As you know from the blog name, I really like calm waters. The leg from Bull River in South Carolina, all the way to Oriental, North Carolina, was my kind of cruising. Protected waterways, no forays into the Atlantic, beautiful scenery, and abundant anchorages. Well—-there were a few marinas in there, too and at least one heart-stopping passage.
The Intracoastal Waterway through South Carolina took us from the peaceful tree-lined anchorages of the Bull River into bustling Myrtle Beach, where a narrow section called the Rock Pile greeted us. This infamous stretch is very narrow with hidden flat rocks that protrude into the waterway and are only visible at low tide.
Swallowing my nervousness, I held those binoculars to my eyes, finding those red and green day marks that marked the channel, knowing even with a four-foot draft we couldn’t stray. It requires a call out on the radio to anyone listening that you are entering that leg. Two boats going in opposite directions would not be good. Fortunately, we met no one and made it through. We splurged and spent the last night in South Carolina at a marina and had a great dinner out, an experience that was much different from the last time we cruised here.
Eight years earlier while on a trip from Florida to the Chesapeake we stopped in the north part of Myrtle Beach to wait out a tornado and the experience was eerie. For two days water receded in the marina until we were sitting on mud tied to a dock. When the water came back, we made our departure. Tidal? Storm-related? Perhaps. To this day we never figured out exactly what happened.
Back to 2015. We crossed the Cape Fear River and entered a stretch along Carolina Beach that was quite narrow, but the channel was deep. We cruised into a city-owned mooring field for the night where the staff comes out in a dinghy to collect their fees and you never have to leave your boat. Cool.
The next day we cruised along a narrow channel that passes Wrightsville heading to Morehead City. I swear fishermen we saw could reach out and touch us, we were that close to shallow water. Last time we did this trip we stopped at Mile Hammock Bay near Camp LeJeune where one morning we were awakened by Osprey—not the birds, the planes— rising straight up into the sky from the trees beyond us. This time we powered past Beaufort and finally anchored out in a quiet bay close to the Neuse River, where we would cross into Oriental the next day.
Oriental, a tiny town that is the sailing capital of North Carolina, was our destination. The town dock had room, which was good because we had planned to stay for a few days to visit with an old friend, a transplant from California.
I’ll spend a little more time on Oriental, the historic Great Dismal Swamp, and Portsmouth, Virginia on the next blog.