[edwardc]

Since Charleston, we've been making rapid progress north.

After leaving extra early to catch a favorable tide through the shoaling at Isle of Palms, this put us at a poor tide for transiting McClellenville. Thank goodness for the Navionix crowd-sourced sonar charts! I crept from one slightly deeper spot to another, and we made it through without touching bottom.

Since it was still early, we continued on all the way to Georgetown SC, anchoring for the night.

Next day, we went up through the beautiful Wacamaw River, some of the prettiest scenery on the ICW, and stopped at Osprey marina for a few days to visit friends. Osprey is a great place, and very inexpensive.

From Ospery, we did a long day (56 nm) to Southport to position ourselves for an early flood-tide current up the Cape Fear River.
The next day, our timing worked, and with wind & tide in our favor, we did 7.9 kts for a while! A second long day (56 nm again) got us to Mile Hammock, just outside of Camp Lejune. The military entertained us until midnight with repeated landing practice for both large helicopters and Osprey V22 tilt-rotors.

We had checked with Camp Lejune, and they were supposed to be closing the ICW from noon until 5 , so another early start to avoid that. But when we got there at 7:30 am, a Navy patrol boat stopped us and told us the ICW was "closed for live-fire exercise" until noon!! A four and a half hour delay!! We had to backtrack a bit and anchor, along with two other boats. And as soon as we got settled in to wait, the Navy called on the radio and announced that the exercise was canceled and we were free to go! Typical SNAFU. At least it only cost us an hour!

We finished a third long (51 nm) day with no further trouble, and are anchored in Adams Creek, just south of Oriental NC. We're going to visit some friends near here for a few days.