Georgetown, SC to Osprey to Barefoot Landing to Southport to Topsail

Day #537; Loop Miles to Date = 6,086

We've continued our march northward, and now find ourselves at Topsail Island Marina in Surf City, NC. We only spent one night in Georgetown, which was fine because we'd been there twice already. Then we enjoyed the serenity of Osprey Marina near Myrtle Beach. This is our third time here too, and 3 nights here was just about right. It is peaceful and quiet, has all the amenities that we need, and it is also in fresh water which the boat likes!

From Osprey, we ventured only about 20 miles up the waterway to check out Barefoot Landing Marina in North Myrtle Beach. This was a great one night stop...a bunch of touristy shops and some restaurants to choose from. This stop was right on the ICW, so it was really simple to get in and out.

This appeared to be a facility that refurbished buoys...out of the water, these things look immense, even though this pic might not represent it well.

 

Sandy found a carousel at Barefoot Landing...a bit reminiscent of Hampton, VA.

From Barefoot Landing we made the run up to Southport. This whole section of travel is dictated by tides and depths. Each day, we need to time our departure and travel with the tide conditions at shallow areas. Fortunately, there is a fair bit of dredging work in progress on the ICW in this area, and we found a couple of trouble spots that were already dredged or in the process of being dredged. It takes a bunch of stress out when you aren't worried too much about bouncing off the bottom every so often.

From Southport, we made our way to Topsail Island Marina in Surf City, NC. This is a very small marina (14 slips total) but we're quite glad we stopped here. It is only 2 blocks to the beach, a small grocery store closer than that, and absolutely terrific folks who run the marina. The only disappointing part of this stay is that Sandy unfortunately found herself in need of a root canal. Thankfully, she found a great local dentist, and was able to get in and get it taken care of. She is enduring a couple of days of pain, but the worst is likely behind her now. We ended up staying three nights here instead of the one that we planned, but we are so glad that we could get this problem resolved as "easily" as possible.

The beach at Surf City.

Quiet dockage at Topsail.

Everywhere we go, we dodge crab pots from time to time. When there is substantial current, sometimes they can be sneaky tough to spot. Here is an example we just encountered...these were in the marked channel and from any distance, all you can see is the eddy behind the crab pot buoy.

This one was marginally easier to spot because it was red...still a good challenge to keep track of them.

It's always a treat to see these working shrimpers out fishing...most of the time we tend to see them at the docks because they do most of their fishing off shore.

Just a plain old brown pelican at our dock at Topsail. We felt compelled to snap a pic, because we're not quite sure how much longer we will be seeing these constant companions. As we move further north, they'll eventually disappear from our daily scenery...they are certainly interesting creatures.

So...all for now. We're off tomorrow for Moorehead City (a long day) and on Friday our plan is to make it to New Bern, NC. Then we're gonna cool our heels for a month and relax!