I cruised 25 miles from Southport to here today. I crossed the border to South Carolina this afternoon, but this anchorage is slighly backtracking back into NC. It was a pretty uneventful passage today with deep water almost all the way and current with me most of the time. I've been lucky to have the current going with me most of the way from Oriental, but I sometimes think it is the bad weather to the south becking me with good currents and I will pay the price later. I passed several inlets today, which are striking to experience because you can see the open Atlantic and there are always currents and shoals adjacent to an inlet. This particular anchorage is evidently the only good anchorage in these parts. It is quite nice, I must say. At first I anchored too close to the center of the channel and the large ferry or whatever it was blew its horn at me, which hurt my feelings. I pulled up and anchored much closer to the shore and seem to be doing fine. Dropped the dingy, put on the little engine, and rowed the dogs ashore to play. The shore was like quick sand, but the squishy muddy sand felt kind of good in the hot sun. After the dogs were back on board the mothership, I took off by myself to town, reputed to serve excellent seafood. The dingy was going really fast with just one person and the 3.5 horsepower engine, but the engine is not altogether reliable and sometimes dies or threatenes to die, whether because it is out of gas or for some other reason. It's not a bad engine, just rather basic. I should have brought the honda 2 hp as a backup, but I was planning to head north and I thought I could get it when I passed back through Oriental... and that's neither here nor there now since I'm a long way south already and not going back north as of this moment. As the guidebook predicted, I was rather underwhelmed with the quality of the seafood in Calabash in spite of the town's reputation, but the air conditioning and the several large glasses of 1/2 sweet/1/2 regular ice tea were very welcome. I got the deluxe seafood platter, which has a bit of everything they serve. I've got enough leftovers to last at least all of tomorrow. I gave the fried oysters to the dogs to enjoy with their dinner tonight since oysters gross me out still no matter how they're cooked. Still an hour or so until the sun goes down, then maybe it will cool down a bit - maybe not. We'll be ok either way.