Monthly Archives: November 2014

Tuesday, 11 November                                                            53.3 SM

Two miles ahead, down the cocoa brown Waccamaw River, the thin mast of a sailboat pierces the smoky gray haze that hangs over the morning. No need for sunglasses, not for a while at least. A “silly hat” is a good idea, though. Twelve knots from the northwest sharpen the chill, damp 50-degree air that cuts through every layer of fleece.

Reason enough to be underway at 0700, moving farther south. Fifty-plus miles away, Isle of Palms will make for a long day on Steadfast but just the name—Isle of Palms—conjures the warmth of the tropics and inspires initiative.

It’d be easy to get lost in the Cape Romain Wildlife Refuge where the marsh seems to go on forever.

The Waccamaw opens into Winyah Bay but the wheel turns hard a’starboard for the five miles of the Estherville Minim Creek Canal from which the waterway evolves to a serpentine series of shoals and turns through mile after mile of open wind-swept marsh.

How’d the first settlers find their way through this maze?

McClellanville, just up Jeremy Creek, sounds like an interesting little town. But it’s only noon, too early to call it a day, so Little Red keeps humming her tune and Steadfast motors on. More marsh, more shoals. Now and again, the crew waves from a bigger, faster boat as she passes by.

The sun rises over yachts and palms at the Isle.

It’s 1600 when the first tall palms of the isle come into view. Isle of Palms Marina couldn’t be more convenient to the waterway, just a quick turn to port and you’re in. It’s a full house this night but Chase the dockmaster finds a vacant 27’ along the fuel dock and Steadfast is home for the night.

Maybe two. IOP invites exploration.

Steadfast out.

Monday, 10 November                                                                            31.1 SM

You never know what you’ll see in the water.

From the basin at Osprey Marina, it’s a short run down the rest of the land cut to where the waterway joins the Waccamaw River, reminiscent at first of the southern stretch of the Dismal Swamp Canal. But soon, there’s no mistaking this is low country.

Spanish Moss. Rice fields. It’s the Low Country.

The Waccamaw widens, with the shores showing for miles the vestiges of rice and indigo plantations of the Ante-bellum South. Spanish moss is seen for the first time, draped on host trees here-and-there. And instead of porpoise, if one looks sharply, one may see a deer swimming across the river.

A Jeanneau 40 wends through the Waccamaw weeds.

The Waccamaw’s deep here, running 17 to 30 feet, so there’d be time to relax and enjoy the vista. But relax and, what’s right off the bow but another clump of something that looks like a waterlily. Big floats, four and five feet across, bobbing in the brownish water. They’re all along the twenty miles or so down to the turn up the Sampit River to Georgetown.

The clock tower anchors a rejuvenated Front Street.

Georgetown makes a sensible place to stop for the night, it being one of the very few towns along this stretch of the ICW. Even were that not the case, this town would be a worthwhile destination. A few working shrimpers still call this their home port but not many. Instead, the economy here—as in so many waterfront towns–now is the waterfront. The handsome Harborwalk pier is patrolled by thirsty tourists who choose from a dozen dining options, from French to Cajun, Low Country, or just burgers. There are the usual “antique” shops, art galleries and other retail, too. There’s room to anchor in nine feet or so and a couple of marina docks at which to, yes, plug in on a chilly night.

A block back from the harbor, many of Georgetown’s earliest homes remain, standing shoulder to shoulder under a canopy of oaks and elms. Trees and homes date back two hundred years or more. It’s a beautiful town for a stroll on a cool evening in the fall.

Low Country. We like it.

Steadfast out.

Sunday, 9 November                                                                        27.3 SM

When you think of Myrtle Beach, what comes to mind? The Grand Strand, right? Hotels, bars, fast food, bars, tee-shirts, bars, miniature golf, Golf-golf and, yes, bars. Don’t forget the traffic, stoplights and here-and-there a few happy folks who appear to have had too much to drink.

A tight channel but enough for big boats.

How about goats mowing the grass? Maybe not so much.

Yesterday’s brief foray to the UPS store brought back memories of the Myrtle Beach we all know and love from the days of our youth. Steadfast slipped into “Myrtle Beach” at day’s end today. At least, that is the post office address of Osprey Marina. But this lovely location is nothing like the Grand Strand.

The narrowest of channels leads off the ICW to a man-made basin filled with boats and yachts of all types and sizes, circled first by well-manicured lawn with dense woods beyond. You just don’t see a marina in a setting like this. (Nor do you see diesel fuel for three-bucks a gallon!) Osprey Marina is special.

Pilots know about VORTAC.

As was the relatively-short run down from Little River, seeing sights you just don’t see that often from a boat…anywhere! Take the “Rock Pile,” for instance, a straight stretch of canal blown out of the granite bed. Don’t stray too far from the center. Loose rock remains strewn along the sides of Pine Island Cut, as it’s called, for nearly twenty miles.

It’s tee time at River Dunes.

Then there’s the VORTAC installation. You come around a bend in the canal and, waddya know, there’s an open field with a flying saucer sitting right there! No, it’s just VORTAC (which, when you look it up, is not far off from a UFO).

A few miles up ahead, a couple of gondolas swing across the waterway from an aerial tram. It’s there to move golfers from a parking lot on one side to the pro shop and first tee on the other. This is the land of the never-ending fairway after all.

Grande Dunes is so important, it has its own bridge.

A bit farther and you’re into (not just any but the) Grande Dunes, a residential-golf development that lines both sides of the waterway with ersatz Spanish architecture, “grande” stucco home with tiled roof after another, for miles.

Don’t miss the turn to Osprey Marina.

The homes become more modest approaching Socasstee and the swing bridge there. Homes then give way altogether to nature as the waterway winds in a more natural path through the woods and marshes until, there off to starboard, there’s a small white painted sign alerting passing mariners to the turn to Osprey Marina.

Osprey’s groundskeepers work 7 days a week.

Miles meets arriving vessels at the fuel dock, Lynn presents a welcome bag full of boater goodies—Koozie, samples of Tide and Bounce, bath soap, Pecan Twirls and a Honey Bun—and the goat herd ambles onto the scene to keep the lawn looking good.

Sure, the Post Office thinks this is Myrtle Beach but we know better. This sure ain’t the Grand Strand.

Steadfast out.

Saturday, 8 November                                                37.0 SM

Long piers reach out all along the waterway in North Carolina.

He sits sideways in the sun under a porkpie hat, sunglasses, jacket zipped up in the cool morning breeze. Perched on the bench at the end of the pier, he tracks the southward flight of the Snowbirds, sometimes offering a gentle farewell with the wave of a hand. One wonders what stories he could tell about fishing off that pier, building the beachhouse, weekends with the family.

As Rod Stewart might say, every pier tells a story, don’t it. So Steadfast today passes the scene of hundreds if not thousands of stories along the waterway. Her story is simple, Red humming along at 2200 RPM as she pushes us off the pier at Southport at 0630.

The view astern leaving Southport.

There are shoals up ahead, of course—first at Lockwoods Folly (quite a story in itself), later Shallotte Inlet, each demanding a couple of miles of added caution—but they’re cleared with no problems. There are bridges, too, but these newer spans at Holden Beach, Ocean Isle and Sunset Beach are made for sailboats with more than 60’ clearance.

There are stories here, for sure, but somehow, it’s easy to believe “apparel” here might be as the sign says, “Unique.”

Untold stories stand mute in the mud on the west side at Holden. On the piers there, too. Oh, but you’d like to know what that’s all about!

They’re all business under the Holden Beach Bridge.

Just before noon, Steadfast slips across the state line into the State of South Carolina. It sends a welcoming party from the Little River Inlet to greet Sequel, the blue-hulled trawler ahead. An officer from the Department of Natural Resources (DNR!) boards while the patrol boat crew stands off. When done with Sequel, they intercept the southbound cruising sloop astern. But for whatever reason (too small to matter?) Steadfast is ignored and she motors on to the town of Little River for a slip at Lightkeepers Marina (one of the cruising guide’s “50 Frugal Favorites” on the ICW). It’s gonna be chill again tonight, they say, so we plug in.

There’s an errand to be run—shipping a package via UPS—but James the dockmaster says, “No problem. I’ll just giv-ya the keys ta ma cah. Take ya tahm. Don’t nobody else need it today.”

Much appreciated, James. Jake, and Joe and Donna, neighbors down the pier, all come by to say “hi.” It’s a welcoming kind of place, Little River. Steadfast will push on in the morning but this is one spot that deserves a return visit.

Steadfast out.

Friday, 7 November                                                            21.2 SM

Pelicans perch on the pilings that mark the channel twenty feet away. Two men (in shorts!) work their fishing lines off the end of the pier at the bow. Steadfast is being readied to cast off.

No optical illusion, her tall stick cleared by 2′.

Last night, David-the-Dockmaster pulled out a pocket tide table and advised “There’s no point leaving before 8. Not given the tide.” An 0800 departure would put Steadfast at the Cape Fear River by 0900, early in its ebb. The Cape Fear, it is said, comes by the name honestly. If not feared, she definitely should be respected and wind against tide is something to be avoided at all costs.

The wind this morning continues to blow but clocked during the night, now a hearty nor’westerly at 17, gusting to 25. Out in the waterway, the genny fills and helps push the speed–over-ground to 7-plus miles-an-hour at just 1800 RPM. It ought to be just right for the river.

There’s the tense moment here-and-there—shoaling at Carolina Beach inlet, for instance—but no traffic. Overall, a real easy run down to Snow’s Cut. Then it gets interesting.

Barren dunes line the shores of the Cape Fear River.

First, there’s the current. Speeds go from the upper 7s down to the mid-3s (miles-an-hour, remember; this is the ICW). This on the approach to the Carolina Beach Bridge, whose height (65’) is no issue for Steadfast but the closer you get, the more the waters churn and swirl. It’s like a mini-Hell Gate, eddies and currents all goofy, try to turn the transom this way, then the other. Fun.

Through the cut, the Cape Fear River current comes quickly into play.  Red pushes hard to keep Steadfast in the marked channel, a two-foot chop slapping the starboard quarter.  Wind and current do their best to sweep her sideways downstream. Fun.

Star Java steams up the Cape Fear River.

Once into the river proper, it really IS fun!  The genny opens again to catch some of that blow out of the north and the speed-over-bottom quickly jumps into the 8s.  Steadfast is rippin’ along!  Traffic is light, just one big inbound transport passing to port, headed maybe for Wilmington.  Otherwise the views on both banks are of trees and dunes and that’s about all.

The ferry dock is right in the middle of Southport.

The Cape Fear continues out to the Atlantic but Steadfast turns abeam of Battery Island and west to Southport Marina, one of the most professional operations of any marina visited so far.  It’s a lovely town, too, with homes and businesses set right on the waterfront.

A good trip, this day, and thank you, David.

Steadfast out.

Thursday, 6 November                                    41.2 SM

One of the great things about the ICW so far has been the fact that, with few exceptions, there’s not enough fetch for the wind to whip up a chop. The wind may blow but the water stays nearly flat.

A sign even a power-boater can read.

With few exceptions.  Albemarle Sound, for instance.   Or going up the Neuse River might be another. Or perhaps motoring southwest down Topsail Sound into a brisk so’westerly, as in 18 or 20 knots worth. That’s enough to make more than ripples on the Sound’s surface. And it just so happens, that’s what was on the Sound today. Progress was slow, even by the standards of a Com-Pac 27.

Snowbirds go single file past the Corps dredge.

On the other hand, there is entertainment along the way. There are the bridges—Surf City, Figure Eight Island and Wrightsville Beach, swing-type highway bridges a la Gwynn’s Island—which each require a brief conversation with a bridge tender to transit. Steadfast passes each without difficulty.

At New Topsail Inlet, the Army Corps of Engineers is at work dredging the shoal that encroaches on the narrow channel. Being respectful of your tax dollars, the Corps has found a cost-efficient way to direct boaters to the safe, deep-water side of the dredge on which to pass.

Then as the Sound narrows, the Waterway runs through a seemingly endless gantlet of big box-like beach homes. Every once in a while, though, there’s a property that just defies description. Just say, it’s entertaining. A life-sized giraffe statue is so distinct (and, it is assumed, entertaining) it has become a dead-reckoning landmark in the cruising guides.

This Disney-esque landscape has all the water features imaginable, a whimsical home like none other seen…so far.

Now there’s a yard ornament!

But the fun can’t last forever and, as the shadows lengthen, Steadfast turns to starboard into the dredged basin in Whiskey Creek that is home to Masonboro Yacht Club & Marina.

(Yes, we’re tied up again. And you’re right, there are perfectly good anchorages nearby, perfectly good for a night when temperatures won’t plunge into the 40s; aboard Steadfast, it’s a plug-in-for-the-electric-heater night. Again.)

It blows still. A steady 20-to-22, gusting into the thirties. Yeah, that’s right. It’s blowin’ stink. But up here in Whiskey Creek, s’all good. Red’s quiet. Steadfast lies still on the pier. And the heater whirrs.

Let it blow.

Steadfast out.

The distant rumbles are not thunder.

Wednesday, 5 November                                                            18.4 SM

“Hello, all stations. Hello, all stations. Hello, all stations.”

The transmission is loud and clear. Coast Guard Station North Carolina has something to say.

“The United States Marine Corps will conduct live fire exercises along the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway between Bear Point and Mile Hammock Bay. For the safety of all mariners, access will be restricted from 0700 to 1200 hours.”

Coast Guardsmen patrol the safety zone.

When there’s talk of “live” fire, it tends to get one’s attention, or so one would expect. Apparently quite a few mariners—Snowbirds planning to transit through Camp LeJeune—didn’t get the word.

Given the Marines’ schedule, there’s no reason to get to Bear Point prior to noon, so departure from Swansboro is not ‘til 1115 today. Steadfast quickly moves into the ICW behind Voyageur, a 40-something Island Packet. She picks up a fair current that carries them both to the restricted zone just after noon. Good. Then the fun begins.

A tricky turn slowed more than 3 dozen boats.

Coming around a bend, the view ahead is of dozens of boats, sail and power, queuing up to clear the confusing “S” curve at green “61” as the channel splits the shoals at Brown’s Inlet. The Cape Dory ketch Morning Maid is on the mud, blocking the already narrow channel. A 45’ motor yacht tries to squeeze through but turns too soon at the green and she’s aground, too. Not good. Traffic comes to a standstill. Boats back down, circle.  Patience wanes. Skippers are not happy to have their day’s itinerary interrupted.  It’s getting cold in Carolina.  (This is exactly why Second Wind sallied on last night to get beyond Camp LeJeune!)

Traffic backs up at the Onslow Beach Bridge.

Steadfast idles in place, coasting forward a couple of boat lengths then backing off again, ‘til the clutter finally clears. The 35’ sloop Grace is motioned to pass, then a 44’ catamaran. After you.  There aren’t enough hours of daylight left to get much beyond Mile Hammock. Besides, we’re all going to meet again, soon, at the Onslow Beach Bridge.

The Onslow Bridge opens, if asked, on the hour and half-hour.  This day some openings last longer than usual.  At the 1300 opening, for instance, an unaided record 31 boats went through on a single swing (the bridge tender recalls counting 42 one time, but that was ’cause the bridge wouldn’t close).

Just a half-dozen, the stragglers from the “61” back-up, motor through at 1330. Then it’s on to the popular anchorage at Mile Hammock Bay, the south end of Camp LeJeune.  So popular this afternoon that it’s decided to motor another two miles to the pier at Swan Point Marina on the outskirts of Sneads Ferry.

“Nope, ain’t nothin‘ here,” says (I am not making this up) Tina Turner who, with her mother, is resident co-owner of Swan Point.  “There’s a coupla rest’rants up the road but that’s it.”

The Donald Richard is home-sweet-home to her skipper.

You’ve been here before, even if you’ve never been here before.  There’s a fixed concrete pier and a floating concrete pier. There are wood piers whose highest and best use would be in a bonfire. A live-aboard makes his home on a mast-less wood sloop, and what doesn’t fit aboard clutters the pier to which she’s tied.  Derelict boats abound in stark contrast with a couple of absolute classics.  Go figga.

There’s a rap on the hull.  It’s 1930, well past dark, and Swan Point otherwise is quiet.  But this is the self-proclaimed “friendliest marina on the ICW.”  So the hatch is slid open and, waddya know, there’s Tina. Her announcement is far friendlier than what the Coast Guard had to say this morning.

Off to breakfast.

“Sorry to botha ya,” she says, “but ah thought-cha maht lahk a loaf-a cinnamon bray-ud, just outta the oven.”

Tina, that’s a pretty good bet.  Ought to go well with morning coffee, assuming it lasts that long.

Steadfast out.

It’s another Silly Hat Day!

Tuesday, 4 November                                    49.3 SM

It seemed ambitious for little Steadfast but…

The mornings have been a bit on the chilly side, i.e., into the 30s. It’d be a whole lot warmer south of here, or so one would assume. So let’s give it a shot. Try for Mile Hammock Bay, more than 60 miles away, what would be the boat’s biggest day so far. Laura and Bill planned to leave at first light with their Endeavor ketch Second Wind to get her through Camp LeJeune, where the Marines would be “exercising” tomorrow. Were we to join them, Bill promised they would share one of Laura’s home-made pizzas for dinner.

Some homes on the creek have a Key West feel.

Coffee was brewing when “D” rapped on the hull at 0630. Consummate hostess, as always, she’d arisen early to see us off in the morning chill. Steadfast motored down Tarpon, down Whittaker and out across the Neuse toward Adams Creek.

Second Wind left from Oriental even earlier. She could be seen well ahead, her new genny catching the brisk nor’westerly. Good. She made it easier to spot the entrance to Adams on the dark wooded shore. Sun up, sky not so dark though still a bit gloomy, and on down the creek Steadfast went.

Here’s another stretch much like those earlier, narrow, shallow, sheltered, easy to traverse ‘cause there’s nowhere to go but ‘tween the mostly high banks lined with mostly non-descript cubicle homes at the ends of short piers. So, motor on in the chill.

Porpoise play but don’t pose on Adams Creek.

The creek widens, though stays fairly shallow, to meet the New River but still there are porpoise playing here. Go figga! They seem to be having a good time, too, although they don’t pause to pose.

On the approach to Morehead City, another milestone was passed, literally: Mile Marker 200. Steadfast now has transited 200 statute miles of the AICW. No matter. It’s still cold. And more confusing, a channel to port leading to Beaufort, one to starboard to Morehead, a third and fourth going…who knows?

A steady stream of traffic down Bogue Sound.

Without a chart, this harbor would be a maze. With a chart, it’s still a tricky path but manageable and interesting, too. On the surface, it’s pretty much open water from Beaufort west across to Morehead City but shoals shift all across. Adding to the intrigue this day is the work being done on the Morehead City railroad bridge, meaning it’s open only from noon to one. Timing is everything. Get there at noon or spend the night.

A foul current slows progress on the Sound.

Steadfast slips through right on schedule, making the hard turn to starboard past the big industrial piers and into Bogue Sound. The view forward explains why many say “the ICW is like driving I-95.” A couple of boats just ahead, and ahead of them and farther up and sticks as far as can be seen in the overcast.

After riding a fair current down Adams Creek in the morning, the current turns foul with the so’westerly right on the nose. It’s clear Steadfast won’t make Mile Hammock before dark so Swansboro becomes the back-up plan. A call confirms there’s room on the pier at Dudley’s Marina, another mom-and-pop kind of place. A bit rough around the edges, for sure, but at 75-cents-a-foot, it’s a bargain. And…there’s an electric hook-up which means, yes, heat.

As Yogi said, “It gets late early this time of year.”

So it turns out to be one of those days when the hoped for destination proves not to be. Still, a lot of water under the keel to put Steadfast 50 miles closer to the warm. It’s a good day.

Steadfast out.