6/14/15
Southport NC
Posted by Bill

The heat index here is over 100 degrees for the next 5 days. Thank god our boat has air conditioning…the heat hits you like a hammer when you climb out of the boat! We were thinking we needed to borrow our friend Matt’s truck and spend the day shopping at Walmart (desperation) so we could be in cool air outside of the boat, but our dock neighbors John and Maryann asked if we wanted to take a boat ride with them to “the sandbar” to swim for the afternoon…needless to say, they are the bomb! We borrowed Matt and Shirley’s beach chairs (they are also the bomb) and jumped in the boat. The “sandbar” is an area in the Cape Fear river that is just east, or behind from Southport, Battery Island. It is almost completely submerged at high tide, but at low tide emerges as and island of sand. Lots of boats will beach there on the weekends and everyone hangs out at “the beach”.

Here is the route we took. It doesn’t even exist on Google maps:

You can see it in green on the nautical charts:

We swam and hung out on the beach, which was a welcome relief from the heat. The current was really strong! It was also great to hang out with John and Maryann and get to know them better. They are long time residents of Southport and gave us a ton of local knowledge about fishing and the waters in the area. After some wallowing, we motored over to Bald Head Island and they gave us a quick harbor tour of the area. We will take Island Bound over there for a long weekend and check that place out for sure.

John and Maryann are “salt of the earth” people and it was great to get to know them better. We have been so fortunate to meet such great people here, especially Matt and Shirley on Sofia Jeanne. It was a stroke of luck to meet them in Marathon and have the opportunity to travel the Bahamas and ICW with them. They have introduced us to Kurt and Sharon on Byrd Ketcher whom we also traveled with and now consider very close friends, and all of the people on D dock. D dock is a great group of people and we are happy to be here.