St. James Plantation Marina, Southport NC

We had a quiet night and woke to a beautiful sunny day. Our next stop was going to be the St. James Plantation Marina, located in Southport NC, about 35 miles away, The route would take us through Snows Cut, a man-made channel to the Cape Fear river, down the river and back into the Intercoastal for about 5 miles.

While we had a good time in Wrightsville, we were happy to be leaving -- our dashed expectations for a peaceful anchorage coupled with the crowds just didn't make it our kind of place.

Paddle Boarders in the channel as we leave Wrightsville

The Wrightsville Bascule bridge, taken in early morning -- hence, no traffic

Our exit was easy as was the first part of the trip -- there would be no annoying bridges today and much of the trip would be in deep water in the Cape Fear river. We did have a foul current early on, but by the time we got to Snows Cut it was helping us, big time -- we went through the cut at almost 8 knots all the way      down its 2 mile length -- there were a few white knuckle moments trying to read the buoys as we wove  our way through the channel into the Cape Fear river, but we got things sorted out and were soon happily heading down the river in deep water.

The Cape Fear river got its name in the obvious way -- it meets the Atlantic at the infamous Frying Pan Shoals, a 30 mile stretch of shifting shallows off the coast that has swallowed many boats over the centuries -- indeed, the coast off Outer Banks has become known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic and Frying Pan Shoals is a large part of he reason why. We wouldn't be exiting the river into the shoals; rather, we would re-enter the Intercoastal waterway near the river's mouth, passing through Southport, a relatively large town at the mouth.

About halfway down the river, the current turned against us -- and not by just a little -- at one point we were barely making 1.5 knots forward motion -- fortunately we had gotten most of the way down the river part of our journey before this happened; unfortunately, we still has a few miles to go -- eventually (it felt like forever) we exited the river and rode the now fair (for us) current down the Intercoastal to our destination.

Birds along the way:

The St. James Plantation Marina is a brand new set of condos cum Marina right off the Intercoastal. We chose it because it had a laundry, something we both needed badly. It also had a nice bar, restaurant, wifi, etc. -- all the basics of life :-) The day had become very hot and muggy, in fact a "heat advisory" day, so we were happy to be able to use the A/C too cool down the boat -- life was good.

I wanted to try and clean my clogged knotmeter while we were in the Marina; this would require me to get in the water and dive under the boat to see if I could "spin out" the sand that had gotten in there. The water was dyed a rose red (we were back in tannin stained water country) which would limit my visibility, but I didn't have to go deep (the bottom of the hull is perhaps 12" under water where the paddle wheel protrudes through the hull).

Before I did this, I asked the Marina Manager whether it's be OK to get in the water; he said sure, they had divers going all the time to do work -- he also mentioned that an alligator used to hang around the Marina, but he hadn't seen him in a while and I should be OK. (Pulling my leg????)

OK, so armed with this "intelligence", I went down to our dock and looked carefully around to see whether there were any "critters"  hanging in the area -- no point in taking unnecessary risks! I got in the water but, after a few attempts, realized that I was not going to be able to get to the paddle wheel -- it was on the side of the boat against the dock, and there just wasn't enough room between the boat and the floating docks for me to comfortably work -- this task will wait for another day.