Cape Fear River

Wednesday, 11-11-2015, 0630 Sunrise over Carolina Beach Harbor. Wind 5 knots NE, Temperature 50 degrees F.

0800 Entering Snows Cut, a man made canal that connects Dick Bay (please believe me, I am not making that up) with the Cape Fear River. 

Snow's Cut

We fight a strong current through the cut and merge with the 370 mile long Cape Fear River, the approach to Wilmington, the leading port in North Carolina. Wilmington is the hub of a robust import/export business for all kinds of products. Lots of barges, military craft, tankers, container ships, commercial fishing and recreational vessels and now Flicka ply these waters.

Vigilance is the word today. Passing by some very large vessels.

We pass by Fort Caswell on Oak Island, a  19^th and early 20^th century defense facility for the North Carolina Coast and the Cape Fear River nuclear power plant to the west, just a couple of miles from Southport, our destination for the day. We turn back into the ICW across from Battery Island and then immediately into the Southport Yacht Basin, a picturesque little harbor ringed with commercial fishing vessels, pilot boats, pleasure craft, one restaurant and very nice historic waterfront homes.

Southport

We anchor in eight feet of water right beside Palasso, owned and operated by Pete Lipton, a character we met last year on our spring return. His boat has not moved. He wasn’t ‘home’ today. Good thing, because Pete in a professional talker, beating records for any talker I have ever met. See last year’s May 12 entry for more on Pete.

We spied an open slip at a free dock and moved there to gain access to Southport Marina (and escape Pete) where every evening at 1800, Hank Pomeranz, retired Navy navigator and now owner of Carolina Yacht Care, gives an informative, free talk on navigating the waters within eighty miles north and south of Southport, including valuable advice on weather and ocean passage making, an activity to which we aspire.

We walk over to the marina with new friends, Dave and Polly, from ‘Illusion’, a twenty-seven foot Island Packet. Dave, seventy-seven years young, and Polly, his lovely wife, bought this boat just this year. They are headed for the Bahamas in it. More amazing is that they traded in their trawler (power boat) for the sailboat. Most ‘old people’ do it the other way. That is, they trade the sail boat for a more easy to manage power boat.

Dick from Illusiom

Hank was great and talked about specific hazardous areas we will encounter between here and Savannah, GA. This area of the ICW has many inlets to the ocean, a five to eight foot tide change, thus very fast tidal currents and lots of shoaling, making for unexpected shallow spots and potential for grounding.

After the talk we walked over to the Fishy Fish Café for a marvelous bowl of clam chowder and a couple of fine North Carolina India Pale Ales.

Back aboard Flicka I just had to have one more. For my beer snob, much loved son-in-law, Chad, I chose a ‘Hog Wild’ from the Aviator Brewing Company in Fuquay-Varina, NC. A very tasty IPA brewed with two - row pale, Vienna and crystal malts and Chinook, Columbus, Cascade, Magnum and Willamette hops. Packing a 6.7% wallop.

The picture on the can is of a snorting, drooling, menacing, Arnold Schwarzenegger looking, iron pumped boar hog wearing an Aviator tee-shirt, sporting a nose ring and chain around his neck with a dog tag that reads ‘Aviator Brew Master’. He’s holding a little buddy rat friend in his left hand who is wearing a tee-shirt that barely covers his fat little beer belly. I swear I'm not making this up. It came out of some other demented mind.

So that’s it for today.

Tomorrow we press onward to Lockwood’s Folly, a particularly daunting inlet with some serious shoaling and finally hoping to sneak into South Carolina to anchor on the Calabash River.

Namaste