Carol and Vern's most excellent adventure - part 3 - the Atlantic Ocean

We arrived at Jeff and Pauline's house late afternoon on Monday. They have a beautiful house that Jeff built – Jeff is a retired Air Force officer/pilot and a building contractor specializing mostly in house construction.

beyond the peninsula the Atlantic

Jeff, Lee and Vern

Tuesday morning, the 21^st, we got going early, grabbing some breakfast from McDonalds and sandwiches from Subway for lunch, meeting Jeff's friend Lee at his home. Lee had the boat hooked up to the pickup, gas in the tank and the bait ready to go. We drove for about 20 minutes to the boat launch on Winyah Bay close to the old downtown of George Town SC, launched the boat and headed out into the bay. The bay is shallow with lots of exposed mud flats, shallow water ways with shallow oyster beds, narrow channels, twisting and turning, it took us about an hour to get to the ocean.  You have to have experience to navigate the water ways, I would not have been able to get us out of there.  Lee let Jeff and I out on the barrier peninsula and we walked around the point to the Atlantic.

It was time to get serious, we anchored a short distance from the mouth of the river where it meets the Atlantic. I was the first to catch a fish, a Blue something or another, about 2 pounds, too small to keep. After an hour or so of no bites Lee decided we should try our luck in a channel surrounded by mud flats, the tide was going out so fish should be moving from the shallow mud flats to the channels. After a few more hours of no bites we moved again back to the mouth of the river where Jeff caught a fish, a bass. As he was reeling it in, Lee ready with the net, within feet of the boat a 5 foot shark swam up and bit the fish in half!

Lee was worried about the tide making the waterways too shallow to navigate, his boat must have drawn all of 2 feet of water... the water was so murky that we couldn't see more than a half a foot down.

When we got back close to Georgetown we picked up a 12 of beer at the marina and toured the waterfront at Georgetown. It was a great day. We later met the ladies and had dinner at Drunken Jacks, a local supper club, I had a plate of blackened Grouper that was absolutely out of this world.

Jeff had a golf outing planned for Wednesday with John and Shannon and asked if I would be interested in going along... I told him I was a good sport and would be happy to go along with anything, within reason of course. The last time I had golfed had been in Japan, 40 years ago. So I told Jeff not to laugh me off the golf course if I was really bad at it.

Jeff loaned me a set of clubs and three balls. The course was beautiful, bright green grass, not a brown spot in sight, trimmed bushes, some flowers. We had a perfect day, it was in the low 70s, partly cloudy, with just a light breeze. The water hazards featured some gators, a few were quite large. I started out with 3 balls, lost one in a water hazard early on but retrieved two balls from the hazard, later in the day I dropped two in a water hazard and then lost another in the rough. I had to borrow a ball to finish the game. I shot a 56 on the back nine and a 58 on the front nine. I got some good drives with a 3-wood but could not get the 1-wood to work.

abandoned rice field

Thursday we took a river/creek tour of the rice fields. In the early 1800s this area was a primary source for rice in the United States. The slaves that were brought over from Africa had lived/worked in similar conditions in Africa and so developed the swampland into  productive rice fields. Our guide told us about plantation life in that era. We saw about a dozen gators, some about 12 feet in length.

Many thanks to Jeff and Pauline for their wonderful hospitality.  Carol and I enjoyed our stay immensely.  We look forward to seeing them in the Hills.

We departed on Friday morning for Savannah, Georgia