Anchoring at Carolina Beach and The Rock Pile
Friday, June 10
Left Barefoot marina at around 7:40 AM. One and a half miles north of North Myrtle Beach is a stretch of water called the rock pile. This is about a 2 mile stretch. It is very narrow and boaters announce on the VHF radio that they are entering the Rock Pile headed north or south to let other boaters know that you are there. Why? Because you don’t want to meet another boat in that narrow section with rock just under the water on both sides. It was good to go through it in low tide so we could see the rocks on both sides.
Left Barefoot marina at around 7:40 AM. One and a half miles north of North Myrtle Beach is a stretch of water called the rock pile. This is about a 2 mile stretch. It is very narrow and boaters announce on the VHF radio that they are entering the Rock Pile headed north or south to let other boaters know that you are there. Why? Because you don’t want to meet another boat in that narrow section with rock just under the water on both sides. It was good to go through it in low tide so we could see the rocks on both sides.
Lots of boat traffic today. As we get into North Carolina we see lots and lots of fishing boats. In Holden Beach area tons of seafood markets on the shore where you can buy freshly caught seafood. We cruised by lots of smaller pretty homes on the inter coastal as we got to Little River and beyond. Little River is almost the end of South Carolina We think we saw our friend’s (that own the boat Fruitcakes) condo. Very nice area. They weren’t around because they are headed to Massachusetts to see their daughter. Hopefully we will catch them on the way back down this fall.
As we cruised into North Carolina we headed for South Port. We have friends here too that we were hoping to visit. This is the couple that we traveled with across Lake Okeechobee. Again, they were gone so we couldn’t visit them. Getting the feeling that maybe people are trying to tell us something. Just kidding. We looked at the anchorage by Kay and Robert’s house, even though they weren’t there, but it seemed to small for both of our boats, so we decided to continue on through Snows cut to Carolina Beach 2 anchorage. We got here around 4 pm. Tom and Colletta found a spot to drop anchor right away but John and I had to put our anchor down 2 times until we found a spot that we were happy with. Lots of condos and paddle boarding activity around this anchorage.
A little way off there was a wedding that we could hear the music from until around 10 PM and the lights from a Ferris Wheel shone off in the distance.
Saturday June 11
We left the anchorage around 10 AM since we didn’t have very far to travel to Wrightsville Beach, our next anchorage. Just after we left Carolina Beach we passed the boat that Kay and Robert were cruising on. We were too far from their place so we just continued on.
This is a very busy boating area. We saw around 3 or 4 patrol boats hanging around or pulling boats over. We turned into Motts channel at high tide. Lots of good water all the way through. There are a few different anchorages here but we anchored to the left with around 6 other boats. Lots of room here. We did rock ‘n’ roll throughout the day because of small boats going fast to the bridge, but everything settled down after dark.We took the our dinghy over and walked around town. Not much in the town just a few restaurants and a couple of shops. Walked over to the beach that was only 2 blocks away. This beach was packed. 
We walked around the little town and got back to the boat in time for a rain storm.