Distance traveled: 58 nautical miles
Travel time: 9 hours, 15 minutes
NOTE: I fell behind and this post is out of order.
We left Mile Hammock Bay after untying from C’est La Vie. This was an early early morning. I mean early. We were rewarded for our early rising with a beautiful sunrise and a fishing heron.
We wanted to catch the first bridge opening at a particular time so that we could catch several other bridges downstream at the right times. They are sort of synchronized correctly at our speeds. Not necessarily on purpose, but it works for us. Not every time, though.
For example, Wrightsville Beach Bridge: The bridge normally opens on the hour and if you miss it you have to hang around until it opens again. This time, the bridge tender opened the bridge a few minutes early for a commercial shrimper. I think they are required to open for commercial traffic. C’est La Vie was ahead of us and was able to make it through before they had to close it again. I think there’s a max time the bridge is allowed to stay open. Have you ever been in a car waiting for a drawbridge to close? Wouldn’t you be aggravated if you looked out and saw a recreational trawler crawling up to the bridge? “Man! I could be down the road by the time that boat gets here!” No? Just me?
We were lucky the bridge tender saw us and 3-4 other boats heading her way and radioed to us that she needed to close the bridge after the shrimper and C’est La Vie got through, but would open it again in 5-6 minutes and to hurry up and get to the bridge. We got there in plenty of time for the 2nd opening. It’s great that the bridge tenders have a little leeway as to opening times. I’m guessing it depends on the traffic they can see building up either on the roadways or the ICW.
We caught up with C’est La Vie on the other side and continued the adventure. Yes, they had slowed down to wait for us. Great buddy boaters!
The ICW runs through the Cape Fear River. To paraphrase Snoopy’s novel, “It was a dark and stormy night…”, it was a dark and gray day. Not everyday is a sunny blue sky day in paradise. Still no umbrella drinks!
We pulled into our slip at South Harbor Village in Southport. Kenny turned Sabrina and backed her into our slip like a seasoned sea captain. I’m in good hands. We had dinner at the marina restaurant. It was a terrific Italian restaurant, Joseph’s Italian Bistro. Yummy! Lasagna was delicious. Kenny had shrimp and scallops with ravioli. Yummy!
We ran into yet another Krogen here in Southport, Magnolia. They were spending a week here and would not be joining our flotilla. We’ll see them again on the journey south.
Then early to bed and early to rise!
Kitty
MV Sabrina goes ... 