N 33 51.849 W 78 37.229
The sunrise creeping through the portlights roused me at 0630. I made my coffee before waking Eugene Jr at 0700. The sky was blue with a gentle breeze from the north. We raised anchor as soon as Eugene was dressed, and headed back out down the Cape Fear River. Our hope was to make South Carolina today, and finaly leave North Carolina.
We were nervous about shoaling and cross current as we made the turn back into the ditch at Southport, but didn't have any problems. We noticed 'Mysterious Ways' had stopped in at Southport Marina, and waved at them as we cruised by early in the morning.
We heard 'Breakaway' trying to hail 'Mysterious Ways', and talked to them briefly on ch 68, letting them know that 'Mysterious Ways' wasn't under way yet.
The boys had cold cereal for breakfast, again. We had corned beef hash and eggs in stores, but weren't into cooking early while under way.
The ICW crossings at Lockwoods Folly and Shallotte inlet continued to make us nervous. We weren't looking forward to running aground any more. The ICW may be protected, but I think we've been happier offshore.
Noonsite: N 33 53.78 W 78 26.123
We'd gotten an early start and were ahead of other boats we'd met. 'Mysterious Ways' and others caught up to us when we had to wait for the 1300 opening of Sunset Beach pontoon bridge.
There's been no hurry to knock down miles on our trip, but we had set the goal of making it to South Carolina today. It was an easy goal to make, and we were there by 1330. There are a number of marinas to choose from south of the border in the North Myrtle Beach neighborhood. We passed up BWs slowly and avoided it. They'd called out a no wake security warning earlier, saying they had a diver in the water working on docks. It was Cricket Cove Marina near ICW mile marker 345 that we chose, and pulled in at about 1430.
Cricket Cove was a very nice marina. We were met by a dock hand in a golf cart to catch our lines. They were happy to give the boys rides back and forth on the dock as they attended to fuel and errands for the boat. Eugene and Peter took a cab ride into town to go shopping for stores. We were a bit unhappy to find that the laundry room closed at 1700.
I treated the boys to Pizza Hut for dinner. It was better than the Dominoes Pizza we had been getting most of the time, but expensive. We all enjoyed nice hot showers.
Our DVD collection got left behind in the van when we left SeaGate in North Carolina, and we'd been through all the movies on board. We watched network programming and the 2200 news. The weather report showed a nasty cold front coming through. We were just starting to wear shorts and T-shirts on the nice warm days we'd had ! Maybe we should start making more miles south ?
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(c)Copyright 2006 by Eugene Kashpureff