Barefoot Landing - Pipeline Canal, May 4

This morning we looked around for a while before leaving. Barefoot Landing is in North Myrtle Beach and is right next to an outlet shopping mall. There are many shops as well as many restaurants and several attractions such as Alligator Adventure, Tiger Preservation Station and the House of Blues. The Alabama Theatre is also located here. The Oakridge Boys played last night. Greg Norman’s Australian Grille restaurant is here as well the Barefoot Resort & Golf, which has 4 championship golf courses built by Greg Norman and 3 other golfers. If we are here again, we would stay longer.

We left this morning at 11 and we started out running at 9.4 mph. This was with the same engine speed as yesterday, but today we were with the tide. We hit a high of 10.3 mph! We were able to run at this speed for 1 ¼ hour then we passed an inlet and our speed dropped to 6.0.

We cruised through the Rockpile, a man-made 4 mile stretch of the intercoastal that was carved out of rock. The edges of the channel are lined with a rocky outcropping, so you must stay in the center at all times. It can be very interesting if you meet another boat. Fortunately, we didn’t.

Any extra time we had made running with the tide was lost when we had to wait 1 hour and 40 minutes for a bridge to open. It was a pontoon bridge and cannot open at very low tide and that is when we were there. The pontoons actually move the bridge out of the way and cannot do that when they are sitting on the bottom.

We saw a couple casino ships today. Both were close to inlets so they can get to sea quickly and out far enough to gamble.

We anchored at Pipeline Canal. We dropped anchor at 6:10. There are 8 other boats anchored here and we are right next to a couple from Napa Valley who are also doing the loop.