Brunswick, GA to Southport, NC

The wind, current, wide catamaran in front of us, and trawler behind us made for a tense departure from the dock in Brunswick. We had to abort the first attempt after it became apparent we wouldn’t clear the catamaran. George, who was standing at the bow, estimated we came within a foot of hitting the catamaran. For the next attempt we took the advice of the owner of the trawler behind us and used a spring line to point the bow toward the dock and back out toward the trawler. It worked and we got away without hitting anything. After 41 hours of motoring 258 nautical miles, we pulled into the marina in Southport just after 8 am this morning. We slowed down for the final 8 hours in order to arrive at 8:00. When we made this reservation we told the marina we would be arriving early & were told that would not be a problem! George had been hailing the marina on the radio but hadn’t received a response. At that point we were already in the narrow channel of the ICW and had three sailboats bearing down on us from behind and wanting to pass. If the sailboats hadn’t been there I would have turned around and waited until we received a response. Instead I made the decision to enter the marina. Once inside it became clear that the fuel dock/transient dock was full and we had nowhere to go. I pulled toward a fairway with the intention of turning around and a man in a small skiff told George there was a dredge pipe on the bottom and we should back out. At that point I had a dock and large motorboat behind me and there was no way I could back out. The current was pushing us toward the dredge on our starboard side so I made the decision to turn around toward the port side as I had originally intended and kept my fingers crossed I would not hit the pipe (I did not.) By that time a member of the staff was giving directions from the dock where we should go for our slip. We tied up with big sighs of relief that we didn’t hit anything or run aground in the very tight spaces of this marina.

On the plus side, the marina is quite close to town, where we walked to get coffee and even do a bit of shopping. Now we are winding down and recovering from two nights of inadequate sleep.