Little River SC (2014-03-28)

N33° 51.800', W78° 38.306'

Tonight finds us tied to the dock in Lightkeepers marina, our last stop in South Carolina.


Wednesday morning dawned clear and cold, with the wind still blowing strongly.  We raised the anchor and continued up the AICW.  We did make one change to our plans though.  We headed in to Georgetown, stopping at the Harbourwalk marina so that Dar could make a stop at a clinic to get a sinus infection she was developing looked at before it got too serious.  Wednesday night was forecasted to be near freezing temperatures again, so it was nice to be in a marina on shore power so we could run our electric heater all night.

Yesterday we headed out from Georgetown, with the temperatures warming to nearly seasonal levels.  We made a stop at the Wacca Wache marina to do our refueling.  A quick check revealed that Osprey had raised their diesel prices and that Wacca Wache now had the best diesel price.  We last fueled up in Fort Pierce FL, and ended up getting an average of 2.1 gallons/hour in the month since (14 travel days).  While not as good at our usual 1.5 gallons/hour, considering the currents we've been fighting through Georgia and South Carolina, it's understandable.

We had the current against us all the way up the Waccamaw River all day, so it looked unlikely that we would make Lightkeepers marina before dark, so we thought we'd stop at Osprey for the night, another dollar a foot marina.  As we were passing the oxbow at Enterprise Landing we really liked the look of the place, and made a snap decision to stop there for the night.  A great decision, as we ended up with one of the most peaceful anchorages we'd had in quite a while.

Today dawned warm and clear, with only a slight breeze.  We knew it wasn't going to last, as there was rain and thunderstorms forecast to start in the afternoon and continue on through to Saturday night.  We only had 30 miles to travel today though, so we knew we'd be in at Lightkeepers around 1300 and hopefully before the rain.  We ended up with the current helping us today, and made it to Lightkeepers just before 1230.  The skies had been getting more and more cloudy as the day went on, and by the time we got to the marina the wind had started to pick up as well.  By 1330 the rain began, and it's been raining off and on ever since.

We had a little adventure this evening when we borrowed the marina's courtesy car to go to the CVS to pick up a prescription and to stop at Applebee's for supper.  As is usually the case with courtesy cars, you never know what you're going to get and what isn't going to be working on the car.  Unfortunately, it was the wipers that weren't working on this courtesy car, which is kind of an important component to have when it's raining.  Because the rain was intermittent we just stopped and waited for the rain to stop before continuing on.

We'll be staying here until at least Sunday.  If the winds are as strong on Sunday as they've been forecasted, we'll probably stay until Monday instead.  Our next leg of travel includes the Cape Fear River, which has a very strong tidal current.  If the winds are strong and opposite to the current the river will be very rough.

From here we are 8 travel days away from Norfolk.  We'll probably take a bit longer than that to get there, as we are planning to stop for a couple days in both Oriental and Elizabeth City.