to Osprey Marina

We spent one extra day in Charleston because of the winds and a morning of rain. Our slip at the Charleston Maritime Center Marina was open to Charleston Harbor so the winds, currents, and passing boats made for a rocky stay with much squeaking of dock lines and fenders. Although we loved Charleston, we were glad to untie from that dock. We anchored out for one night and then stopped for a night at Georgetown, SC. Lots of boats in the harbor as we came in.
This is the view down the main business street of this small historical town....

... and the backside of the buildings open up onto the boardwalk along the waterfront.

We picked up some shrimp at the local fish market and had a shrimp dinner on our boat with Jack and Nan. Although we've done much of the Loop by ourselves, we are enjoying traveling with them. We really enjoy their company and have lots of laughs together. We all like to do the same kinds of things on our shore excursions and we are working off similar budgets. The next morning, we enjoyed breakfast out, then took our bikes for a tour around the town which has its share of historical homes on beautiful tree lined streets.

We left about noon for a short cruise to our next anchorage and immediately noticed that more trees began to appear along the shore line. This was the entrance to Thoroughfare Creek.

After anchoring the boat we took the dinghy to explore a small "canal neighborhood" that was shown on the navigational charts. There was a central canal cut, here's the view looking into the central canal from the Creek.

... and then about 5 branches of canals off in both directions. The banks were mud and there were only one or two houses with docks in each canal.

The houses were quite rustic, we were beginning to wonder what this "development" was all about.

We took the dinghy over to the small sand hill directly across from our anchored boat. This was beginning to remind us alot of the Upper Mississippi River.

Nice sand, we climbed the hill and found this path among the trees. We hadn't had a favorite anchorage for a while, but Thoroughfare Creek is definitely in our top ten.

On the other side of the hill, we found ourselves overlooking the dead end of one of the canals we were just exploring.

Later in the day, Jack and Nan met some locals on the sand hill who told them that a developer had cut the canals without getting any permits, so the project was never finished. They also said the folks who built there were squatters. Interesting story.

The water was flat calm and perfectly quiet that night. Steve put out a stern anchor to keep us from swinging because we get more consistent TV reception when we don't move. With just rabbit ears and a digital TV we get an average of 10 channels even in the most remote anchorages. Today's cruise brought us through the most beautiful section of the ICW that we've seen. Thick trees right up to the bank. Lots of cypress trees with their cypress knees.

We arrived at Osprey Marina by noon, this time getting a push from the incoming tide. Osprey is well known on the ICW for its dockage rates (only $1/foot, we haven't seen that since we left the rivers) and fuel prices ($2.66/gal with BOATUS discount). When we got to the turn off, boats were waiting in the channel to get to the fuel docks. We found lots to like here including a welcome bag that included crackers and cheese among other goodies. Great homemade burgers and potato salad, friendly folks, and a great layout with everything close. It's tucked into the woods just off the ICW and the only drawback is that there's nothing nearby to see or do, so it was a great place to do a major boat cleaning (Steve) and a huge load of laundry (Liz). We had a couple of windy and cool days (upper 60's), but it's back to sunny, calm and warm so we'll be moving on up the coast tomorrow.