Southport, North Carolina

The Admiral is back in charge!

We’re on the road again!!  After returning from Florida, we spent only a short week on the boat before we left our winter home in Little River, South Carolina, and headed north to Southport North Carolina.  (yeah, sometimes even we get confused which way we’re headed!)  It has been three years since we’ve hauled the boat out to check the fiberglass blisters and paint the bottom, so we’ve scheduled a 4-5 week yard period.

A mess of Anhinga birds sunning on the dock canopy

We had a weather window on March 18, so we got underway to take advantage of the tidal currents.  In doing so, we ended up traveling on the Intracoastal Waterway across some ocean inlets (that continuously have shifting shoals) at low tide – which means “skinny water”.  We were so focused on recording depths across the inlets that we maybe possibly might have strayed outside the channel just a wee bit, and started plowing through the soft bottom.  Sue, who was driving, said “Something doesn’t feel right” and I responded “Because we’re aground!”  Luckily we were able to plow forward back into deeper water, with no apparent damage (which we’ll confirm next week when we haul the boat).  Oh well, as they say, “there are only two kinds of boaters:  those who have been aground, and those who are going to go aground!”  At least we hit bottom on our first trip of this year, so we got it out of our system & we can check that off our list!

Sunrise along the ICW from our aft sundeck

This Monday we plan to go 2 miles to the boatyard, where we’ll be on the hard for hopefully no more than 5 weeks.  We have big travels plans this season, so we need to be heading north by May 1.  We’ve brought several credit cards with us & closed out two checking accounts in hopes of paying for all the yard work that is needed.  BOAT = Break Out Another Thousand.

We’re spending a couple days now unloading all our stuff from the boat, since we can’t live on it while it is out of the water.  The best part is that Sue was able to rent an apartment right here at this marina, so we only have to transport our stuff a couple hundred yards.  Then, 5 weeks from now, we get to reverse the process!  Ain’t boating fun?!?

We’ll see what condition the hull is in next week.  Should make for some interesting photos and an interesting time!