Catchup Blogpost Nov 1 - Nov 7

Nov 1, Departed Beaufort for Huggins Island anchorage near Swansboro where I dropped the family off at the beach so I could get some work done on the anchor and was called back immediately for a medical evacuation because Lucy had cut her foot on a shell badly enough that it needed some medical attention on board by Dr. Mom.

Nov 2, Left the following day and headed for surf city/topsail Island NC where once again I stayed on board and Sarah and the kids went off this time to the Caryn Beasley turtle rescue center. Gators invisibly swam beneath the boat.

Nov 3, Left surf city and headed south again through a misty encounter with a swing bridge, this time to Cape Fear river where we attempted to enter a tiny harbor called Carolina Beach State Park Marina at the end of Snows Cut.

Sarah was hung-ho to visit some carnivorous plants.

Upon turning the corner to head in the tiny channel it became quite clear that the woman I had spoken to on the phone was not aware of how big a 40 something foot sailboat actually is. We promptly thumped onto the hard bottom. Luckily we were at idle speed so I quickly threw it in reverse and, serendipitously, a powerboat passed behind us with their wake up which helped dislodge the keel from the bottom and we were back on our way heading down to your river to Southport North Carolina on the crazy busy ICW.

After getting things in order at the marina dock, Jessie, Stan and I found the local playground which was apparently to be shared with alligators from time to time.

A brisk game of tag with the kids ended with Dad going off a slide face first into the wood chips much to the delight of the children.

The next morning while getting the boat topped off with water, the family took a stroll down the dock and started up a conversation with Bob Mayne of Aqua Quest who was running a salvage operation to recover copper ore from a shipwreck that had occurred about 100 years ago. Turns out he was from the Cape. During his telling of stories he disappeared into the chaos of the working deck and returned with some chunks of copper ore as souvenirs. The kids, especially Stan, were delighted.

The kids watched a diver replacing huge props on a big power boat that had run a ground where we had run aground briefly in New River north of there the previous day. Apparently that was a skinny spot for just about everyone coming through. The diver was very friendly and seemed to enjoy all of the questions being asked about his job as a diver and the work at hand.

Nov 4, Departed Southport and headed down the ICW to Little River Inlet/Bird Island/Sunset Beach which is on the North Carolina side of the North Carolina South/Carolina border.

Anchored up in an estuary anchorage surrounded by marshes and duned beaches that could have been straight out of Cape Cod.

We took the dinghy in to the beach and took a short evening hike across to the ocean side of the spit. We came across an area of squared off and broken rocks where someone had been busy building balanced karins and we all decided to add to their installation. It was a great distraction for all of us as we balanced rocks and built different rock stacked structures. We found some monarch butterflies that had washed up but were still alive. We buti them a safe spot for them out of the wind and hoped that they would be able to continue on their journey south. Sarah and the girls headed right for the surf to get some salt water intake. Later, back on the boat after dinner, Sarah discovered a cool curiosity called the Kindred Spirit Mailbox. Many years ago a couple place a mailbox in the dunes. It turns out that a man named Frank Nesmith says he and a former girlfriend placed the original "Kindred Spirit" mailbox in a remote location more than 35 years ago. People hike the mile and a half out to the mailbox in the dunes to write messages in notebooks that live in the inside. Sometimes it is their innermost thoughts, sometimes just messages to the universe. The journals are now part of a special collection at University of North Carolina Wilmington. Our messages will soon be part of the collection.

Nov 5. Packed up some snacks and headed out to hike to the mailbox and get a taste of the inter-dune areas of the beach. After following some paths through the dunes we quickly learned the difference between Cape Cod and the Carolinas. The one hiker who went barefoot, Me, was quick to discover the alarmingly sharp and purposely barbed spikes of the little mace-like burrs that hide just below the sand. There was much dancing on one foot and wincing while pliered hands extracted and tossed away the little menaces. Turns out they are so sharp that when you try to pull them out with your fingertips they simply embed themselves in your fingertips as well.

We eventually reached the mailbox and had a peaceful session of writing down our deep thoughts in the journal notebooks and replacing them in the tin postal vault.

Nov 5, onto Osprey marina down the Waccamaw River through the cypress swamps of South Carolina.

Osprey marina is a tiny basin that was excavated out of the cypress swamps ages ago that is home to a terrific little marina that has resident freshwater turtles and mystery fish that eat Cheerios and beg for more. Near to Myrtle Beach, it does not have a big touristy feel to it but the people there are wonderful and extremely accommodating to wandering families like ours. As we approached Osprey Marina we were treated to an audio display of gunshots and sirens emanating from the murky depths of the swamplands.

We still don't know exactly what it was but it was quite a good deal of different weapons fire. I ordered the entire crew to go below until it settled down.

Approaching a drawbridge, we came across a 30 foot sailboat with a bearded guy aboard who was single handing a boat called "Problem Solved". We met up with him later at Osprey marina and became fast friends. He was bringing the boat that he had just purchased, sight-unseen, in Annapolis, back down to the West Coast of Florida, single-handed. No electronics, no dinghy, no refrigeration, and no autopilot.

He's a trooper.

Took a ride with our new friend Rob on a pizza and shopping excursion driven there by one of the marina employees who kindly offered us a ride.

We had a great pizza dinner and stocked up at the “Lowes” supermarket. On the uber ride home our driver was a retired musician who spun tales of driving Steve Perry in his car along with hanging out with various country music legends of the current day, none of which I knew anything about but feigned excitement over.

Nov 6, to Georgetown South Carolina. Further down the Waccamaw river closer to the ocean sits the town of Georgetown South Carolina. Home to a massive well weathered steel plant adjacent to an incredibly odiferous paper pulping plant, we witnessed some of the most interesting liveaboards so far on our trip as well as took a tour of the Rice Museum which was quite an experience. Most of the museum has been around for quite some time. It truly showed its age in the overall patina of the place as well as somewhat glossed over view of history and the overall narrative that described the industry and labor force of the old south.

Later we walked around the town and met a woman on the dock playing saxophone named Kerri Who was a secret weapon of sax talent. At the same time we also met a fellow boaters with kids who we had a long and exciting conversation with while Stan played with their two young children on the dock.

Nov 7, pulled anchor and headed out, not knowing that our day would end in the mud.

Heading south through The lowcountry of South Carolina and bringing along the knowledge we had gained at the Rice Museum, it was interesting to see the former rice fields and their still-visible structures and layouts. We passed through hundreds of thousands of acres of former rice fields some producing but most now just endless wet meadows of vegetation heading back to its next wild transformation. Once deep and lush cypress swamps are now open sunny areas that seem to go on forever. More so when you pass through them moving at the pace of an elderly jogger.

Looking at Active Captain, we had located a nice looking Anchorage down a tributary off the ICW called Price Creek. The charts showed an approach that seems perfectly reasonable. Upon attempting the approach, on the falling tide, it turned out to be not so reasonable after all. The boat quickly slowed to a muffled stop, indicating a mud bank under the keel. Repeated attempts to back the boat off were futile. A passing couple in a small powerboat were recruited to attempt to pull us off while I was heeling the boat over with a halyard attached to the dinghy.

All of this was happening as the tide raced out and the boat wallowed, very high and very dry.

We all loaded into the dinghy and took a little tour around the area to check the depths for the approach after the return of the tide and the boat was free to continue on. Just as the sun was completely set, the tide did indeed come back in and we were afloat again. Elapsed time was about three hours. During our grounding experience we were passed by a few boats we had passed earlier in the day. I'd say that was probably the worst part for me. I could hear the snickering. In our downtime we did some bottom scrubbing and barnacle inspection of the port side bottom, which was quite exposed. Don't believe the charts in the ICW in South Carolina. This is not news to the guide books and seasoned ditch travelers. It is now considered common knowledge to the Sailing Swains.

We headed down the side river in the pitch black to the anchorage toward our friend Rob on Problem Solved as he flicked his flashlight in the rigging to guide is in for a peaceful night sleep.