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It had been a rough day with the rain and all, but we made it
in one piece to Calabash Creek. The anchorage guide advises you to
motor your dinghy up the creek and go to local seafood restaurants
but, since we don't have a motor, anything that's too far away to
see is too far to row. We stayed put. With just a few days until the
new moon, there was only a thin sliver of light in the sky, and we
were definitely in the boonies, away from all things civilized. When
the last light of day faded, it was as dark as the inside of a black
cat, a good night for crawling into bed early and popping a DVD into
the player.
 Morning dawned hazy, dark enough that
we needed to turn on the running lights. We passed Barefoot Landing
at Myrtle Beach, where only a handful of boats were docked, not like
it was before they 'improved' it last year. In 2003 boats filled the
entire length of the dock, rafted three and four
across.
We've never been able to make it
through the so called 'open-on-demand' Socastee Bridge without a
wait and this time was no exception. The bridge tender  advised we'd
have to wait due to maintenance. He was, however, the only one in
the control room and nothing was moving.
When we finally got through, we were in
the deep and winding Waccamaw River, where cypress trees straggle
down into the water and floating hyacinths dot the surface. If
you don't like peace and serenity, you won't like this.
 We parked next to Sandy Island, aptly
named, as it's all sandy trails through prickly brush with a
few live oaks draped in Spanish moss. At 6 p.m. the sun was already
dipping below the treetops when a speedboat and a water skier
whizzed by, probably folks trying to squeeze in a little outdoor
recreation after work on a warm fall day.
 The other side of windy Winyah
Bay is all tiny  creeks and canals, the easiest and most enjoyable
part of cruising. We passed a cute little houseboat near Little Crow
Island and watched a crabber setting out his traps in Fourmile Creek
Canal.
The day ended in Graham Creek south of
Georgetown on an unseasonably warm afternoon, not great sleeping
weather, but spring and fall are always changing and unpredictable.
When we went to bed I was wearing a T-shirt, uncovered, with a fan
blowing on me. By morning I had a sweatshirt on top of my T-shirt
with the sheet and blanket pulled up around my
ears.
Farther down the South Carolina coast
is Francis Marion National Forest where the ICW makes a deep cut
through marshland, bearing more of a resemblance to a vast wheat
field on a South Dakota prairie than to the Intracoastal Waterway.
Straw-colored marsh grass stretches all the way to the horizon and
now and then we'd spot a sailboat mast miles away up a creek. In the
midst of all this flatness stood a tiny island with a long dock and
two tiny houses on it. There is no road, or solid ground to build
one on for that matter, just acres and acres of watery marshland.
Approaching Charleston, vegetation on
shore begins to change. Palmettos pop up in back yards of waterfront
homes - that would be the 
front yards to us - but then, when you
travel via waterway you see the whole ball of wax from a different
viewpoint. In the congested Charleston harbor I glanced down at the
chart; it's covered with so many lines and numbers and symbols
going every which way, it's confusing. Even if it had been my turn
at the wheel, it wouldn't be, not in that jumble. Tom got
us through that maze.
I was steering through the Stono
River, averaging seven knots, when we came to Elliott Cut and our
speed went down, down, down, all the way to 3.2. By the time we got
through the cut the current was with us and we zoomed all the way up
to the breakneck speed of 8.4 knots.
The last few days have been too easy
and peaceful. Something is bound to break the spell soon.
(click on pictures to enlarge)
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