We departed from Carolina Beach State Park Marina at 0640 about 20 minutes before sunrise. We had the current with us running down the Cape Fear River pushing us over 11 knots at one point. I think this was the fastest trip we have ever made down the River to Southport.

As we passed Southport we listened to the VHF closely as we always get hailed by Robert Creech the MTOA Port Captain for Southport... But no hail from Robert... seemed wrong... it's such a regular occurrence... he must not of been home this morning.

Had a few other boats traveling south with us... the two trawlers that had been at the marina with and another motor yacht that passed us just south of Southport.

Just past the high rise bridge at Sunset Beach I receive an email with two photos of SAILS passing under the bridge... Thanks Ronnie Holden!!! Great Photos.





We had two bridges to open today... Little River Bridge and the Socastee Bridge... both are very slow swing bridges and we waited several minutes at each bridge 5-10 minutes but we expect this at these two bridge.

We arrived at our location for the night Wacca Wache Marina on the Waccamaw River at 1740 and we were securely docked at N33°33.737', W079°05.173'. We traveled today for 11 hours covering 76.4 nautical miles averaging 7.0 knots.

Yesterday we were able to attend the Emerald Isle Christmas Parade.... It was quite the experience and much bigger than we had anticipated. The best thing in the whole parade was this giant shopping cart powered by a V8 engine.... very cool!

After the parade we had a lovely dinner with the Erwins at their home on Emerald Isle. It's always an awesome time with them.... we really enjoy our visits with them.

We departed from Casper's Marina at 0635 a few minutes before sunrise and the sky was absolutely beautiful.

Today we had three bridges to deal with that can a real pain.... today they went very smoothly... 0800 for the Onslow Beach Bridge... the tide was low enough that we did not need to open the Figure Eight Island Bridge... just dropped the mast and antennas and we squeezed under with 8 inches to spare. The then Wrightsville Beach Bridge at 1400... no problems at all.

We arrived to our destination for the night at Carolina Beach State Park at 1600 and found two boats docked in the only two places we fit... So I docked in the fairway next to fuel dock.... plenty of room and the fuel dock closes at 1800 so we would not interfere with any boats wanting fuel. At 1605 we were secure and power plugged in all set for the night.

I had to do an oil change on the engines during this stop so I was off to the engine room and changing the oil. Susan was off to shore to walk Beecha in the grass.

I had one engine drained and had just started draining oil from the other engine when Susan comes back and yells down to me we have to move. The park ranger said we can't dock where we were and there was no room for us anywhere else. We were not going anywhere till I finished with the oil changes and told Susan it will be 30 minutes till we could move.

Next thing I know Susan is telling me that the boat on the t-head where we normally dock is going to move to a slip for us. We had met this gentlemen last year in this exact marina. He was very nice and moved to a slip and this allowed us to move to the t-head. I sure did not want to continue on to Southport tonight which would of been the next place we could of stopped.

We were secure again on the t-head at approximately 1700. Our location for the night N34°03.012’, W077°55.156’. We traveled today for 10.25 hours covering 66.7 nautical miles averaging 6.5 knots.

Layover in Swansboro to continue our visit with Frank and Chris Erwin. Last night we had the Swansboro Christmas Boat Parade take place right next to us.... was very good way to jump start our celebration of the Christmas Holiday.

Some "low quality" photos of the boats in the parade taken with my phone....