Butler Island Anchorage, SC to Lightkeeper’s Marina, Coquina Harbor, North Myrtle Beach, SC
Days On Cruise: 24
Today’s Distance: 60.9 miles
Total Odometer: 684 miles
Our Saturday night anchorage spot behind Butler Island on the Waccamaw River was so quiet, secure and beautiful that when we got up Sunday morning we decided to do something we’ve not done before: take a day off! Instead of motoring further northward, we spent the day in our anchorage puttering on minor boat projects, reading books, taking a nap and generally relaxing. This was the first day we’ve had a “down” day with no driving our sightseeing, and it was great! We intended to drop the dinghy and explore the creek adjacent to our anchorage, but the wind stayed pretty high all day, so we never got around to it. There was only one other boat in sight, a sailboat anchored about a mile south of us.
Click on the photo below and what do you see in the giant nest at the top of the snag tree?
Monday morning we spent 30 miles (about 3 1/2 hours) traveling through Cypress swamp land, which includes lots of trees growing in the water. It’s all part of a huge National Wildlife Refuge and as far as we’re concerned, is the most beautiful stretch of the ICW we’ve seen yet. We’d heard other people say this would be the case, that it was their favorite stretch, but we were still caught by surprise at the 8 shades of vibrant green, quiet, lack of ANY development, and remoteness. Lots of birds, no manatees or even dolphins!
The photo below shows what “billboards” look like along the waterway. There aren’t many, but this particular marina had a billboard up about every 5 miles.
When we were younger adults, we were interested in hiking and mountain climbing, so took a rigorous mountain-climbing class. During ensuing years of hiking and climbing, we came to understand that a GPS was ALWAYS to be trusted more than our own eyes: it would tell us when we were on a false summit and needed to climb up the next ridge to the true summit, and it would tell us when we were approaching cliffs we might fall off of, even if we couldn’t see them. The ICW has turned this piece of training completely upside down! During our 3 days of training with Captain Chris Caldwell in January, he told us repeatedly, “Anytime there is a conflict between what your GPS/chartplotter is telling you, and what your eyes are telling you, don’t believe the GPS; believe your eyes!” We’ve had many examples that have proven the truth of this statement, and finally caught a photo of one today that illustrates the point. Do you really believe we were driving our boat this far up on land today?????
You can’t actually see the cause of the disturbance on the water in the photo below, but it was two jet-skis that came zipping toward us on the river, then turned sharply to jump our wake; looked like they thought it was great fun!
After the 30 miles of spectacular beauty on the Waccamaw River, we entered a man-made canal called the Pine Island Cut. Mile after mile, it was land that had been scraped clear of all growth by development, and big houses put up in new developments. The weird thing was there were no trees in the new developments, and most of the lots were empty, so the scrunched together houses that were there looked strange. We thought it an unattractive stretch.
And finally we came to the Rock Pile, of which we’d been warned only a few days ago. We were told the channel here was very narrow, plenty deep, but lined by rocks that were invisible at high tide, but could be seen at low tide, so it was important we stayed in the middle of the channel, as hitting the Rock Pile would not be forgiving like the sand in the rest of the ICW we’ve traveled so far. Our journey through this stretch was thankfully uneventful.
The color in this photo is not “true”. In fact, the entire house, trim, dock, ramp, everything was one shade or another of PURPLE! Interesting?
We arrived at the Calabash Creek anchorage about 3:00 and had a new experience: we were unable to set our anchor! The wind was blowing pretty hard, the current was fast as there’s an ocean inlet nearby, and the water was shallow with crab pots every couple hundred of feet. We made two attempts at anchoring, and neither was successful. We knew the 6 feet of water would drop 2-3 more feet during the night, and the narrow channel meant we might end up on the shore in only two feet of water with the tide swing. So, we called it good and headed to the closest marina, where we’re spending the night for only $1.00/foot, the cheapest marina we’ve stayed in to date.
This is a big, full marina, but as far as we can tell, we’re the only people staying on our boat tonight. There are no other people around! That’s fine by us. We filled our water tanks, declined the option of hooking up to electricity, had a good dinner and called it a night.
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