Sightseeing along the ICW

 Leaving the dock was a little dicey this morning at 7:30am.  I was at the helm, David was doing the dock lines.  When he took the stern line off, the current starting grabbing the boat and pushing it towards the center of the channel.  With our headsets on, it is easy to communicate, David kept telling me to use the thrusters, which I did but with the water current pushing the boat around, it didn't look like I was using the thrusters.  We finally got it figured out, I got the boat back parallel to the dock so David could jump aboard and off we went.  That wasn't a great start to the day, but not that bad.  As the boat moved forward, I put it into the automatic navigating mode.  The boat drives itself according to the route that has been input into it.  We missed a button on our startup procedure and the boat suddenly starts making a very hard turn to port and only 30' off the beach.  I took back manual control of the steering, David pulled the throttle back so we weren't flying towards the beach and grabbed the wheel and gave it a fast and furious correction to get us straightened out and headed in the right direction again.  One lousy button, we have to be so focused and we

  Moss in the trees

  The cormorants flying away from our path

just plain ol' missed a step.  Oops, no harm not foul, thank goodness.  And you know the good thing?  There's never any yelling or other issues, we simply have a debrief session to figure out what happened and how to prevent it from happening again.  We make a pretty good team!  There was a lot of interesting sights today, the houses along the water, the birds, the trees, the dredging equipment, the derelict buoys in somebody's yard, the low clearance bridges, oh and the signs too. Today we went from South Port, NC to  Socastee, SC near Myrtle Beach and the Waccatee Zoo, 54 miles, 7.5 hours, the sun never came out and it rained a lot, temps are in the 40-50 degree range.
  Bread rising in the warm engine room

  YIKES!!  I took Ellie for a walk, removed her leash to let her sniff, she ran down a grassy hill to the water's edge. I just knew an alligator was going to jump out of the water and eat her.  I used my mean Air Force Command voice and she  came right back to me.  Scared the you know what our of me!!!!!

  The first geese we have seen

  Moss hanging from the trees, it's like art

 Trees growing out of the water in front of a home 

 A pirate boat

  A floating casino

 We only had 3' clearance going under the bridge, it looked like 3" to me!

 I think a fake lighthouse, but it looked pretty

  A mermaid peeking into a window, ha

 Floating casino

  There's a bird on every piling...all looking the same direction, what the heck??

  A yellow, peach, teal and blue condos.  Great house colors everywhere, even a purple one!

  Dry stacking storage for boats.  Thay must use a really BIG forklift!


 Cormorants sitting on a submerged log

  I think this is a duplex, really pretty!

  Neighborhoods on the water

  A single family home, I think

  What a great place if you do RV'ing

  Pelican parking lot


  What a pretty house!

 Back half of a boat for a dock cover with a slide that goes into the river. How fun!!




 Derelict buoys in his backyard

 Giant crab wall decoration


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