Isle of Palms, SC

Day 12: Georgetown to Isle of Palms, SC

We left Georgetown on the slack low tide shortly after dawn, heading for Charleston, SC. Steve will have to leave us in Charleston as he has extended his absence from work to the maximum. Mike and I will continue on to Fort Pierce - hopefully on the long anticipated outside passage.
A few miles down the Wacamaw River we turned into the Esterville-Minim Canal. We would be in a very restricted waterway through marsh and swamp for most of the day. Still we had plenty of water depth for the entire trip. The only places where the depth sounder reported less than 10' were likely the result of our drifting to one side or the other of the main channel.
A short distance into the canal we passed a ferry crossing. This looked like a cable powered ferry.

This is typical South Carolina Low Country.
Just above McClellansville, SC we passed the second working dredger we saw on the ICW. The first was at Lockwood's Folley Inlet, NC.
McClellansville is small shrimping community on the ICW. We could see shrimp boats working their trawls over the marsh that separated the ICW from the coastline.
This shrimper has just entered the ICW from one of the cuts going to the coast. I assume it is headed for McClellansville. Can anyone say "Forest Gump"?.

As we approached Charleston we began to see a number of very unusual homes. This appears to be a very remote area so anyone living here must like solitude. The home in the picture on the above, right appears to really like being left alone. This house is on a marsh island. The road leading to the house passes over a small bridge that the home owner can lift to further isolate himself. The house is also in somewhat disrepair, but appears to be inhabited. In contrast, the picture below is of one of the many huge, ostentatious homes built along this stretch of the ICW.

While we hoped to make Charleston that evening, but the combination of head winds and adverse currents made that impossible. The Ben Sawyer Bridge, which must be passed to enter Charleston Harbor from the ICW, does not open between 4:00PM and 6:00PM. We pulled off the ICW at 3:30PM into the Isle of Palms Marina (red arrow on chart) 3 miles from the bridge. This is a very upscale and friendly marina. Unfortunately they had no transient slips available when we arrived and we had to tie to the fuel dock for the evening. This would not be a problem except that dock is infested with cockroaches. We discovered one a few days later in the cockpit. If there is one cockroach on board there must more. Looks like I may have to pick up a few crickets to get rid of the roaches.