We had been told by many that Beaufort SC was a must see stop along the ICW. Although we don’t do the ICW for South Carolina, we tend to hop outside and make 24 hour hops which can get us much farther north or south quickly. Still as a must stop we decided it was going to be a trip.

The first thing I noticed was that getting to Beaufort SC from the ocean takes FOREVER. It didn’t help that the wind was up and in the wrong direction either.

Once at anchor though we found excellent holding and a beautiful town. Cute restaurants and cafes which always put me in a good mood. We also found the grocery store fairly convenient as well.

One tip for anchoring out though is to make sure that you time the tide for going to and from the boat in the dinghy. We found that our little 55 lb thrust electric just couldn’t fight the current at all. A stronger dinghy motor wouldn’t have this concern though.

When it was time to go we decided to move up the river and visit Monkey Island. Actually it’s Morgan Island and they have a colony of about 5,000 Rhesus monkeys. Sadly we didn’t see any and you’re not allowed to go to shore but the anchorage was fine and we had a good settled night.

The trip out to the ocean from there was a bit bouncy and we were once again reminded just how far out shallow water can go in this part of the world. We bounced and we bounced for MILES until we got to deeper water.

The plan was to head up to Cape Fear and up to Carolina Beach. But we’d lost so much time getting out onto the ocean we didn’t have enough time to do so in the 36 hours I keep as our maximum time out when close to shore like that.

As a stop gap choice we decided to visit Georgetown South Carolina to get fuel and spend the night.

That was another wild long ride in from the ocean. We arrived so late and tired that we anchored off the fuel dock and went promptly to bed, never getting to see the town or the “must stop” attributes along the ICW. Still I’m not sure if I’d want to go in and out from the ocean on this one without more time.

Exiting was a breeze until we got to the final entrance. The tide going out and the wind blowing in we found 4 foot breakers and I was a bit unsure if our little boat would make it out. We were beaten pretty hard for the 1/4 of a mile it took us to get out. And then once back into deeper water we had zero waves and it was glass the whole way to Cape Fear where we once again spent a couple of weeks in Carolina Beach.