Generator

 4/18- Cow House Creek to Lighthouse Keeper Marina ( Myrtle Beach)

   It was another beautiful morning. The birds were chirping away and the water was like glass. Everything was so still and quiet and then the boat up the way fired up his generator. An ear splitting roar filled the marina along with a cloud of blue smoke. Well I exaggerate but still.  I had been waiting to get going but I didn’t want to disturb the peace but as long as the generator was going I would go. 

    The same thing happened last night. Everything was all peaceful and then 3 of the 5 boats started generators. How can you motor all day and still need to run a generator. These people are just power hungry. I talked to one guy who said he had 1 Kw of solar panels on his boat. What do you do with 1 kilowatt of electricity. The minute these people pull up to a dock they hook up to power. We are an anomaly in that we don’t have regular (120v) power on our boat. They are running multiple freezers, air conditioners, tv’s, toasters etc etc … It’s just crazy all the things people need(?) on their boats. Folks are shocked when we tell them how little power we use. 

    Anyway back to the trip. This was a very beautiful stretch of the ICW today. We wound through twists and turns of the river with cypress trees all leafed out on the banks. The river is wide and deep so it made for easy navigation. Also we the current with us most of the day. 

   In the Rockpile another danger spot we had to wait a bit for several barges that were taking up most of the channel. The Rockpile is a narrow section that is rocky instead of the normal sand and mud. Good thing we spotted the barge before we got to a really narrow spot. The next barge was pulling large lengths of dredging pipe and it was a series of 4 barges with pipe slung between them. 

   We pulled into Lightkeeper Marina in record time and slid right into the slip. If you remember the last time we were here we had a real mess getting out of here. Hopefully this time we’ll do better. 

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