23 & 24 April – North Myrtle Beach, SC to Southport, NC
We enjoyed a pretty uneventful day making our way to Southport, NC. For some reason this section of the Waterway has quite a few partially sunken boats as landmarks. 
It was time to change the oil in the engine so we decided to spend 2 nights in Southport and do some boat chores and enjoy some wonderful local cuisine on our “off day”.
Our next door neighbor had a very inquisitive cat who decided to joined us and explore our boat, comparing the differences between her own motor yacht and our sail boat. We definitely enjoyed playing host to Tito.
For our hospitality we were rewarded with a bowl of the most awesome crab bisque prepared by Tito’s mom. It was a win win win for us!
One of the services offered at Southport is a most informative and free presentation by a meteorologist and sailor about the ICW and known trouble spots. We attended the seminar to learn the latest news about potential upcoming hazards and conditions. It was an excellent source of information and we used those notes for the rest of the trip, noting bridges that were not operational, new shoaling areas, actual surveys of depths in the channel, and one section where the recommendation was to ignore the channel markers and go outside the channel to find the deeper water – something we would never even consider without the briefing. Thankfully we had no issues, but were grateful with the latest and most up to date information available.