between the bridge and the marina. Our first time in this spot.

We are anchored in a different spot, we are between the bridge and the marina. We usually go past the marina, but that area looked more crowded than we like. So far this is looking good.

We're both tired and Shay is catching up on his sleep. We were hoping we would be able to eat at Filling Station on Lady's Island, across the harbor tonight. But they only have food Tuesday-crab legs, Wednesday-HD/HB, Thursday-pork chop, and Friday-steak. We'll probably eat on the boat tonight, since we will still be tired.