Day 37, Thursday,
November 3, 2016
You can monitor my trip at the link: Second Winds Progress Live
Today turned into a
long slog. It started just after sunup
and ended just as it was turning dark.
More on that later. Our trip today was along relatively narrow rivers
that wind through southern North Carolina and into South Carolina. The trip traveled through more flat land and
marshes with homes anywhere they could find solid ground to place them.
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| Barrier Island Condos |
As we travel south, the
barrier islands are always to our left, port side, and I am fascinated by the
side by side condos that line those ocean facing beaches. They pack the landscape. Further inland, on our right, the homes range
from the old houses that were built early on to the mega mansions
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| Wrecked shrimp trawler |
that have
moved in with new moneys. I remember
seeing the same thing down in Florida.
We started seeing remnants
of the damage caused by Hurricane Mathew.
Most of what we have seen so far is damage to older docks. However, as I
was approaching our destination I began to see tall living trees lying in the
water. On the trip today, I saw two
shrimp trawlers that had been sunk presumably by the
 |
| And another |
storm.
Bridge height is still
a problem for some of our group. The
bridges are for the most part advertised to be 65 feet above the high water
mark but with some of the flood waters still draining out from up country,
these heights are suspect. Most all of
them have a miter board that gives the height between the water and the bridge.
As you might imagine, this is somewhat of a
sweat for some of our skippers. The
damage caused by striking a bridge is really catastrophic. Today, 4 boats chose to
 |
| An elephant crawling up my back |
move out into the
open ocean and bypass a section of the Waterway that included 4 bridges. There were still about 4 or 5 more that they
had to pass under on the remainder of the trip.
The boats that went “outside”
reentered the Waterway via the Little River Entrance. From the entrance, the ICW follows the Little
River for quite a long ways. I had a
following tide when I came to that
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| Pelican sculpture near Barefoot Landing |
juncture but when I crossed to the other side
the current was on my nose. The tide was
falling and heading back to the ocean by way of the Little River Entrance. I had that current in my face for the next 16
miles. At no time did is see a speed
above 4 knots even with the engine running at high speed. Most of the time it was between 3.2 and 3.8
knots. I burned an inordinate amount of
fuel to travel just that short distance.
 |
| A Maga home in Grande Dune SC |
Upon my arrival, I was
greeted by several members of our group who obviously knew of my situation with
the current. They had also experienced
it but they still got there quite a bit earlier than I. Sam and Phil didn’t get in until around 7:00. They traveled the last couple of miles in the
dark. As I said earlier, it was a long
day.
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| Sunset from the entrance of Grande Dune SC |
I was invited to dine
with Jack and Diane on their beautiful big Jeanneau, Valentine. Jack prepared a beautiful salad with all
forms of fresh vegetables and Diane fixed a wonderful chicken thigh dish which
included lemon zest and artichokes. She
also roasted carrots. I will tell you,
life is really different on a big boat.
We enjoyed a glass of wine in their spacious cockpit while jazz was
piped though their stereo speakers. I
brought along the fixings for a blob carrot cake which turned out well.
I finally headed back
to Second Wind at around 9:00 for
another night of rest.
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