Myrtle Beach to Southport

Tick off another state. We left South Carolina first thing this morning and crossed over into North Carolina.

Travel today was easy and without incident of any kind. In fact, we spent the four hours in a small cluster of boats, with Soul Shine ahead of us and Sea Trolley behind us. All loopers. As it turned out, all of us came to the same marina.

If you're fond of sand dunes and salty air,
quaint little villages, here and there...

Soul Shine hailed the marina, wanting to fuel up before docking. We hailed them requesting to be docked, and so did Sea Trolley. We knew the crew of Sea Trolley, Rob and Lee, since we'd run into them a couple of times on this trip thus far starting way back on the wall in LaBelle.

We slowed down as Soul Shine pulled off the ICW and headed for the fuel dock. We received instructions to proceed to A dock and someone would meet us there. Stern in. Once I made the turn down the small fairway I realized I probably wanted to back down, which might be easier than spinning 90 degrees given the size. But I committed and, since things were calm, we spun without issue and backed into our slip.

Gratuitous dog pic. Savannnah rests her head
on Lizzie's belly

After we docked we walked the dogs (early day for them, too, as we got here right around noon) then headed for lunch. Walking in the little town we ran into Rob and Lee. We shared some of our stories, telling them about running aground almost two days in a row. They confessed that just now, as they were turning into this marina, they ran aground. Badly, too. It took a while for him to back off whatever he got stuck on. Sadly, it wasn't even his fault. The dock person he talked to gave him bad instructions. Because they were behind us we didn't see any of that.

Those folks are loopers but they're about done, crossing their wake when they get to the Chesapeake. In other words, we're in for a long year of mistakes.

A neighboring boater confessed that he too is quite new to the whole boating thing. We decided to start a newbie boaters club. We'll call it the "Oops! Sorry!" Club.