Next stop Myrtle Beach

The run down to Beaufort was pretty uneventful other than shortly after leaving Oriental and entering the Adams Canal, I was surprised to see a large pod of dolphins swimming towards the boat. They seem to be quite plentiful around here - I suppose that is the reasoning behind the signs that were posted in Oriental that we not feed the dolphins. There was a fair bit of wind blowing from behind me so I tried to deploy the genoa as often as I could so that my speed would stay up. I still wasn't able to keep up with Robert and Brigitte and after a couple of hours, lost sight of them. The rest of the trip went without problems and by early afternoon I was tied up at the Town Creek Marina, just outside Beaufort. They had a courtesy car so I signed up for it and later in the afternoon, went and replentished the "larder" at the local Food Lion store. They had a restaurant on site but O checked out their menu and was not all that impressed, so dinner was prep'd on board.
I left early the next morning, planning on getting as far as Dudley's marina - about 30 miles down the ICW. This marina was located right on the ICW so it was subject to whatever tidal currents might happen to come along. There are many inlets from the Atlantic to the ICW and the tides generate currents through the inlets and into the ICW. It is hard to predict just what the currents will be at any particular spot since there are so many of these inlets. The docks at the marina were a bit rough but I got in without incident. The other notable item was that this marina served a number of sport fishing boats and whenever they went by, their wake gave us a bit of a ride. This disappeared, however, just before sunset and we had a fairly peaceful night. Part of the run took us through Camp Lejeune - a US Marines base. I attached a photo of the tower at the start of the Camp. There is a dolphin in the foreground of the picture. The tower is there to warn boaters when the Marines as engaged in live fire exercises. Fortunately, when I went through, they were not.
We were off and running again the next morning - it was another beautiful day; warming up a bit - into the low 70's.The getwaway from the marina was hairy - there was a good current running and I had to call upon those 10 puppies to work pretty hard to get me out of the slip and back into the ICW. Resolute's pretty good paint job will likely need to be redone after I get back frpm this trip.
Today's run was to a marina advertised in Skipper Bob's book as being in a basin off the ICW and therefore not really subject to currents or the wakes from passing vessels. The Beach House Marina was at Surf City - yes- it could be the same surf city that Beach Boys sang about - the beach was about 300 yards away - a photo is attached. There was a huge pier jutting out into the Atlantic - it was populated by dozens of people fishing; many other just sat in the sand taking in the fantastic view.
They had great floating docks at this marina and getting in and out was absolutely a breeze. None of the local eateries appealed that much to me so it was dinner again aboard. I will save my appetite for when I get to Southport.
I left early the next morning, Sunday, planning to go to the Carolina Beach basin about 35 miles away, and stay there overnight, going the last 15 miles to Southport, at the bottom of the Cape Fear River, the next day. However, I caught a very good tidal current and soon found myself in the Cape Fear River, doing 8.4 knots. I was tied up at Southport before 3:00 p.m. and planned to stay at least a couple of days since heavy rain and strong winds were forecast. As it turned out, the poor weather continued until Wednesday, so we will be leaving tomorrow morning. I met up again with the boat Breezaway. Kent and Karen came in the same day as I did and we will be leaving together tomorrow, this time bound for Myrtle Beach South Carolina. We shared a cab out to the WalMart and then had a nice dinner aboard their boat last evening. After listening to the reports regarding the American elections for an hour or so, I returned to Resolute, listened for another hour or so, had a chat with Terry and then crashed.
This community has a lot of history and has a mixture of very old, well preserved buildings located in live-oak stands, and condo-type developments. I will attach a couple of photos of these as well. That pretty much brings me up-to-date.
Well -= I tried to do an upload, but I had problems. I'll try again later. For now, it's back to the boat; Caja's legs are crossed, so are his eyes - time for some relief.

Too der loo

Mike