St James Plantation - The ICW is closed!

Ann took a much better photo than I did yesterday at the butterfly garden

The news on the ICW was all bad today. North of us the routes south were both closed. The Dismal Swamp and the Virginia Cut were both closed. On the Virginia Cut side it was the bridges that were not operational. On the Dismal Swamp it was high water. Farther down the ICW there was a closure between the North Carolina border and the Albemarle Sound. Adding to that problem was a closure from the Alligator River to the Pungo River as was Goose Creek to Bay River. Bogue Sound and inlet were also closed.

Pampas grass

South of us the North Myrtle Beach Little River swing bridge was non-operational as was the Socastee swing bridge. Even going outside to Georgetown was not an option since the Winyah Bay port and approach was closed to navigation. All this was due to hurricane Matthew.

Well that puts a damper on plans for going south! We are all paid up for a month's stay here but we only wanted to stay two weeks. Adding to the problem is the marina's rule that you can only stay on your boat for two weeks. After that, your boat can stay but you cannot. I don't quite know what we'll do in case the ICW is still not open by Tuesday of next week, our last day of a two week stay. We can hope they will fix the bridges by then which is the reason for the closures in our area. We'll take it day by day.

Meanwhile the weather has turned much cooler with a high today of 68 although it's comfy in the cockpit with our full enclosure. Hopefully we are nearing the end of the hurricane season. We haven't put on the jib yet, we're waiting for calmer winds and warmer weather.