5 hours 11 minutes (includes 30 minutes waiting for a bridge opening)
8.3 mph average speed
4-7 mph winds
Hampstead was just an overnight stop for us and we were told to beforehand to have plenty of food on board because it was a rural area with nothing around the marina. When we first pulled in to our slip we were so excited to see the beautiful sailboat, Rubycon. We were docked next to John and Hamida when we were in Key West. Unfortunately, we learned that, while their boat was there, they were not so we missed getting to see them again.
Shortly after we had pulled. in, Nowhere Fast pulled in to the slip next to us. We had first met Lee and Lani in Southport. We enjoyed talking with them and planning out the next legs of our trips together.
Southport is a charming town overlooking the Cape Fear River and has been the setting of many movies, including Nicolas Sparks’ “Safe Haven”. We visited the Fort Johnston-Southport Museum and the Maritime Museum. There are about 100 homes from the mid to late 1800’s in the downtown historic area.
The absolute highlight of our time in Southport was spending time on Robert and Kay Creech’s front porch! Robert and Kay have been Harbor Hosts for the AGLCA for many years and regularly speak at the AGLCA Rendezvous. I believe they completed the Loop in 2008-2009. They graciously invite all Loopers that stop in Southport to their home to visit and enjoy “porch tails ” rather than “dock tails”. Robert checks NEBO and walks the docks of the marina every day to make sure everyone knows they are invited. We were in Southport for three nights and went to the their porch every night. The first night, there were 23 Loopers which almost beat their recent record of having 24 Loopers. There were 10 of us the second night and 8 of us the third night. Such a great time getting to meet other Loopers and exchange stories as well as get wonderful advice from the Creech’s.
The WONDERFUL Robert and Kay CreechThe second largest gathering, by one, that the Creech’s have hosted.Friends Karen and Rob from “Off Leash” whom we first met in Georgetown.
We had a delicious dinner at Provisions Company. Orders for dinner are placed at the kitchen when you first walk in and they bring the food out to the covered porch. In the meantime, patrons help themselves to beer, wine, tea or soda (or get a mixed drink at the bar). Once the meal is finished, the patrons check out back where they placed their dinner order. The ticket is found and the patrons are then on the honor system of letting the cashier know what they had to drink. Two sweet teas for us that night!
I don’t know who those people are!
It was a full moon and also a lunar eclipse the night we were there. By the time we had finished our dinner, the whole area was flooded and we had to walk along the dock on the backside of the restaurant and jump to another dock to get out.
Ellen stayed up late to watch the Flower Moon Eclipse. It was a real treat as the sky was clear and she had a great view from the flybridge.
Not the historical part of town but where a lot of restaurants are.
Kay Creech was also kind enough to offer to take anyone who needed provisions to Walmart and I gratefully took her up on the offer!
As we were leaving Georgetown we saw the most beautiful rainbow.
Today we made it through the infamous “Rock Pile” without incident. The Rock Pile is an area on the AICW that is known for being a narrow channel lined with submerged rocks on both sides and home to commercial barge traffic which would make passing in the narrow channel difficult. Fortunately, we came through this area at low tide and were able to see the rocks and also did not have any other boats to pass, let alone barges. It was all very uneventful for us.
North Myrtle Beach is just a quick overnight stop for us. We had a great dinner at The Officers Club at the marina and were off again the next morning.
We spotted our first alligator swimming in the water as we were traveling to Georgetown.
Georgetown is a lovely town! We had a wonderful dinner at The River Room and delicious pastries from Indigo Bakery the next morning for breakfast.
Another turtle spotted while we were strolling along the Harbor Walk/
We Ubered to Hopsawee Plantation which was built around 1740. and was one of the South’s major rice plantations.
Front view of Hopsawee Plantation House which faces the North Santee River.Rear view of Hopsawee Plantation House.Relaxing on the porch while waiting for our tour of the house.
The home is now a private residence with the owners only recently having moved out of the house. They run a lovely tea room on the property. There was a Sweetgrass Basket making class going on when we went there. While we had easily gotten an Uber to the plantation, getting one back to the marina was a different story. We tried for an hour or so before asking the plantation manager for assistance. He had just learned of a new “taxi” service in Georgetown and made arrangements to have us picked up. In the meantime, we decided to have a snack in the tea room. We had Pimento Cheese Biscuits and Okra Fritters along with tea that we sweetened with spoonfuls of simple sugar. They had a Tea Room cookbook in the gift shop which Ellen had to have and both of these recipes are included along with many other delectable looking things we look forward to trying.
We met Looper friends Karen and Rob from Off Leash at SoCo Grill for some wonderful “home cooking” before attending a play at the local theatre, the Strand Theatre. The play was “Murder at the Howard Johnson’s” which had opened on Broadway and closed just three days later.
Ellen broke down and got her gray roots covered at a darling salon named “Hairapy”. It was like being on the set of Steel Magnolias as everyone else in the salon was local so Ellen got her fill of what was going on in everyones’ lives and felt like she knew all of them by the time she left.
We had a great tour of the Rice Museum and Clock Tower. in The Old Market Building was built in 1842 after the previous building had been destroyed by fire the year before and was originally used a law court and jail. There is a wonderful collection of dioramas that explain the history of rice cultivation.
The Old Market Building which houses the Rice Museum and Town Clock
The Kaminski Hardware Building was also rebuilt in 1842. The Maritime Museum is now on the third floor and houses the Brown’s Ferry Vessel which was built in the early 1700’s and sunk around 1730. The vessel was discovered by divers n 1974. It is the oldest commercial vessel to have been discovered. in the southeastern United States. Remarkably, the vessel predates previous shipbuilding discoveries by about 50 years.
The Kaminski Building
There is a wonderful collection of old ledgers from the hardware store.
We met a. lovely non-Looper couple at the marina, Bob and Laurel. They are traveling on a houseboat, Last Resort, to the Erie Canal where they will spend the summer. We enjoyed talking with them the night before we left and hearing stories of their travels, including being in two hurricanes.
8 hours 16 minutes – includes about a half hour of hanging out in the harbor waiting to get in the marina
8.7 mph average speed
7-10 mph winds
We left early for our trip to Charleston and were in a convoy of about 5 boats for a good portion of the trip. It was a beautiful and calm day but a tad bit chilly on the flybridge. Once we got close to the marina, we had to hold up for about 30 minutes until the dock master was free to assist us with docking so we circled the area in front of the Battery and admired the beautiful antebellum homes. Docking in Charleston was challenging with the wind and current but Kevin did an excellent job, as usual! We wish we knew why the winds always kick up right when we are docking.
We were happy to see that our (non-Looper) friends, Zuby and Ilyas, who were on the beautiful Nordhaven that we met in Brunswick were docked at the marina and enjoyed dinner with them before they took off the next day.
Ellen was excited to meet Julie, a friend of hers since 6th grade, who lives in Mount Pleasant and do a bit of catching up over breakfast.
We had plans for the four of us to go to dinner later in the week but we ended up having to go home to attend to a family crisis. The good news is that while we were home we learned that Ellen’s second grandson would be born on May 3rd so we were able to go to Birmingham and help take care of Luke while they were in the hospital, meet Baby Levi at the hospital and help out once they all got home. More on that later!
Before we had to leave Charleston, we were able to do a good bit of sightseeing. We visited Boone Hall Plantation, Fort Sumter, the USS Yorktown, the Charleston City Market, the Aiken Rhett House and took a bus tour of Charleston.
Boone Hall Plantation was founded in 1681 by Englishman Major John Boone. The home that exists today was built in 1936 and is filled with beautiful antiques that would have been typical for a Coastal Carolina planter.
While at Boone Hall Plantation, we took a tractor led covered wagon tour of the 738 acres that make up the plantation. It is one of the oldest still working farms in America.
There is a beautiful barn that sits on the river and hosts special events. It was set up for a wedding the day we were we there and it was absolutely stunning.
There are nine original slave cabins which were built between 1790 and 1810 and currently house exhibits depicting how the slaves lived and worked.
We attended a live presentation of the Gullah culture which included storytelling, singing and dancing by a descendant of the Gullah people. The Gullah culture dates back to when West Africans were brought to Georgia (known as Geechie) and South Carolina (known as Gullah) and enslaved on plantations. Gullah is one of the oldest surviving African cultures in America with over a half a million descendants still carrying out the traditions of their ancestors.
The drive up to the plantation is lined with live oak trees and dubbed The Avenue of the Oaks. These trees were planted by the son of Major John Boone in 1743. The view is quite spectacular!
We took a ferry across Charleston Harbor to visit Fort Sumter. Fort Sumter is where the Civil War began on April 12, 1861 when the Confederacy fired the first shots on the Union troops in the fort.
View of Fort Sumter from the ferry.
The USS Yorktown was a World War II aircraft carrier. It was the United States’ tenth aircraft carrier and was commissioned in 1943. She is also known as “The Fighting Lady”. She was redesigned in the 1950’s and served in the Vietnam War and recovered the Apollo 8 astronauts and capsule in December, 1968 before being decommissioned in 1970.
The Captain!
We had a fantastic bus tour of downtown Charleston. We deboarded the bus at the Charleston City Market. The Charleston City Market was established in 1807 and is one of the nation’s oldest public markets.
We have not bought many souvenirs on the trip thus far but we did both want to purchase a sweetgrass basket made by one of the Gullah women. Sweetgrass baskets were originally used to winnow rice on the plantations and the craft has been passed down from generation to generation among the Gullah women since the 1700’s. We looked at a lot of different types of baskets, most were way out of our price range, before choosing the one below. It turns out we have good taste as choosing a sweetgrass basket as one of our few souvenirs as I later read that sweetgrass baskets are regarded as one of the nation’s most prized souvenirs and one of the oldest West African art forms in America.
The lady that made our basket is Beverly Grant. She was born on Boone Hall Plantation and has been making baskets since she was nine years old. Both her mother and grandmother worked on the plantation.
Sweetgrass Basket
Photos from a trip to Charleston would not be complete without a picture of the famous Rainbow Row, a row of 13 brightly painted houses along the waterfront. The homes were built in around 1740 and merchants would have their businesses on the first floors and live on the second floor.
Rainbow Row
Our final tourist destination in Charleston was the Aiken-Rhett House. The Aiken-Rhett House was built in 1820 and then expanded by Governor and Mrs. William Aiken, Jr in the 1830’s and 1850’s. Rather than being restored, the home has been “preserved-as-found” by the Historic Charleston Foundation when they assumed ownership of it in 1995. The slave quarters are the same as they were in the 1850’s.
Aiken-Rhett HouseRear view of the Aiken-Rhett House with slave quarters on the left and stable on the right.Kitchen area in the slaves quarters.
As our time in Charleston came to and end, we traveled home to Atlanta for a week and then Birmingham for a week where Ellen’s second grandson, Levi, was born and joins big brother, Luke!
This will likely be our shortest travel day of the entire Loop. We had to backtrack 4 miles because the weather predictions were for strong thunderstorms so we had decided not to travel today as planned but the marina needed our slip for another boat so we moved to another marina 4 miles south. Of course, it was a beautiful but overcast day with no rain in site and the water was as calm as a lake! Better safe than sorry though!
We were fueling up at the new marina when a boat about 60′ went under the nearby bridge at top speed. We, along with all of the other boats docked, got waked pretty bad as Kevin was refueling but no one sustained any damage. It’s hard to imagine anyone, let alone someone with such a nice boat, would speed by a marina and fuel dock. The dock master was able to radio ahead to the next bridge so that someone could get the name and home port of the vessel and she will be filing a complaint.
A fellow Looper came by to talk with us once we were docked. He had completed the Loop, solo, last year. He had just purchased another boat, a beautiful Defever, and will be heading up to Canada the end of May. He had a car at the marina and offered to take us to the store if we needed anything.
We walked to a wonderful Mexican restaurant, Agave, for dinner and had ONE margarita!
Today was a long but pleasant trip. We had a flock of seagulls that followed us for several miles.
Kilkenny Marina is a very rustic marina with a wonderful owner and a beautiful setting just off the ICW. It is quite different from the marinas that we have stayed at so far but definitely has character! We had planned to stop here for one night before heading to Beaufort, SC but the winds didn’t look good for travel the next day so we will stay two nights. The gnats/noseeums were plentiful when we arrived but vanished in the wind the next day. There really isn’t anything around the marina except for a wonderful restaurant, Marker 107, next door. The town of Richmond Hill is about 12 miles from the marina. This was a nice stop to just relax.
The only other thing to do here besides eating at the restaurant was to take a walk but it was a beautiful walk!
