N 33 41.724 W 78 57.721
I woke at 0730, and woke Eugene up at 0740. We had a clear blue sky with a few clouds, calm at 0-5 from N winds. It was already warm, in the 60s.
Eugene went out with the laundry at 0800. He said he wanted to do it himself, he'd been displeased with Peter's laundry duty lately. Pete made me coffee, Nico and Greg were already up at 0830 doing school work.
I uploaded pictures from the camera, and updated logs some.
Peter spent time cleaning up forward, organizing the vberth, and washing the head.
I took a cab ride out for beer and smokes. Eugene had gone shopping yesterday, but can't pick up these stores for me.
With the laundry done and everything else taken care of we untied and left the dock at 1115.
We were very pleasantly surprised to get an on demand opening from the Little River Swing Bridge. It seems all the bridges in South Carolina will open on demand, instead of the half hour our every hour schedule the bridges in North Carolina had tortured us with.
Noonsite: N 33 50.469 W 78 40.269
We were again favored with an on demand opening at Barefoot Bridge. It might serve to explain that I've always been an offshore sailor, and have always dreaded the idea of 'doing the ditch' on the ICW. I've never liked having to wait for bridge openings.
We had looked at the charts and found there weren't any atractive anchorages to use for many miles. Although we prefer to anchor out and not spend money on a marina, we had already accepted the idea of stopping at one again tonight. Eugene and I decided on not stopping at Barefoot marinas, and made plans to sail on to Hague Marina.
Hague Marina was a pleasant surprise. It's a beat up old place with barely maintained docks and a boat yard included in the operation. Just our kind of place! I spoke with George Rus of Hague Marina about the origin and plans for this place. He told me how his dad had a marina back in the 50s in Norfolk VA, where the 'Hague' developement now exists. The government had paid him well when they took his property with eminent domain, and he relocated to South Carolina to start this marina. Hence, the 'Hague' name he gave it.
We discussed our kids a lot. It seems he's got a whole set of over acheivers of his own. We discussed the subject of marina developing. I was happy to see this place as undeveloped as it was, but he's told me it won't continue. The property has become too valuable not to cash in on for his family. He's still considering whether he'll sell out, or try to develop the land with his kids.
Another pleasant surprise was free high speed wireless ! I uploaded the pictures I had on the laptop to my server and the boys made use of the bandwidth on their laptop. We use a cel card on my laptop regularly, but they don't have one.
Another feature of the Hague Marina is Otis the dog. He's a warm old blonde lab who comes to check out all the visitors to the family marina. We let him lick the pan clean when we were done making a beef stroganoff dinner, and he spent a good part of the evening in the cockpit of El Tigre...
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(c)Copyright 2006 by Eugene Kashpureff