Myrtle Beach Yacht Club to Wacca Wache Marina, SC
We planned short cruise through the canals and Waccamaw River to a recommended anchorage in Bull Creek on Saturday, less than 5 hours underway. With the predicted cooler weather in Myrtle Beach I chose a dark sweat shirt and sure enough the bright sun kept me warm at the upper helm. Rosa and I were immediately comfortable on the upper helm and before long Rosa removed her outer orange coat.
It turns out that a planned 5 hour cruise ends up at over six hours due to the swing bridges. There are three along the route that advertise openings on demand. It turns out Surprise fits under one of the bridges, so two of the bridges account for this delay. First of all, the Little River Swing Bridge is close, about .3 miles south, of the Myrtle Beach Yacht Club. Long ago it carried all US Highway 17 traffic and about about 20 years ago South Carolina moved route 17 traffic onto a new fixed high bridge several hundred yards north of the swing bridge. Most through traffic uses the new fixed bridge, but local North Myrtle Beach traffic still uses the swing bridge as a convenient connection into the Little River SC area. Anyway, the advertisement that the bridge opens on demand is NOT TRUE. This bridge tender, when he finally answered our calls for an opening, had some unpublished schedule he was following. I seem to have bad luck on the first day of travel on this cruise.
South Carolina bridge tenders use VHF channel 9 and I heard about an eminent opening on this bridge as we first cleared our MBYC slip and heard that the bridge was closing when we first entered the ICW. We cruised at about 7 knots and I called the bridge on VHF channel 9 when we were in sight of the bridge. No response. I tried two more times with no responses. I waited several minutes between each call. I felt I was being ignored, or the attendant had turned off his radio, or...... I chanced a call on channel 16 and was promptly told by another boater that SC bridges use channel 9, and that the attendant was probably busy because the bridge had just closed. So I waited a few minutes and then called on channel 9 the fourth time. Absolutely no response. Rosa then tried to call the bridge's telephone number and received a busy signal. I guess the attendant had turned off the VHF to make a phone call to his girl friend, or maybe he had a heart attack and knocked the phone off of the wall when he fell. Needless to say, I was getting pissed so I followed protocol and used the boats horn to sound a long and short blast. No response.
By now we had cruised under the high bridge and were waiting in a wide lagoon with the entrance to a marina to port and a boat launch ramp to starboard. A gentle southbound current and southbound wind was pushing us forward so I had to use the boats reverse power just to keep the boat in position. Several smaller fast boats passed us ignoring the no-wake signs posted everywhere giving us gentle rocks and pushing us towards the shores. This time I waited over four minutes to try channel 9 again and finally got a response. He replied with a noticeably annoyed tone in his voice that the bridge had just closed, that he sees me waiting north of the bridge, and I would just have to wait for "awhile" for the next opening. There was no time mentioned, no estimate of the wait, no acknowledgement that he had heard our earlier calls. When the bridge finally opened about 20 minutes later we had waited over 40 minutes for this one - "opened on demand" - bridge to open. In hindsight, his message was 'he's in charge'.
Rosa an I measured the height of our boat and mast Friday evening. With
some margin of error, we recorded 23 ft. from the waterline to the top of the
mast. This was with full water tanks and over 50% fuel. The
privately operated "Barefoot Resorts" swing bridge is 31 ft. above mean high
water. (Picture below.) Today at low tide the gauges showed 34 ft.
available so I felt comfortable we could clear, but just in case I called the
bridge tender and asked him to monitor our approach. He responded
immediately and spoke with us to advise that in his view we would fit with about
10 ft. of clearance.
Sure
enough we made it through but not before I reviewed all of the information on
computing bridge clearances we learned in Advanced Piloting. Just kidding.
Myrtle Beach has grown during the last 20 years, benefiting first from their
becoming the golfing capital of the east coast, and later during the real estate
boom. High rise condominiums now line the coastline and there are many
along the ICW.
Here's
a photo of Barefoot Landing condominiums and marina just south of their private
swing bridge. Another large ICW development named 'Grand Dunes' is further
south. They also have condos and large homes. Here's a picture of
their private bridge across the waterway.
Soon after passing the US 501 bridge and then again waiting on the Secoste
Swing Bridge to open we left the Corp of Engineer created canals and entered the
Waccamaw river which twists through beautiful almost undisturbed cypress swamps.
Our
journey today ends in this peaceful setting. We elected to tie up at a
marina across the way for the evening. Looking forward to tomorrows
cruise into the PeeDee river and Georgetown SC.