It is quite foggy when we pull the
anchor. It takes a couple hours to clear.
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Near the Calabash River, Casino boats head
off shore, outside the three mile limit, for gambling.
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Today we have three draw bridges to
past through, all open on request, instead of on a schedule. You
would think it would make for a faster passage, Wrong ! We are about
½ hour out from the first bridge when a group of boats leaves a
marina 10 minutes from the bridge. By the time we reach the bridge
the operator says we will have to wait since he just let a group of
boats through. After about 10 minutes I see another sailboat coming
behind in the distance, so I tell the operator I will wait for him,
although he never contacts the bridge himself requesting an opening.
Finally after ½ hour the bridge opens. He leaves the bridge open
longer for a 3rd boat coming along.
We pass through and area called the
“Rock Pile”. For about two miles the ICW is quite narrow here
with rock ledges on both sides sticking out from the shore. This is
not a section you want to be passing an oncoming barge.
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| The "Rock Pile" |
In about 8 miles is another open on
request bridge. These two boats pass me after a couple miles and at
the Barefoot landing swing bridge they pass around the curve in the
ICW to the bridge. I forget to switch the VHF to channel 9 (the
channel for the swing bridges in North and South Carolina) and by the
time I round the bend and call the bridge they are through. The
bridge operators usually ask if anyone is behind, to group the boats,
obviously they did not mention us. Oh well, no good deed goes
unpunished. I am told we will have ½ an hour wait. By then a boat
that was two miles behind us gets in range and calls on the VHF and
we have another 15 minutes to wait for them to catch up. Arg!
Our last Bridge just before the Ospray
Marina, the Socastee Bridge is our last open on request Bridge.
I call them about 1 mile out at 1:25 PM
and the operator tells me the next opening is at 2:00 PM.
WTF ? Do they not understand the
concept of open on request ? So we wait another ½ hour. Arg !
As we approach the bridge we see a
whole bunch of people working on the part of the bridge. Then it
dawns on me they are doing some sort of maintenance and a limiting
the bridge to hourly openings. The bridge operator should of informed
us and the Coast Guard should of made occasional announcements on
channel 16. As it turns out we were lucky, the bridge was closed a
couple days prior due to its problems.
So anyways the “open on request”
bridges add another 2-1/2 hours to our day, aside from having the
current against us most of the day. This trip, I much prefer the
bridges that open at schedule times which you can plan for. By
mid-afternoon we pull into Ospray Marina. Ospray is surrounded by a
Cyprus Swamp and in the evening we can hear owls and crickets like it
is still summer. When we go to bed it is still 72 degrees.
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