Days 334

Charleston SC - Wacca Wache Marine, Murrells Inlet SC

• Start 7:55 AM
• End 5:15 PM
• Underway 9:20 Hours
• Distance 75 Miles
• Total Miles on Trip 5360
• Av Speed 8.0 knots
• Weather Sunny , 78 Degrees, Wind 13 Knots S

We left Charleston this morning, heading for Leland Oil Company Marina, In Leland SC. Leland is 35 miles from Charleston, and other than location it does not have much to offer. In the past they have also had the lowest fuel prices, but not this year. When we were about 30 minutes from Leland, Mark (Kay Dee) called us and asked how we felt about skipping Leland and continuing on to our next planned stop Wacca Wache Marine, another 40 miles, and 5 hours. Mark had called them and they did have 2 slips available, and would stay open until we arrived. So off to Wacca Wache we went.

All morning we had been travelling in shallow water, and the tide was going out compounding the problem. At one point we touched bottom, and that is never a good feeling. Our shallow water alarm was set to 5 feet and any time it went off, I would slow down and carefully watch the depth. Whenever the depth would go below 3 feet, I would take the boat out of gear and just bump it in and out of gear to coast to deeper water. At one point the depth finder shown 1 foot, and then we stopped moving. I bumped the boat into reversed and slid back into deeper water. (Deeper being a relative term, it was only 3 feet deep) If we had not been able to back out into deeper water, we would have waited about 30 minutes for the tide to change and the water to rise. Running in tidal water has its challenges, when we are going against the tide it can slow us down as much as 2 or 3 knots, or cause us to use more fuel to maintain our speed.

The afternoon was much better, the river was deeper and we were traveling with a rising tide. As we go north the rivers are getting prettier, the banks are lined with trees instead of the marshes we have been going through. There are also more houses and docks, that are nice to look at. While having stuff to see is nice, the docks mean we have to slow down to no wake speed. One of the more interesting areas we passed was Goat Island. Goat Island is located across from Isle OF Palms, and is lined with houses and docks. The interesting thing about the houses and docks, was each one of them had a Fire Department Connection on the dock. I assume it is for sprinkler systems in the house so if there is a fire, the fire depart can pump water to the house from the dock. One of the local restaurants also brings goats out to the island in the summer. This is for tourist to watch and to keep the vegetation trimmed down. In the fall they heard them up and take them off the island. (We did not see any goats, maybe it is too early in the season?)

When we arrived at Wacca Wache, we went to the fuel dock first. This is always are favorite park of the trip NOT!!!! We do spend a fair amount of time calling marinas to find the cheapest fuel price, and this marina is fifty cents a gallon cheaper than anyone we have called. When you get 217 gallons of fuel, fifty cents adds up quickly. We should only have to fill up a couple more times before we get home.

Wacca Wache is a well run marina, and the dockhands were excellent, but once again the are at least five miles from anything to do or see. They have a restaurant onsite but it is closed for a couple of week. They changed who is running the restaurant and the new people need a couple of weeks to remodel and get setup.

With nothing here to see or do, Angel and I are going to head to North Myrtle Beach tomorrow and spend two nights there instead of the one might we had planned. Mark & Karen, are going to stay here and do some maintenance done. Nick & Ginger (Ginger Gale) are in Myrtle Beach, as well as Kim & Dave, Kim is friend from work who retired right before I did and moved there.