11/4/15
North Myrtle Beach, SC
Position: 33 48.102N, 78 44.816W
Posted by Bill

Well…we finally got moving again. After an emotional (for me) send off from our friends Matt and Shirley from Sofia Jeanne, and Kurt and Sharon from Byrd Ketcher, we got off the dock at 7:03 this morning, destination: North Myrtle Beach. Amazingly…this is the same trip we took last year on this date! Everything was pretty much the same, except the tides were close to low when we left and when we traversed Lockwoods Folley Inlet west of Southport. Just out of the marina we saw this sailboat aground at a creek known locally as “Wildlife”. This poor guy didn’t have the local knowledge that he was going on to a sand bar at the entrance to the creek:

Unfortunately for him, he was a good hour to two hours away from enough tide to lift him off. He obviously put his head sail up to help him get off, which probably only pulled him higher on the bar.

We did a white knuckled transit through Lockwoods Folley, which has been grounding vessels for weeks at low tide, but we made it with room to spare! Shortly thereafter, we ran into a tug boat pushing a double-wide barge that took up most of the channel. I diverted to port (left), almost out of the channel to avoid him, nearly running aground myself. Ass Captain award to that jack-leg! The rest of the trip was very similar to last year, so I won’t bore you with a duplicate entry and will let you click to last year’s post. We arrived around 2:30 and went to one of our favorite places to have a great dinner.

It was really nice to get back on the water again, but it is a MAJOR bummer to not be traveling with our friends. We are going to miss them very much until we see them again SOON! Good first day, but a long day tomorrow. By the way…tortuga is spanish for turtle…we move at about 5-6 miles per hour!