Southport, NC

What a great little town! We left Wrightsville beach - built up condos and such - and arrived at the mouth of the Cape Fear River/ICW/Atlantic Ocean within 4 hours. This is a little town, full of art shops, restaurants, tuna/marlin fishing boats/museum/etc/etc. We like it.

It was an uneventful cruise from Wrightsville Beach, arriving in Southport just as the local fish shop was receiving a 350 pound tuna. Unfortunately, we didn't get docked in time to watch the process. They bring it in from the boat, weight it, cut the head and internal stuff out, weight it again, and then package it on ice to bring down the internal temperature, and then prepare it for a trip from the Raleigh airport straight for Tokyo for first class sushi. A good, high fat tuna can bring over $30/pound for the fisherman. Can you just imagine what they pay per pound in Japan?

Pelicans are still abundant and the great blue herons are becoming more plentiful. There were 8 on a small slip of land beside our anchorage this morning.

The ICW in this area is full of nice coastal houses set on marshy land.

Southport is an old town, with lots of small cottages and big Victorian houses. Very pretty. It turns out that the town of Southport was instrumental in providing the boat pilots that guided the blockade runner boats during the Civil War. For one round trip from NC to the Bahamas, a pilot could earn $3000 --- in the 1860's! Can you imagine what that would be worth in today's dollars!!??

Don't know if I mentioned it before, but Luke has passed all tests and obtained his HAM radio license. He got the radio installed a couple of days ago and now we are listening to the weather from here down to the Bahamas. sigh. And he's in contact with the radio network and other HAMS. Pretty cool!