Southbound ’17 – Travel Day 18: Southport, NC to North Myrtle Beach, SC

FROM: The Captain

Conditions: Sunshine.  Winds from the north/northeast 9 mph. Seas – 2′ moderate chop from NNE

Distance traveled: 51.3 statute miles

Time underway: 4 hours 47 minutes

Average Speed: 11 mph

Max Speed: 20 mph

Fuel used: 46 gallons

Well, we could have easily stayed another day in Southport, even if we never left the marina.  In our opinion it is a standard-bearer for what a marina should be like.  Wonderfully friendly service, beautiful and well-maintained grounds and floating docks and, perhaps most importantly, plenty of grass and treats for Jasper.  Big thanks to Chris and his fun crew there – we’ll see you next time.

It was another combo day of outside (the Atlantic) and inside (the ICW).  The conditions were good for being out in the ocean and with a morning low tide on this next stretch of the ICW with a few notoriously  problematic areas, it made sense to split up the run.  It might seem like it is more direct to travel outside rather than in, but that’s actually not the case on many legs of this trip.  Sometimes you can travel many miles to get in and out of an ocean inlet which can add up to some significant additional distance.  On this particular leg it’s just about a wash and even if it was another two hours to travel outside it would have been worth it to eliminate the stress.  It’s unfortunate in that it’s a particularly beautiful stretch of the ICW but there will be plenty more of that.  When I refer to “problematic” areas, it mostly refers to portions of the waterway that are experiencing severe shoaling, meaning that it is now shallow where it was once navigable and many boats run aground, even when being careful.  Sometimes a shoal can be right in the middle of the charted channel.  Notes about these spots are aggregated on various websites, some in near-real-time, so prior to any leg we have a sense of what’s ahead and how to avoid “hitting bottom.”  It’s easy to make yourself crazy when you read the notes so you have to sift through them and decide what applies to you and your vessel and do your best to make informed decisions on the best approach.  There are those boaters who scoff at the over-planning and say, “hey – if you ain’t been aground, you ain’t been around.”  We may have our moment one day but I’m a big fan of information and keeping our keel and running gear away from the bottom.

So we had an easy thirty two miles to cover with the ocean seemingly all to ourselves before entering Little River inlet and rejoining the ICW for the stress-free twenty remaining miles of our day.  There is a piece of the ICW north of Myrtle Beach called “The Rock Pile” which gives many a boater anxiety.  It’s a three mile stretch where if you wander out of the channel, which is very narrow in some spots, you could literally find yourself on a rock pile, and when the tide is high the rocks are not visible.  Having gone through the area a few times before I know to just pay close attention, which is always the case anyway, and not leave the channel.  The only thing we want on the rocks is our arrival cocktail (sorry, too easy).

We chose to land at Barefoot Landing Marina in North Myrtle Beach, a very un-fancy floating dock-and-nothin’-else right along the ICW.  We just needed a place to tie up for the night and this was the perfect spot.  And, unbeknownst to us, we will likely never find a better dockage deal.  Because the proprietor, Captain Alan, had been gone for most of the holiday weekend, he had left a message on his answering machine (that we didn’t hear) letting boaters know that because the marina would be un-staffed over most of the weekend, if there’s an empty slip, help yourself – no charge!  Once we were tied up he had me fill out the usual dockage paperwork and then let me know that since it was still the weekend the dockage and electric were free.  Crazy.  We were happy to tip heavily.  Unfortunately he lost his lease on the docks so it will be interesting to see what happens with this space after this year.  Big props (no pun intended) to Captain Alan – a really great guy.

We’ll stay inside tomorrow and make our way to Georgetown, SC…