Headed South Again

We left Myrtle Beach on Saturday after re-provisioning.  Most of the day we had residential development on both sides of the waterway.  This was interesting in its variety.  It was much like an art gallery that has hung all the different eras and styles of art randomly together on one long gigantic wall.  There were American palaces and ramshackle fishing cabins next to each other.  Like the art gallery it reinforces the truism that there is no accounting for taste …  We tied up for the night at a small marina near Murrells Inlet, with a golf club community on one side and a swamp on the other.  Here we discovered that even boaters get into the spirit of decorating for the holidays.  Both the marina and at least one large boat were gaily lit.

Christmas bear arrives by boat!

In the morning we floated out of the swamp into an area that had swamp vegetation mixed with beautiful marsh grasses.  The hybrid habitat included Spanish moss and some type of Cypress that has knees that emerge above the surface of the water, looking like wooden garden gnomes.  We also eyed a bird wading that look incredibly like a bald eagle, but we don’t think that eagles wade while they fished.  Any ideas?? 

 Cypress trees with their knees in the water.

 

Any ideas?  Ever seen a wading eagle before?

We eventually pulled into a small town, McClellanville, smaller then Oriental North Carolina, but just as charming.  This was once a very busy oyster harvesting and processing center.  Since canned oysters have gone out of fashion, they have managed to keep a sizable shrimping fleet on the water.  The town is full of Victorian and antebellum homes surrounded by live oaks dripping with Spanish moss.  Think of a scene from the Prince of Tides…

Monday morning did not dawn.  The rain pretty much drowned everything including the sunrise.  But we were determined that we were not going to spend a second day in McClellanville, having exhausted our curiosity the day before.  So we put on our foul weather gear and headed out onto the water in the rain – what the heck – water, water, everywhere… By 1000 we were soaked to the skin, but at least it was not cold – we have gotten to the point where we consider 60 degrees as warm.  Thankfully the rain stopped by noon and the sun came out just as we approached the beach area of Charleston – Sullivan’s Island.  Our entry into Charleston Harbor was gloriously sunny although blustery. 

We spent three days in Charleston and had a wonderful time.  We had a slip in a fairly new marina in town, that put us in walking distance to everything we wanted to do – Christmas shop, grocery shop, walk, ride our bikes and even take in a Christmas concert by the Vienna Boys Choir who did one show in town while we were there.  Charleston has grown immensely since we left 19 years ago. We visited old haunts and dear old friends.  We even made new friends at the marine, where half of the boats were going to stay in Charleston for the winter.  All the lady sailors bonded over breakfast one morning and shared stories and important information about places on the waterway. 

This was the view from our boat in the marina in Charleston.

We hated to leave, but we are still looking for temperatures consistently higher than 70 degrees.  We would like to sleep without the heat on at night and get back into our shorts.  So we departed early Friday to continue our push southward.  We had a wonderfully bright morning to photograph Charleston as we travelled through the harbor. 

 

The Charleston battery in the early morning.

The day was sunny, warm and uneventful until close to the end.  We were just about to enter a small creek where we were going to put down anchor for the night (since temperatures were going to be warm enough overnight to not require heat, and therefore electricity – hurrah, 50 degrees!!!  Anyway, as we rounded the bend just prior to the entrance to our overnight creek we came upon a very unfortunate soul who had not only run aground, but the tide had gone out and left him very high and dry.  He was sitting very dejectedly on the fore deck of his boat, but waved us on indicating that he did not need help. 

High and dry.  This makes for a very bad day.

We could only surmise that he had pulled to the side and anchored in order to sleep – although it was 3 pm .  When he woke the tide had left him very high and dry.  The tides in Carolina and Georgia can add or loose as much as 8 feet of water over a 6 hour period.  When we anchored, we had to be very aware that the tide would change at least twice while we were there and the currents would change direction and pull the boat different ways in the water.  Anyway, we anchored in our creek at dead low tide.  The water was so low we could see the oyster beds at the base of the marsh grass, but there was not a domicile or other structure in site; just birds, marsh, trees and water. We watched a beautiful sunset as the tide turned and came in quickly enough that the oyster beds were covered within 90 minutes.  The poor grounded soul would be floating in another 4 hours.

The views in our anchorage.

Saturday dawned clear and warm, and the tide was high, so we would be able to ride out with the tide.  This speeds up the boat as much as 30%, but then you will loose just as much when you are struggling against the tide.  One slightly disconcerting thing about another wise perfect morning, is that rather than the sun, we woke to the sounds of gunshots.  These were not particularly close and we guess that it must be deer or geese season.  We however made haste to ensure that we did not get between any hunter and their game.  We moved quickly through Beaufort and arrived in Hilton head in the early afternoon of a delightfully warm day with multiple porpoise sightings en route. They remain pretty camera shy.  I never seem to have my camera handy to document their existence.  Today, I had the camera, but both batteries were dead..  The weather and marina conspired to allow us to get a 2 hour bike ride around the island (they had loaner bikes so we didn’t have to bring ours up from the deep storage area}.  We were also treated to a colorful sunset, as we sat and planned for the less favorable weather coming in the next few days.