South Carolina

After leaving the marina at Little River we made our way down the ICW through the famous "rock pile" with no issues whatsoever!  Thank goodness for that - I'm just sorry that Rick did all that worrying and lost sleep anticipating it to be bad!  All of our sailing friends who are reading this know exactly what I'm talking about but for the rest of you I'll briefly explain.  Apparently, when the ICW was made (back in the 1800's) there was a substantial amount of rock that had to be blasted out to form "the ditch" through several miles of the waterway through the Myrtle Beach area.  It's not very wide through there and boaters are warned to use extreme caution when meeting other large boats because you do not want to get close to any of the rocks.  We were advised to go through at lowtide so we could actually see where the rocks were.  We did and yes, we could see them but neither of us thought they looked as menacing as we had expected - however, we sure wouldn't want to have gotten close!  Fortunately, there was little to no traffic on the morning that we went through!

We spent a couple of days in Georgetown.  What a pretty little waterfront town!  They've built a very nice boardwalk along the water in front of the shops and restaurants where boaters can tie up for free during the daytime.  We spent most of a day walking around the town, visiting the maritime museum, shopping and eating lunch.  I had a very interesting and delicious item for lunch called "Oyster Bar Trash"!  I love all types of seafood and with a name like that I just had to try it - especially after our waitress told me that she doesn't eat oysters but her mama does and she loves it!  It was a combination of shrimp, oysters, scallops and flounder chopped, stirred and blackened - yummy!  Never saw it on a menu before and may never again so, here's a picture of the interesting place where I ate it.

Here are a few more pictures we took aournd Georgetown.

We've visited Charleston many times (by car) and it's a wonderful place but arriving there by boat is so totally different it's hard to describe!  First of all we got to be dazzled by all the gorgeous homes on the Isle of Palms and Sullivan's Island before we entered the very large Charleston Harbour and port shipping channels!  What a sight to see the huge suspension bridge over the Cooper River from the water!

We also go the best view of Ft. Sumter we've ever had because it sits so far out of the harbour near the ocean and a different view of the lovely old homes along the Battery.

I'm having a problem uploading some of the Charleston pictures - sorry!