Triangle Loop – Week 2

May 4th to May 10th

Day 7 – 10 Sunday, May 4th to Wednesday, May 7th, 2025 In: Murrells Inlet, SC
Visiting With Friends

Day 7: Sunday, May 4th – In Murrells Inlet, SC

We lived in Murrells Inlet for 8 years before moving to Florida, and we still have lots of friends there. On Sunday morning, I installed the new Trim Tab Controller to see if that would fix the issue. It didn’t. While testing, I pulled apart some connections in the stern of the boat, and water started dripping out of the controller and power wire for the Starboard Trim Tab, which was not a good sign. This confirmed the issue with the actuator that sits under water at the back of the boat. I ordered some replacements. However, they would not arrive until Wednesday, so we extended our stay for a day and will leave on Thursday morning. Only one of the actuators is bad, but they are the same age, and an actuator is about $180, while the cost of having the boat lifted out of the water and the replacement labor is about $700, so I ordered two and will replace both while we are at it.

Sunday evening, our friend and mechanic, Michael from A&M Marine, invited us to dinner at the beachfront restaurant at the community where he lives. It’s a gorgeous community on the shore just north of Georgetown, SC. The restaurant was excellent and we had a great time catching up.

Day 8: Monday, May 5th – In Murrells Inlet, SC

Monday morning, I rode my bike to Home Depot to get some parts for installing the new Actuators. When I got back to the boat, we arranged to have the boat hauled out for the part replacement on Friday in Holden Beach. Holden Beach was going to be our next stop anyway, to visit with our friends Robert and Diane, so that worked out well. In the afternoon, we cleaned out the Geocache we had placed at the marina when we lived there. The box was pretty beat up, so we ordered a replacement since we were going to be there an extra day.

In the evening, Steve and Edie from Brand New Day picked us up for dinner. We traveled down the rivers with them, and they happened to be camping in their new R/V (they sold their boat) in Myrtle Beach. We went to Inlet Prohibition Company and sat out on the deck. It was great to see them again, and we had a great meal looking over Murrells Inlet.

Day 9: Tuesday, May 6th – In Murrells Inlet, SC

On Tuesday morning, we took an Uber to the local Publix and did a bit of food shopping. Brenda visited with several of her old coworkers who work there now. It was great to see the old crew! When we got back, we did some work on the boat. When the deliveries arrived, we replaced our Geocache Box with a new one, and I took care of a couple of minor repairs on the boat (there is always something!).

In the evening, we grilled chicken on the back of the boat. Our slip was right behind the restaurant at the marina, and the staff came out onto the porch in the back for their breaks. We got some good-humored comments that we were cooking ourselves, not eating with them. “Just bring that chicken in, we’ll cook it for ya!”

Day 10: Wednesday, May 7th – In Murrells Inlet, SC

On Wednesday morning, I worked on an article for The Clever Boater, and Brenda baked cookies. At noon, we went to lunch with our friend Dave and his new wife Vicki. They were just married in March, and this was our first opportunity to meet her. She is very nice and they are quite happy together, a great couple! We went to an old haunt of Dave’s and mine called the “G.O.A.T.”, a local pub in Murrells Inlet where Dave and I would meet for lunch. Neither of us has been there for at least two years, and it was just like we remembered it! It’s good to see some things don’t change.

When we got back to the boat around 2:30, I checked on my replacement parts. When I placed the order, I must have dropped a digit on the street address for the marina, or the address correction messed it up, because all of our Amazon orders were coming to 950 Wachesaw Road, not 1950. The postal delivery driver, had made a note on one of our earlier packages that the address was wrong, but delivered it anyway. When I checked for our actuators, the tracking info said “Being Held At Post Office For Customer Pickup”. Why they would deliver one day and not the next, I don’t know. I requested a Lyft ride to the post office to pick it up. When I went to the post office, it took them almost 15 minutes to find the package. The Murrells Inlet Post Office is not that large. The delivery driver had put the package into the “return to sender” section, not the “hold for pickup” section. I guess they were really annoyed that the address was missing a digit! Thankfully, the counter person at the post office took the time to search.

While I was gone, a fellow looper Selah Way (pronounced “sail-a-way) stopped at the marina for fuel. The dock hands were busy wrangling in another boat that was having difficulty getting into their slip, so Brenda helped tie them up.

In the evening, one of our former neighbors, Frank, stopped by at the marina and gave us all the news from our old neighborhood. Then we had dinner at Outriggers (the restaurant at the marina) and got the boat ready for departure in the morning.

Day 11 – Thursday, May 8th, 2025 – To Holden Beach, NC
Holden Beach Transient Dock

• From: Murrells Inlet, SC
• To: Holden Beach, NC
  Holden Beach Transient Dock
• Start Time: 7:50 am
• Dock Time: 2:05 pm
• Time Underway: 6h 5m
• Miles Traveled: 53.3 NM (61 statute miles)
• Average Speed: 8.8 knots (10 mph)
• Draw Bridges Opened: 2 Locks: 0
• Weather: 66°-74° – Partly Cloudy
• Winds: Light – Waves: Calm

Thursday was partly cloudy and calm when we pulled out of Wacca Wache just before 8:00. We cruised up the Waccamaw River, which was very familiar territory. Most of the area on both sides of the Waccamaw River from Georgetown until you get to the Socastee Swing Bridge is a Federal Wildlife Refuge. Many people say it’s one of the most beautiful sections of the Great Loop. Not much had changed.

We had to wait for about 15 minutes for the Socastee Swing Bridge as a boat had just gone through. The ICW through Myrtle Beach had just a few No-Wake zones when we first started cruising it eight years ago. Now, both banks are mostly built up with many no-wake zones. We weren’t in any big hurry, so we just took our time cruising along at about 10 mph.

The tide was just starting to fall when we reached the infamous “Rock Pile”. This is a six-mile-long section of the ICW from Barefoot Landing in North Myrtle Beach to the Little River Swing Bridge. It was blasted out of the coral and bedrock. It is plenty deep, but quite narrow, and has very rocky and jagged edges. It’s not a good place to stray out of the channel or to meet a large boat heading in the opposite direction. We made it through just fine, only meeting a few small boats along the way. When we came in sight of the Little River Swing bridge, several boats were waiting, and we heard on the radio that the bridge was starting to open. We still had about two miles of no-wake zone to reach the bridge and didn’t think we would make it for that opening. Fortunately, the bridge takes about 10 minutes to open, and with boats going through in both directions, we were close enough that the bridge tender held it open for us to make it through.

After we got through the swing bridge, we passed the Lighthouse that marks the Myrtle Beach Yacht Club marina entrance, then passed the Little River Inlet, crossing into North Carolina.

From there, the only hazard is Shallotte Inlet, which tends to shoal in as it’s open to the ocean. It had been dredged recently, and we crossed without any issue.

Just before we reached Holden Beach, we caught up with a boat called Olive Oyl that we had seen on our Nebo app. The captain called us on the radio and said that he remembered stopping in Palm Coast last year with his old boat and getting a box of Brenda’s Blondies! He was continuing on, so we promised that when we caught back up with him, we would re-supply him with some docking cookies.

We arrived at the Holden Beach Town Dock just after 2:00. We tied up on the North end of the dock, then decided to move to the south end as it was closer to the power pedestal and had better cleats. We had just finished when Brenda got a Nebo message from Last Chance saying that they were about 90 minutes out and would be joining us. The Holden Beach Town Dock only has room for two boats our size (and both have to hang off on the ends). So, we untied again and shifted back another 10 feet to make room for them.

I spent the rest of the afternoon getting the boat ready for our trim tab actuator replacement in the morning. When Last Chance arrived, we went out and helped them dock, then got ready for dinner with our friends Diane and Robert from Morning Star. They live just across the ICW in Supply, NC, and we try to visit with them whenever we come through. The last time we saw them was last summer in Jekyll Island on their farewell cruise before selling their boat.

They picked us up, and we drove across the bridge to Provision Company, a restaurant directly across from where we were docked. If you could walk, it’s only about 300 feet, but the drive is about 3/4 of a mile to go over the bridge and back. We had drinks and sat on the deck, catching up with them, then went to a great little Italian Restaurant just up the road for dinner.

After dinner, they dropped us off, and we watched yet another beautiful sunset.

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Day 12 – Friday, May 9th, 2025 – To Southport, NC
Morningstar Marina Southport

• From: Holden Beach, NC
• To: Southport, NC – Morningstart Marina Southport
• Start Time: 10:20 am
• Dock Time: 12:00 pm
• Time Underway: 1 h 51 m
• Miles Traveled: 12.7 NM (14 statute miles)
• Average Speed: 6.8 knots (8 mph)
• Draw Bridges Opened: 0 Locks: 0
• Weather: 68°-73° – Rain in the AM, Clouds, Sunny in the PM
• Winds: 0-15 mph – Waves: Calm

We had our appointment to have the boat hauled out of the water at 7:00 am. We got up early, and when I went to make coffee, I discovered my coffee maker was dead. Not a good start to the day! The boat yard was just a 1/4 mile down the river, so we left the dock at 6:50 just as it started raining, and arrived as the crew was putting the lifting straps into the water. The staff at Zimmerman Marine was excellent! Even though our boat has labels where the straps go, they took the time to verify that they were in the correct place and adjusted twice before they were happy with the placement. Then they lifted the boat and rolled it forward so that we could climb off, before taking it the rest of the way out of the water.

We expected the swapout to take about an hour, but like all things boats, nothing goes as planned. A thunderstorm rolled through while we were working, and it was raining pretty hard. Fortunately, we were working under the swim platform, so we had a roof over us that stopped most of the rain. It took a bit longer to remove the old actuators because of all of the sealant covering the nuts on the inside of the boat, and several coats of anti-foul paint on the screw heads. It took us an hour to get the starboard actuator installed and hooked up. We tested it and it worked great! One down, one to go!

Interestingly the port actuator has completely different screws, different heads, different nut sizes. We had learned a bit on the first one, so the second, once we got the right bits for the screws when a bit quicker. We had it installed in about 30 minutes. I went into the boat and pushed the button to test it. It lowered as designed, but when it reached the end of its travel, the end of the piston fell out of the actuator!

We tried to see if it just screwed back in, but noticed that there was a keyway at the top with a threaded hole, so it was clear that there was a retaining screw that held it in place. So the second unit was defective from the factory. The boat yard checked to see if they had another one in stock, but it was not our size. Since it was no good as is, and it would take until Tuesday to get another one, we decided to take it apart and see if we might be able to fix it. We removed it from the trim tab and took the cover off. None of the three mechanics had ever taken one apart, so it was a new experience for all of us. It came apart pretty easy, and it was immediately clear that the screw that holds in the piston mechanism was missing. We poked around in the gears, and there was no screw to be found. It had never been installed at the factory!

I got out my screw box to see if I had something that would fit, and the mechanic suggested that since we had the two old ones, we could take one apart and use the correct screw from it. It turns out that that was a good idea because the threads on it are reversed. We put in the screw with some Locktite and did a quick test before reinstalling it. It worked! We reinstalled it and gave both of them repeated cycles before calling it done.

We were racing against the tide as the lift well only has about 4 feet of depth at high tide, and at low tide, it’s just mud. High tide was at 6:30 that morning, and by the time we were done, it was almost 10:30, and we could see the bottom at the front of the lift well. They said to just go, and they would email us an invoice later on. Everything moved fast. They brought us as far out as they could and lowered us into the water. We were reading -1 foot on our depth sounder, and the front of the boat was sitting on the mud. A bunch of the staff pushed us back a bit, and I carefully put the boat into reverse. We had just enough water, and in a burst of mud, we backed into deeper water. Success! If it had taken any longer, we would have been stuck there until 6:00 PM when the tide returned. Thanks to the great staff at Zimmerman Holden Beach for getting us going!

We had reserved a slip in Southport, NC, just 12 miles away, in case we got stuck at the boat yard. We took it slow all the way so that we wouldn’t arrive too early. Check-in time at marinas is usually after 1:00 pm. We arrived at noon, and they were able to get us into our slip.

In addition to the issue with the trim tab, I’ve been chasing an oil leak on the starboard engine. Since we were early, I decided to see if I could find it. The engines were hot from our ride up, so we decided to go to Walmart and pick up a new coffee maker and a few odds and ends while they cooled down a bit. We tried to get both a Lyft and Uber, but no drivers were available. I checked the marina website to see if there was another transportation option, and we saw they have a courtesy car. We walked up to the office, and they called a driver. It turns out they drive you where you want to go! We got a ride to Walmart, and told the driver we only needed a few things, so he waited for us. We only took about 15 minutes. Walmart didn’t have a single-serve Keurig in stock, but they did have a Walmart brand, so we got that until we can get a real one.

When we returned to the boat, I changed into my engine room clothes and climbed down to look for the leak. While I was working on the engines, Brenda whipped up a batch of her Chocolate Chip Docking Cookies. I spent about 2 hours going over both engines with a flashlight and a rag, looking for the leak. I thought it might be coming from the oil pan drain, but that wasn’t it. My new theory is that the rear engine seal might be dripping. I got everything cleaned up and put new oil absorbent pads under the engine. I taped a pad under the area where the transmission meets the engine so that I can see exactly where the oil is dripping from. It’s not a big leak, only a few drops a day, but I’d rather be sure where it comes from in case it gets worse.

I got cleaned up, and at 3:30, Robert Creech, the local Harbor Host, stopped by to say hello and invite us to Porchtails on his porch at 5:00. He and his wife, Kay, live just a short walk from the marina and are famous for hosting Porchtails (Docktails on their porch). Having Porchtails at the Creeches is a Looper rite of passage!

We walked into town to check out a few local shops, then went to the Creeches. Their home sits on a low hill overlooking where the ICW meets the Cape Fear River. It has a spectacular view of both, and Robert sits on his porch to harass, errr… say hello, on the radio to Loopers who pass without stopping. We chatted until about 6:30, then walked to the waterfront for dinner.

After dinner, we stopped at a walkway across the marsh to grab a Geocache before returning to the boat for the evening.

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Day 13: Saturday, May 10th – In Southport, NC

Our original plan was to leave Southport at 8:30 am to continue north. We got the boat ready to depart and were about to start the engines when we overheard a couple of boats that had just left chatting on the radio. When you leave Southport, the next 6 miles are on the Cape Fear River, which is known for being rough when there are north winds. The chatter on the radio was talking about 3-4 foot waves, and very strong winds gusting over 25 knots. We are in no hurry, so we checked the weather. Tomorrow is forecast to be rainy, but with much lower winds. We checked with the marina, and they said we could stay another day, so we canceled our reservation for tonight and tied the boat back up.

The local yacht club was having a Marine Flea Market in the marina parking lot, so we went and browsed around. There was nothing we needed. There was, however, a Geocache at the end of the parking lot, so we went and found that before returning to the boat. I worked on the blog for a while, and we listened to the radio to see if there were any other weather reports. Right around noon, there was a report of a signal flare in the Cape Fear River just east of us. A shrimp trawler had run aground in rough water, and they wanted to be rescued. We heard that they were safely pulled off the boat, but that their boat was adrift. A short time later, the local water rescue boats came past, heading back to their dock. It’s good to know that they are out there when you need them, and it reinforced our decision to stay in port for the day.

In the afternoon, we walked back into town and browsed the multitude of shops. Brenda picked out her Mother’s Day present, a new Frog pillow for the boat.

As we past the fishing pier that looks over the Cape Fear River, we saw that the waves had subsided some, but could see the shrimp boat that got into trouble up on a sand bar just across the river. The radar showed rain coming for 3:00, so we headed back to the boat and arrived just as the rain started to fall.

The rain continued until evening, so we stayed on the boat, working on the blog and relaxing.

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Recap of the week

We had another good week. Only 66 total miles as we were in port for 4 days. There were some minor boat issues, but the most severe was the broken coffee machine! If that’s as bad as it gets, we will be in good shape! We were able to catch up with lots of old friends and make a few new ones. We ticked off a major Loop Bucket List item by having Porchtails with the Creeches!

Next week, we continue north through Beaufort, NC, and then to the Dismal Swamp Canal. (Do I hear banjos?)

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Thanks For Visiting! – Tom & Brenda