Holy City, Batman, here we come.

We are again underway southbound in the Atlantic Ocean, this time off the South Carolina coast. We are making the day run to Charleston Harbor from Winyah Bay. Our reservation there starts tomorrow, but we need to make a slack-water entry at 11 AM, so we will anchor someplace tonight and make our way to the marina in the morning. It was supposed to be a nice day for a passage, but we have been bouncing over three foot rollers under medium chop since making the turn south.

Sunset over the Bird Island anchorage off the Little River.

Saturday we arrived to the Little River inlet against the last of the ebb, but we were glad to get inside the jetties and out of the slop. I was also happy to have a little against us as I worked my way into Bonaparte Creek behind Bird Island. The anchorage was chock full, between several cruising boats and a couple of  locals on day hooks, and we had to work our way back past a 6' shoal, at dead low tide, to find a decent spot (map). One of the locals looked to have wrapped his prop and was diving on it as we passed. I'm happy to now have a track, because that might be the best spot in the anchorage. We had a nice dinner on board and a very comfortable night.

Myrtle Beach and the Grand Strand can be something of a gantlet on pleasant weekends, and so Sunday morning we made an early start to beat the traffic. We had a quiet couple of hours through Calabash Crossroads, Little River, and Myrtle Beach, and did not see traffic picking up until we were past the Rock Pile and approaching Barefoot Landing. It was a gorgeous day, and even in the more remote stretch through Socastee we saw a lot of small boats out enjoying it.

Wait, where are we? Not Easter Island, but Grand Dunes.

The early start had us at Wacca Wache before 2, and we pulled up to the fuel dock to squeeze another couple hundred gallons in at a great price of just $2.96 per gallon. We dropped the hook in our usual spot across the river at the mouth of Cow House Creek (map), where on this visit we had to squeeze in among three other boats. Several more boats from the day's conga line passed us to anchor further down the creek. We dropped the tender and headed back to the marina for dinner at Outriggers Bar & Grill.

We were well set on a short scope, but kept a watchful eye out through the evening's 20-knot gusts. We had a comfortable night, but found ourselves in just 7' of water Monday morning with king tides. We caught just the last hour of the ebb and then slow-rolled against the flood the rest of the day, all the way to Georgetown.

We always see turtles on the Waccamaw. This was the closest shot I could get.

We normally anchor in Georgetown, but with two nights of forecast subfreezing temperatures, and not a lot warmer during the day, we decided to take a dock with power and hunker down until the cold snap passed. We were a bit late on the draw, and all the marinas in the Georgetown Basin were full up when I called on Sunday, and we settled for the Georgetown Landing Marina out on the Pee Dee River.

This was our first time here, and after making the nearly 180° turn off the Waccamaw it was just about a mile to the docks. We tied up on the inside face dock at the north end (map), which turned out to be a comfortable spot. They still had room when we arrived but had filled up before the day was out and were turning boats away.

The building shoal at Cow House Creek is visible at low tide.

While it was still warm enough to be comfortable I put the e-bike on the ground and made a pilgrimage to Walmart for provisions, stopping at the UPS drop in the hardware store en route. From this dock the quaint downtown with a half dozen restaurants is too far to walk, and so at dinner time we walked the mile to El Cerro Grande, a decent Mexican place that was really one of only two options. The food was good and they had Dos Equis Ambar by the pitcher, but the walk along US 17 is not the pleasant stroll found elsewhere in town.

The temperature dropped rapidly overnight and the winds picked up, gusting up into the 40s. We had doubled lines when we tied up, and we buttoned up every opening on the boat. We ended up running the heat all night, uncharacteristic for us even at a dock. By the time we awoke in the morning the temperature had climbed back up to just 32°.

The high winds and low temps persisted all day, and we mostly stuck to indoor activities. In the mid-afternoon it warmed up enough for me to add water while tracking down a leak in the engine room that only occurs when we top up the fresh water tank. I also remediated a persistent rust streak under one of the portlights. It looks like the outer trim will need to be removed and re-bedded. I also bundled up and took a short walk around the marina neighborhood.

The steel stand for this scarecrow outside the pizza joint literally snapped in the high winds.

At dinner time we braved the cold to walk to the closest place, Southern Pizza Company, ironically right next door to Pizza Hut. Draft beer and surprisingly good pizza; we had the thick crust. We had two slices left over and neither of us wanted to carry a box home with the temps in the 30s; we persuaded them to give us some food service foil instead and I was able to stuff the wrapped slices into my parka pocket.

After Louise turned in for the night I started seeing posts in my feed about Northern Lights being visible in the Carolinas and as far south as northern Florida. I did go outside to look, but there are far too many artificial lights here to be able to see anything that faint. Ironically, boats that could not get marina reservations and stopped in some of the more remote anchorages probably had a great view.

Yesterday things started to warm back up and it would have been a fine day to make the first of a two-day run to Charleston down the inside. But this is one of the most shoal-ridden sections of the entire ICW, requiring judicious timing of tides in several spots and focused attention to the helm, so when Louise deemed today acceptable for an outside run, we opted to just stay put in Georgetown and leave this morning.

Last night's sunset from our anchorage in the Western Channel of Winyah Bay.

With the cold snap over we had no need to stay at the dock, and I wanted to be able to enjoy downtown for one evening, and so we made plans to leave the dock and drive around the corner into the basin for the night. We knew the anchorage would empty out by mid-morning and we watched the exodus on AIS. We planned to linger at the dock until close to lunch time to take advantage of power while things were still warming back up.

Before that time came, I learned the space weather event was still ongoing and there was a possibility again last night of an aurora visible on the horizon from our location. We both decided the chance of seeing the Northern Lights trumped dinner in Georgetown, and we shifted gears to anchoring in the Western Channel, where we might get a view over the distant light pollution of the Grand Strand. The marina gave us a late checkout and we stayed at the dock until after 3 PM.

We pushed downriver against the flood and dropped the hook in a familiar spot south of the ICW junction (map). We found four sailboats already in the anchorage, and we unplugged our string of lights as a courtesy. We had a nice dinner on board and settled in. Sadly, by early evening the NOAA aurora forecast was saying the view line would be quite far north of us, somewhere in Pennsylvania. I still got up and looked several times throughout the evening, but saw only the glow of the Strand.

Sunrise underway this morning as we made our way out Winyah Bay.

If nothing else the move to the Western Channel cut nearly an hour off today's cruise. We still left before dawn, but the plotter has us arriving ahead of 4 PM and not just before sunset. That's early enough that we might be able to tender ashore for dinner, depending on where we end up dropping the hook.

We'll be in Charleston a full week, and my next post will be underway somewhere south of there. My next project is to figure out where we might be around Thanksgiving and make some dinner reservations, before everyone is sold out.