Saturday – 14 November
Southport was a lovely stop along the way.
We planned to leave the marina a little later than usual as we tried to time our travels with the tides and currents. But we were ready to go by 0730, and off we went.
A cold spell has made its presence known, and layers were worn as were shoes and socks! (We are looking forward to putting the fleece and shoes away soon!)
Today was a pretty uneventful day, but very relaxing as there were no bridges to schedule around, and very few shoaling areas to navigate around. But each of the four inlets we passed through were more challenging than expected with whitecaps on one.
We passed by beautiful homes, many with private docks for small power boats. This particular house created their own waterpark with slide into the water.
Today’s landmark of distinction was this half sunken boat, still tied to the dock. Reportedly, it has been like this for years making us wonder what really happened to it and why someone hasn’t cleared it out. It is not really a hazard to traffic on the waterway, but still something to avoid so we don’t have a similar fate.
The narrowness of the “ditch” is becoming commonplace and easy enough to deal with.
The marina we chose for the night is literally right on the ICW, so even with a strong current we were able to pull up alongside the dock easily. The marina is small, but the restaurant looks to be top notch and we will plan to be enjoying happy hour libations and good food before retiring for the evening.