Underway Day 15:
We woke up groggy at Wyatt's Isle of Songs compound, made some coffee, and borrowed Wyatt's golf cart. It was pretty fun to just electric glide right up to the boat and get underway. The morning was glassy and beautiful. There were dolphins and seabirds hunting everywhere. Once again weaving through the marshes at high speed is something I'll never forget. The Waccamaw National Forest was possibly the most beautiful section of the ICW so far, and we could see that the wetland foliage is changing as we move north. Once we left there, it became a bit of a nightmare. Children with no nautical knowledge zipping around willy nilly like Sea Doooche. It was like the jet ski scene from the movie waterworld, mayhem and anarchy. Tiny fleets of angry buzzing Sea Douche, jumping wakes and not paying attention to their surroundings in a tight channel. Add in some half drunken boaters by the hundreds disobeying the Rules of Road. This is all in narrow channels with active shoaling, at high speeds in unofficial "courtesy" no wake zones, of course. It was a madhouse. It was stressful and unpredictable, and nautical life doesn't have to be like that. I'm starting to change my "personal responsibility" mindset in favor of people being required to learn basic navigation and boater safety. It was like playing Atari's frogger on the water, no joke.
Anyways, we stopped for a nice lunch at Barefoot Landing marina, ran the redneck Rivera gauntlet some more, and arrived safely in Wrightsville Beach, near Wilmington NC, a run of 129nm. We met the nice owners of Bridge Tender Marina. They put us right next to a treasure hunting ship complete with blowers. A blower (see pic gallery) is a destructive overburden removal tool that redirects prop wash to blast a hole in the sea floor and uncover shipwrecks. Maritime Archeologist's like the people I work with don't usually use them, because they can be destructive to the treasure we look for, which is knowledge. Treasure hunters, on the other hand, tend to just want the yellow shiny stuff, with any historical archeological significance coming secondary. From what I heard, they have been pulling up some serious gold coin off the seabed on our neighbors Zissou style boat.
As we fueled up, my old friend from Costa Rica, Ryan Hipp, walked down the gangway. We hadn't seen each other in a decade, but we have kept in touch, and we picked up our (wife friendly) bromance right where we left off. Back around 2006, we had some fun adventures in the jungles of Uvita, CR with Ryan and his wife Karin. Ryan is an entrepreneur and man of many talents. He is an ex cop from Jacksonville, who was a realtor for a while, and he now runs a very successful power washing company. He also builds custom RV's from Sprinter Vans. They have two beautiful, funny, well behaved and athletic young boys, and it was great to see such good friends evolve into great parents. The boys nick named me "Captain Greybeard." I've been called worse.
Because their baby sitter flaked out, we decide just to swim in the pool and order pizzas at their awesome house. It ended up being a near perfect evening. We had a wonderful conversation, got all caught up with them, had some laughs, and then around 11pm, despite being exhausted, Mary and I jumped in an Uber to go to the Calico Room in downtown Wilmington. We wanted to see the last show of this years Nth Power Tour. A few red bulls later and we were having a great time. Nikki Glaspie, Nate Edgar and Nicholas Cassarino are just such incredibly talented and hard working musicians, and I love watching them work. Nick was sweet and gave Mary and I a shoutout on stage. We had a nice hang after the show and it was exciting to hear about all the new collaborations and music projects they have planned. It's great to be a witness over the years and to watch artists work so hard, face the struggle head on, and succeed.
We got in another Uber to head back to Ryan's house, and, just like on the water, we had very dangerous run in's with aggressive drunk drivers, one of whom almost hit the Uber driver and then got very aggressive and wanted to fight the Uber driver. I guess it's a college town, but it was weird and scary to see 3 obviously drink drivers in less than 10 minutes. We were tired. Fast asleep by 0230.