S/V Geru: Into South Carolina

We had a few days of relatively uneventful travels from Wrightsville down to McClellanville. The crossing of the Cape Fear River was a complicated section as there is a huge number of buoys and side channels, so picking the correct channel is difficult enough. This is then made worse by the changing of the buoy colours (the buoys flip sides red/green) for the Cape Fear River section. The colours logically make sense (the ICW has a consistent colour scheme, and the Cape Fear River, being a large shipping river with an inlet from the ocean, follows the convention for such a river), but traversing this section is a bit of a navigational mind-bend.

Our first stop in South Carolina was at Cricket Cove Marina. We might not have stopped here were it not for an interesting connection. When Geoff was in the hospital with his leg injury, he shared his room for a day with a police officer suffering from a kidney stone. Ruth ended up talking to the gentleman for a while (Geoff was too drugged at the time to remember any of this), and when she told him our story he mentioned that his father runs a marina on the ICW in South Carolina. Ruth got the name and address - and three months later, there we were. We met the officer's father and had a pleasant stay at the marina, which turned out to be one of the nicest places we've stayed at so far.

One evening we anchored in Thoroughfare Creek, just off the ICW. The anchorage was very picturesque and very isolated - or so we thought. Although there was no sign of civilization on land anywhere near it, shortly after our arrival several small local power boats appeared, and people walked their dogs on the sandy beach. One boat was the best camouflaged duck hunting boat we've seen so far. You could just see the outboard motor sticking out of a huge bunch of reeds (see photo below). We really knew this wasn't an isolated anchorage when a fast motor boat came through pulling a water skier! Nevertheless, we spent a nice quiet night at anchor there.

McClellanville is a small town full of large old trees, including one oak that is over a thousand years old. Most of the trees are dripping with Spanish moss, and the vegetation we are seeing is starting to feel quite lush. There are northern trees that are in fall colours next to large bushes that we normally think of as indoor tropical plants. We are now seeing palms trees that are growing wild - not just ones used for landscaping around people's homes, as was the case a bit farther north. We dropped by the local fish processing plant and bought some local shrimp for dinner - they were just wonderful!

Houses along the ICW south of Myrtle Beach