NORTH CAROLINA

Saturday, May 2

Fort Sumter

We took off early from Charleston and made a pass around Fort Sumter to get a good look at it from the water, then headed up the channel toward Georgetown, SC. I had thought this would be a "slow cruise" day where we would only go about 7-8 knots, a more relaxing pace than what we have been doing the past few days. We were traveling with HERON, another PDQ 34, and a PDQ 41 with new owners aboard (the old name of the boat was HYE LIFE, the new name will be GYPSY CAT). It ended up that the scenery just wasn't worth the slower speed. It was pretty much straight line canals for several hours, so we boosted our speed up to the higher range and pulled into Georgetown, SC in the afternoon. There are a few small marinas in Georgetown, but they all seemed to be either full for the night, or not interested in any more business, so we anchored out in the very-well protected bay. We anchored once, then decided to move to a different location and found the anchor chain covered in thick, slimy black mud when we pulled it up. Well, you don't want that kind of mud going into the storage locker for the chain, or else your whole boat will soon smell like low tide. I got out my hose and connected it to a pump on the foredeck which pulls seawater to wash down the chain and anchor as we raised it. I guess because of the age of the hose, and its exposure to the tropical heat of Florida for a couple of years, it immediately broke into about a half dozen pieces. I improvised washing down the chain using a bucket and we re-anchored, but now I was on a quest to get into town and buy a new hose. We took the dinghy over to the town dock and I started walking toward the hardware store shown on the Google map on my phone while Elaine stayed in the central area of the town to check out the shops. Google maps was wrong - I ended walking about 2 miles (on a hot, humid afternoon) before I found a hose. It was worth it, though, the next morning when we weighed anchor and I had the hose ready to wash all the mud off of the anchor chain and anchor.

Anchored in Georgetown Harbor

In the evening we were invited over to the PDQ 41 for cocktails and had a great time getting to know the new owners and their crew. The only drawback was the no-see-ums which were out in force and really seem to go for West Coast skin to bite. I have about 100 bites on my legs (shouldn't have been wearing shorts!) which itch like crazy.

 It seems like we've been eating out most nights lately, so, after cocktails, it was nice to get back to our boat for the first home-cooked meal in a while.

Sunday May 3

We left Georgetown around 8:30 AM and headed up the Waccamaw river. This is a very pretty area which we liked on our trip south a couple of years ago, and it was nice to see it on a sunny, warm spring day. We took a by-pass through Pike Creek which was an exotic area that Elaine said was like a ride at Disneyland.

The good news was that it was a gorgeous day, the bad news was that it was a Sunday and most everyone in South Carolina that owned a boat was on the water. There were some who appeared to have the knowledge and skill to be a safe boater, but there were, unfortunately, many that did not. It was, at times, a frustrating day.

We kept up a pretty good pace after the Waccamaw River, stopping to refuel before the section of the ICW known as "the rockpile." This relatively narrow channel is cut though rock unlike most of the rest of the waterway which is dredged mud and sand. If you get out of the channel here, the risk is more than an inconvenient grounding - here, you can do some real damage to your boat.

The green marker is the channel, behind it -- rock!

Made it safely through the rockpile and ended up near the North Carolina border anchored in a quiet, protected area just off of the ICW, barbecuing chicken for dinner.

Monday May 4

Got off to an early start after a quiet night at anchor. The early morning fishing boats going by helped get things going. I had been tightening the alternator belt on the port engine every few days, and it had been putting out more and more black dust in the engine room, so I decided to change it out for a new one I had on board. It was a relatively quick job - done even before my first cup of coffee for the day.

Weather was quite nice today with a southwest wind that was pretty much to our back, which made it much warmer on the flybridge. The water was smooth all day, even crossing the sound at Cape Fear. We decided to make it a fairly short day and join some fellow PDQ owners at a marina in Wrightsville, NC. It was a very small marina - essentially a few docks out in front of a restaurant - and our dock was a challenge to get to because of a narrow entrance, a strong current and the wind. Although the boat felt a little odd as I first entered the dock area, it was clear something was wrong when I was maneuvering up to the dock and the boat did not respond as it should have. We got tied up and I realized my port engine was not shifting into reverse. During my diagnostics as to why this had happened, I found a bolt on the engine room floor, figured out where it was supposed to be and, ultimately, got the engine shifting into reverse again after putting everything back together.

The marina is less than a mile from a nice grocery store, so we walked up to the store to restock a bit. Dinner was with the PDQ crew at the marina restaurant, a tough crowd to break in a new waiter...