Champ III: Going Places

The adventure starts here.

Charleston to Georgetown SC — April 24, 2013

Another great weather day for traveling.  You can see from the pictures there was no wind when we left in the morning and we had a moderate South wind when we arrived in Georgetown.

This section of the ICW is fairly straight without a lot of the bends and twists we have seen.  Some areas are pretty shallow.  We were behind 2 sailboats as we approached a tow that was heading South.  The lead sailboat indicated to the tow captain that he would like to pass port to port and that it was pretty shallow could the tow move over.  The Tow Captain said no.  He explained that he was technically aground. The water depth was 7 to 7 1/2 feet and he draws 8 feet of water.  The sailboat said they would pass on his starboard side.  Once we were by the tow, the water was a black color from all the mud the tow had pushed around.  A couple of miles later, I had passed the sailboats and the depth alarm went off and we scoured the bottom slightly with the props and I was just slightly left of center on the ICW.

The wind was out of the south and with us moving north at about 8 mph, the apparent wind was about zero.  We started to get these large flies in the cockpit.  I found out the locals call them mayflies.  They are about 3/8″ long and if you swat them they keep on flying even if you stunned them.  The longer we tried to get rid of them the more that came into the cockpit.  We finally went up on plane and at 22 mph we were able to get them out of the cockpit.  Once we were on the large river leading to Georgetown we did not see them anymore.  The locals said they are only around for about 3 weeks in the spring.

Georgetown is a great little community that really invests in their downtown and most of the stores have businesses in them.  It is nice to see that Walmart drive the downtown businesses out of town.  They have built a river walk and many of the restaurants are on this walk with some type of open air dining.  We went to an Italian restaurant, Portofino, last night and they had live entertainment in the bar that was very good and the restaurant was about 1/2 full for a Wednesday night.  Most of the dishes had butter and a cream sauce but we did get something worked out for Lenore.

I called the Piggly WIggly market today and they came and gave me a ride from the marina to the market and back.  Some what of a small market but they had most of the things we had on the list.  They even accommodated me with a courtesy Piggly Wiggly card to give me the special prices.

Right now it is raining and we have had several thunderstorms roll thru but it is supposed to be all over by 8:00 tonight.  Candy is hiding even though she has her thunder-shirt on.