We belong to the AGLCA, American Great Loop Cruisers Association.  Although we have just completed part of the loop they have some interesting information that they share. Each day we get at least one E-mail where people ask questions, get answers, discuss the pros and cons of certain boating items and even talk about danger on the great loop.  One such danger was a rock pile at North Myrtle Beach in South Carolina.  Here is the excerpt from the news article ”

The “Rock Pile” is a man-made canal-like section of the AICW, officially known as the Pine Island Cut, running between Little River and Waccamaw River. The canal is narrow and lined with submerged rocks and a rock shelf, just a foot or two below the water’s surfce.
When the USACOE was building this portion of the AICW in the 1930′s they encountered a sold shelf of granite. The Corps simply blasted through this obstruction, but, over the years, the soft silt above and below these rocky outcropping has washed away, making the canal now appear wider than it really is. Also, over the years, many portion of the rock shelf have broken off, and left all sort of underwater rocks waiting to trap keels and underwater hardware.
Cruisers are urged to hold as close to the mid-width of the Pine Island Cut as possible, and announce their presence on VHF in case large commercial traffic is approaching, which could force you out of the channel’s mid-line and onto the “rocks,” especially at high tide when the rocks are fully submerged.”

Then here is someone who didn’t heed the warning

Whoops

Here is what the news article said about them “A 42′ sport fish boat was traveling about 18 knots and was trying to pass another boat – due to each others wake he ended up on top of a rock shelf – all five people on the boat were unhurt.”  Yup, a good lesson learned, glad it was learned by someone else and not us 🙂

The marina here does a lot of work on boats.  We are having them install a hoist for us.  They do some wonderful work here.  They have been working on this boat, that used to belong to Alan Jackson (he’s a country singer in case you didn’t know who he is) for 5 months, getting it all prettied up.  It is an aluminum hulled Berger.  Only the cabin structure is made out of wood, the rest is all aluminum.

70 foot boat

Stern of the boat

The pictures, as usual, don’t do it justice.  It is a oldie but a goodie.  We don’t know what it looked like when it came in but it sure is pretty now :).  Here are some more pictures of it as it was gassing up at the gas dock to leave.

Lady J

Wow!  May is over with!  Memorial weekend here was quite an eye opener.  We put some chairs out on our bow so we could get the best view of the all the boats.  This place is packed.  Every empty slip is full with 2 to 3 little boats tied and there are people coming and going.  The docks have quite the traffic on them.  There’s a boat kitty corner from us.  No one has been on it so far but there was a few people on it this weekend.  About 9:30 on Saturday night I saw a reflection of flames, I turned around and I could see flames shooting up on the end of the finger where this boat was.  Holy Hoot!  What the heck is going on?  I shot out of my chair and went on the back deck.  There was this guy standing by what I assumed was his grill with flames 4 feet in the air.  He was cussin and swearing.  I asked him if he wanted a hose……I don’t think he heard me.  After a little bit his fire got under control and I went back in.  I bet his dinner was real tastee, Hee Hee 🙂

That weekend we saw 5 boats being towed in.  They seemed to tow them close to the gas dock and then just let them go and had them fend for them selves.  One young kid got towed in and after that person dropped him off, he paddled around for a bit until another boat came and towed him to the gas dock.  Crazy.

Now we see why they have 6 people working the gas dock.  People were waiting in line to get to the gas dock to fuel up.  Cha-ching!

The parking lot was packed, not a spot to be found except in the overflow parking area.  We’re glad we didn’t have to move our car at all that weekend :).  We’ll see if it continues to be busy here after Memorial weekend is over.

We hope you all had a safe and enjoyable Memorial weekend and the month of May.  Time flies when your retired 🙂