Windmill Harbour Community on Hilton Head Island

There is one way in for residents and visitors: the main gate on Harbour Passage, off US 278, staffed around the clock. Owners’ cars carry a decal, and a transponder opens the automatic gate in the right-hand lane. A back gate is for construction traffic only. The association’s rules let security turn away anyone who isn’t an owner or renter, a boat-slip owner or renter, or a member of the yacht club, and people on foot or on bikes need ID showing they belong.

Guests get in on their host’s word. A resident, a slip owner or a club member calls security at (843) 681-6405 with a PIN, or books the pass online, and the gate won’t admit a guest without that. Contractors and delivery firms can’t use guest passes; they buy a daily pass or a yearly decal at the gatehouse. Boaters renting a slip are given a pass that gets them to the marina and back.

Without a host, there isn’t much of a reason to drive in: the club’s dining rooms are for members and their guests, and the pool, piers and paths are for residents. The exception is by boat. The marina welcomes transient boaters coming off the Intracoastal Waterway, and members of yacht clubs with reciprocal privileges can ask the South Carolina Yacht Club for a guest membership to eat there.

For a meal with the same marsh views, The Crazy Crab at Jarvis Creek is just along US 278 on Jenkins Island, and Pinckney Island National Wildlife Refuge, back across the bridge toward the mainland, has free trails through the marsh. Our Hilton Head boating guide covers getting out on the water without a slip of your own.

• Size: About 3,500 square feet, two stories
• Rooms: Three bedrooms, three and a half baths
• Outside: A screened porch the length of the house, a pool and an outdoor kitchen, facing the marsh
• Prize: Over $2 million, from 144 million entries

HGTV built its 2020 Dream Home, the house it gives away each year in its sweepstakes, in Windmill Harbour. The search started in January 2019. The builder, Shoreline Construction, needed a lot with a sweeping view that could take a house built straight on a slab, because it had about eight months to finish, and of the three lots a local agent found, the one in Windmill Harbour won on its view over the marsh.

The result is a two-storey, Southern-style house of about 3,500 square feet, designed by the Court Atkins Group and decorated by Brian Patrick Flynn in jewel-toned blues and greens with touches of coral and blush pink. Inside there is a two-storey foyer, a great room open to the kitchen and dining room, a primary suite on the main floor and an entertaining room upstairs, with three bedrooms and three and a half baths in all. Outside, a screened porch with retractable screens runs the length of the house, beside a rectangular pool and an outdoor kitchen, all looking over the salt marsh.

HGTV’s special, hosted by Tamara Day, aired on New Year’s Day 2020, and fans could enter twice a day from December 30, 2019 to February 19, 2020. The sweepstakes drew about 144 million entries, and in April 2020 a woman from Georgia won the furnished house, a new Honda Passport and $250,000, a package worth more than $2 million.

It is a private home inside the gate now, so we don’t publish its address, and there are no public tours; the video above, filmed inside in January 2020, is the closest you can get. If it has you picturing a house on the marsh, our Windmill Harbour homes for sale page has what is on the market now.

The harbour is the reason Windmill Harbour exists. A lock off Calibogue Sound, run by the harbourmaster’s staff during the day and by keycard after hours, lets boats in and out, and inside the basin there is no tide and no current, which keeps the boats safe in bad weather and slows the growth on their hulls. Its 258 slips are each owned separately, like condominiums, and many are rented out by the month through the marina office. You don’t have to live here to own one.

Our Windmill Harbour Marina page covers the lock, transient dockage, renting a slip and buying one. For the island’s other big marina, see Harbour Town Marina in Sea Pines.

The South Carolina Yacht Club, on the harbour, is the community’s social centre: fine and casual dining, a pool, tennis and pickleball, a fitness centre and a busy sailing program. Membership is optional and is not part of the association’s fees, and you don’t need a boat to join. It is a private club, and it is not the Harbour Town Yacht Club in Sea Pines.

Everything else belongs to the association and is for residents and their guests. There is a community pool on Indian Hill Lane, heated from March to November; a promenade around the harbour and brick paths under the trees; two piers out by the lock for sunsets and watching dolphins (no swimming off them); and a community pier off Crosstree Drive where residents launch kayaks and paddleboards, drop crab pots and fish (a South Carolina fishing licence is required). Small parks are tucked into the common ground, including Dolphin Park, with its dolphin fountain on the harbour, and a loop through most of the streets makes a walk or run of 4 to 5 miles.

There is no golf course inside, but residents can join the community’s Golf Group, which gets reduced rates at several local courses with no annual fee. For public courts nearby, see our Hilton Head tennis guide.

You can’t rent a home in Windmill Harbour for a vacation. The community’s covenants, amended by a vote of the owners and recorded with Beaufort County in January 2019, define a residence as a home that may not be rented or leased for less than six consecutive months, and the association repeats the rule for buyers. Long-term leases of six months or more are allowed. So a Windmill Harbour, Hilton Head rental means a year-round tenancy, not a holiday week, and a buyer counting on short-term rental income should look elsewhere.

The one thing here you can rent by the month or the night is a boat slip, through the marina. To stay nearby, most of the island’s vacation rentals are in Sea Pines, Palmetto Dunes, Shipyard, Shelter Cove and around Folly Field, and our Hilton Head vacation rentals guide covers the companies that rent them.

Every owner belongs to the Windmill Harbour Association, the property owners’ association that runs the gate, security, roads and common grounds. It is governed by nine elected directors and managed day to day by FirstService Residential, with a manager on site. It is also the umbrella over a few smaller associations: the Westwind Villas and Spindle Lane regimes, the Leeward Passage association and the marina’s own owners association.

The yearly assessment is set by the kind of property. A home, townhome or condominium pays the full rate, an empty lot pays half and a boat slip a quarter, which the marina’s 2026 fee sheet puts at $820 a year per slip. When a property sells, the buyer pays the association a transfer fee equal to one year’s assessment. Slip owners also pay the marina owners association, and homes in the smaller regimes can carry their own fees on top; yacht club dues are separate again. The association’s fee page lists the current figures.

Windmill Harbour fills the west end of Jenkins Island, between US 278 and the Intracoastal Waterway. Coming from the mainland, the entrance is on your right shortly after the bridges, at Harbour Passage. Inside, Harbour Passage runs down to the marina at 161 Harbour Passage, and the yacht club is at 10 Yacht Club Drive on the north side of the basin. The association keeps a community map on its website.

By boat, the lock is on the waterway about half a mile south of the Pinckney Island bridge. Hilton Head Hospital is less than 10 minutes away, and the Hilton Head airport and Savannah/Hilton Head International are about 15 and 45 minutes by car.

Homes range from full-size home sites and smaller patio lots to villas and townhomes, many of them on the harbour itself, and some lots come with a boat slip of their own. The community is small and sociable: a December Harbour Stroll with the homes and boats lit up, a golf-cart parade on the Fourth of July, a progressive happy hour in early summer, and newcomers’ parties twice a year. Wildlife runs to herons and egrets at the rookery, dolphins off the piers, a few small alligators in the lagoons, and no deer.

Being outside the Town of Hilton Head Island has consequences. Owners can’t get the Town’s resident beach parking pass, so they use the metered lots at the beach parks or free parking at Coligny; they vote in county, state and national elections but not the Town’s; and the association doesn’t collect household rubbish, so each home hires its own service.

If you are thinking of buying, our Windmill Harbour homes for sale page has the current listings, homes and boat slips alike, and what to know before you make an offer. For other communities, see the Hilton Head real estate guide and the Hilton Head neighborhoods comparison.

Windmill Harbour was developed by JR Richardson, who also founded the South Carolina Yacht Club; the club opened on July 1, 1989, with a black-tie party for 700 guests. The community’s covenants were restated in 2018 and amended by a vote of the owners that December.

Its best-known house is much newer: the HGTV Dream Home 2020, built here in 2019.