🎶Just a little bit South of North Carolina🎶

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We enjoyed our time in Southport, NC but we were there for a bit longer than we would have liked and through a good weather window to go offshore to Charleston, SC. Part of our longer stay was due to needing some time to recoup from our offshore passage but also to have a house-call from Superior Life rafts. If you recall our fender failure in Oriental, NC over the summer, our superior life raft came out of its mount and was partially submerged. At that time, it did not self-inflate as the tether was not pulled but the casing became waterlogged. Life rafts are important, life saving equipment, especially for boats that like to travel offshore. In talks with Mike at Superior, they recommended a new life raft, instead of just getting it recertified, to prevent corrosion of the self-inflation mechanism. We received our new life raft before we left Baltimore but they wanted to get us a new rail mount since the previous one had failed and allowed the raft to fall into the drink. Mike drove from Raleigh to Southport to make this happen. They went above and beyond what we expected when we asked for advice back in October at the Annapolis Boat Show. If you need a life raft, please consider Superior

We ended up spending a week in Southport visiting some familiar haunts. With this being our 2nd trip to Southport, we loved visiting our favorite places. We recommend the Carolina Coastal Cafe (CaCoCa) for breakfast, the Royal James Rummery for lunch and the Moore Street Oyster Bar for dinner. Though Southport doesn’t have their own brewery, the local restaurants and especially the Southport Tap and Cellar have a large selection of local craft beers available or on tap. 

We were hoping to get a weather window to make an offshore passage all the way to Charleston (~130nm) or possibly down to Savannah (~210nm). But the weather did not agree with our plans with the wind being light and then turning to blow 10-15 in the direction that we wanted to go. We’re ok with light winds cause we can comfortably motor along with little impact from the waves. But once the wind builds up and blows on our bow/directly at us, we have to divert our course to allow the wind to fill our sails. This wind direction also builds up the waves so that we’re beating into them, making the bow of our boat bounce up and down (vertical acceleration/pitching/slamming) making the ride very uncomfortable and slows down our forward progress. With weather conditions in mind and the fact that we could only stay at our marina for a short time due to other boats coming in, we decided to make a shorter trip in the ICW through Myrtle Beach to Georgetown, SC. 

We left Southport with the sun in hopes of riding an outgoing tide/current down the Cape Fear River before diverting right into the ICW. We’ve seen 3 knots of current in the river and were more than happy to have it with us, instead of against us. There were a few reported sections along the way that were reported to be shallow, around Lockwood Folly, but we went slow and had our autopilot set to Bob423’s track we squeaked through even at low tide. We had an uneventful cruise until we came into Myrtle Beach and we heard that the Little River Bridge, the 1st of 3 swing bridges that we had to go through the following morning, was broken down and they were trying to get it back into commission. We were lucky that we had called ahead to reserve the last spot at Lightkeepers Marina, just 1nm north of the bridge. Other boaters weren’t so lucky as they had to either anchor for the night in the ICW or try and stay overnight at random docks along the ICW. We spent the evening trying to make contingency plans for if we weren’t able to get through the bridge in the morning. At the time that we went to sleep, the bridge was operational but the bridge tender said to call in the morning, just in case, making for a restless night. 

The next morning, our alarm went off at 5am. Justin called the bridge tender and they said that the bridge was operational, so we hurried and were on our way by 5:45. We made it to the bridge at 6:00am and were able to get through. We were up and through before the mad rush of other boats that were stuck waiting for an opening. With that initial stress over, we went through the following 2 swing bridges without incident. We also cruised through our favorite sections of the ICW. It was also intensified by the morning mist along the water as the sun was rising. Eventually all the other boats passed us again because we’re typically the “slow” boat on the water with our cruising speed of about 5.5knots. And with us being slow, we made the 52nm to Georgetown in about 10.5 hours. We like to stay at the Harborwalk Marina, which is just a short walk to all the restaurants and shops in the historic downtown area. We will be here through Thanksgiving and have a couple of restaurant options in town who serve a buffet to the locals and transients like us. 

“Just a little bit south of North Carolina, I’ll find paradise” – Dean Martin

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