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| Socastee Bridge |
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| Socastee Bridge |
Sv/ Grey Ghost is planning on leaving this morning at
6:30am! It’s not even light yet!! Chuck says ‘no way’. He wants to be able to
see when we leave this dock at Osprey Marina…so 7 am it is for us. Our boat is in a very tight slip and to get
out of here Chuck is going to have to back out of the fairway before we can
head out bow first. At 7 am we cast off our lines and everything went
well, so we’re off…probably 15-20 minutes behind Grey Ghost…it turned out they
didn’t leave until 6:45 am. We almost caught up with them while they were waiting for the first bridge but up it went. They were on the motored to the north side of the bridge and the bridge closed before we got close.
Today is the day of bridges!
From Osprey Marina to Southport Marina, we will travel under 13 bridges
while motoring from South Myrtle to North Myrtle Beach. The only delay might be
at the Little River Swing Bridge. We
keep hearing on the radio that the bridge has malfunctioned and a mechanic is
working as quickly as possible to fix the problem. Hopefully by the time we get there, it will
be up and working. Yes, when we got
there it opened for us without a hitch.
We lucked out with that one….
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| Rock Pile |
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| Rock Pile |
Next comes ‘The Rock
Pile’ which sounds very intimidating. On
our way south, it was an easy stretch to navigate. It reminded us of the Erie Canal. On our way north today, the tides are much lower
and we can see the rocks and rock ledges
that this area is noted for. These rocks
can do some major damage to a boat if they get out of the channel. We still had no problems here.
Soon we will be crossing into North Carolina once we cross
the Little River. I can’t believe that
we’ve traversed the ICW already through 3 states!
North Carolina welcomes us with Shallotte Inlet and Lockwood’s Folly
today. Two areas of heavy shoaling. On our way south last fall, we heard and saw
many sailboats grounded in one or the other of these locations. We were warned in the fall to pass through them at
mid rising tide, which we did. This
won’t be necessary today because they just finished dredging both trouble
spots. However, all it’s going to take
is one or two perfect storms to create the shoaling conditions again. We motor/sailed right through today....no problems!
Pictures along the way in NC
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| What do you think about this color! |
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| Now this is a boat rack! |
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| shrimp boat |
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| dredger |
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| sunken boat |
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| fleet of shrimp boats! |
After 64 miles, we pulled into Southport Marina, NC about 30 minutes behind Grey Ghost. We also know
sv/Kokomo and mv/Silver Tail are already
docked in this same marina. We've been
trying to meet Frank and Donna of Kokomo.
Hopefully we can find them tonight.
As soon as we fueled up and docked, we walked into Southport with Charlie
and Mary Beth, sv/Grey Ghost, while it was still light.
They've visited this town many times on their trips north and
south so we know they’ll be great
tour guides. We checked out the water
front and decided to eat at the Frying Pan.
The dining area is up on the second floor with huge windows looking out
over the Cape Fear River. What a
spectacular view and what a sunset!
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| Inside the Frying Pan |
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| The Frying Pan |
View from the Frying Pan
After we ate, our waitress told us to visit the bar, The Old
American Fish Co. This is where the
main female character in Nicolas Sparks’ book/movie ‘Safe Haven’ worked. The
movie was filmed here in Southport, NC.
We walked over after eating, but it was closed. So, the four of us then walked along the
waterfront, back through town (everything was closed) and finally back to our
boats.
We wanted to meet Frank and Donna on Kokomo and introduce
ourselves but their boat was dark. They
must already be in bed! On our way back
to Happy Hours II, I noticed two couples on Silver Tail. So, I called up to see if Kokomo was there.
They were!! We got invited onto the 43 foot Silverton and finally met Frank and Donna as well as our hosts, Ron, Marilyn,
and dog Trig. We sat up in Ron’s upper
deck. What a boat! What great people!! Boaters are the best. We left and got to bed much later than we
should have. Tomorrow is another early
start….
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