11/5/15
Minim Creek, SC
Position: 33 11.502N, 79 16.367W
Posted by Bill

Just like yesterday’s trip, we did the same trip today as we did exactly one year ago…well, same destination anyway. We left the dock in North Myrtle Beach at 6:36. We were trying to time the arrival at the Socastee Swing Bridge so that we would arrive on the hour because the bridge was broken down and they restricted the opening to every hour on the hour. Not knowing for sure how the tide was going to affect us, we needed some slack in the schedule. When we pulled out of the marina there was no one in front of us and there was no wind, so the water looked like glass. It created some interesting illusions along the shore line:

We made it to the crippled bridge with about 25 minutes to spare so we had to wait. On the other side we stopped in at Osprey Marina to take advantage of $2/gallon diesel fuel prices and fueled up. Between the delays for the bridge (including going very slow part of the way so we didn’t have to wait longer at the bridge) and getting fuel, we lost over an hour of transit time, so I revved the engine up to 2300 RPM and got us going faster than we now normally travel. It was a LONG day, but we made it to Minim Creek by 4:30 PM and dropped the hook in the same place as last year. It wouldn’t set, so we moved over a bit and got it to set finally. Good thing, because the no-see-ums were already swarming. No wind in the middle of a marsh is a bad situation around dusk!!

Tomorrow, we need to transit McClellanville, which is really shoaled over and pretty much impassable at low tide. Our false start the other day has pushed us into a challenging tide schedule where we need to transit this area close to low tide in order to make our destination tomorrow by dark. Well, what fun would it be if it was easy?!!

For more pics and information about traveling between Myrtle Beach and Minim Creek, see last year’s blog by clicking here.