5/20/15
Southport NC, ICW
Position 33 55.092N, 078 01.734W
Posted by Bill

We left Georgetown (position 33 21.964N, 079 17.428W) yesterday at 7:10 in the morning. We motored until we arrived at Barefoot Landing Marina in North Myrtle Beach at 2:55 PM (position 33 48.078N, 078 44.727W). We walked around Barefoot Landing and hit happy hour at the Flying Fish. Good food and drinks. Afterwards we hung around the boats and drank and socialized. It was fun, especially after such a long couple of days. The trip up was more picturesque than the trip south in the fall as the trees had leaves and there was more activity with the birds. We saw many Osprey in their nests like this one:

This morning we left just before 7 AM and made it to Southport, pulling into the dock just before 3 PM. It was great to reach our destination when we had planned to. The weather the last few days has been very nice, not too hot, and winds were not too bad. We pulled in the dock, turned on the air conditioners, plugged in the cable TV and popped a few hard ciders. Matt and Shirley on Sofia Jeanne reside here and had cars, so all 6 of us jumped in and went to a Mexican restaurant, having a great meal. The next couple of days we will get the boat cleaned up and just chill for the Memorial Day weekend. Southport is going to be crazy for the holiday and the marina is booked full. We are glad we got here early to make sure we got our dock. Next week we will start on some boat projects that we put off while we were traveling and get ready to meet the kids and grand kids for a week at Kure Beach. Really excited about that!!!

Our general plans for the summer are something like this…Southport for June and July (they have one of the best 4th of July celebrations in the country), maybe back to our Lake Erie house and Ohio for August, Southport until mid-October, and then head south again. We also plan to do some 3 or 4 day trips to Wilmington, Carolina Beach, and Myrtle Beach while we are here. We will keep you posted…of course!

Here are some pics of the trip here:
Shallotte Inlet:

Pelicans wallowing on the shores of Lockwoods Folley Inlet:

A pirate ship:

A shrimp boat that has seen better days:

Lockwoods Folley Inlet:

Caswell Beach and light house across from Southport: