November 14, 2020 Saturday

The weather was great with sunny skies, mild temperatures and a light north wind. The trip down Snow's Cut and the Cape Fear River went without any issues with the current slowly picking up speed and helping us along. They had a dredge ship set up along the channel with a couple of tender tug boats but there was plenty of room to pass even as ships came up the river from the ocean.

At Southport we turned west along the ICW passing an ever-increasing number of waterfront homes. If they couldn't buy insurance, we are sure few of these homes would be built in such a hurricane prone sliver of land along the coast.

As well as more homes, there seems to be more and more power boaters using the ICW as a playground and on this beautiful Saturday afternoon we got the full court press of boats, fishing boats anchored just out of the channel and other power boats flying past in both directions at full speed. I don't like when a power boat aims right at Monarch and then turns at the last moment to pass. Fortunately, many of the power boats are small and travel on a plane, so they don't kick up very much wake.

Lockwoods Folly is an inlet with a lot of shoaling but we carefully picked our way through the temporary channel markers and made it through without problems with about two feet of tide left to go down.

At the Shallotte River we turned into the dock at the Inlet View Restaurant to have lunch and take a look at a friend's house that is just up the river (he was not there this weekend). The dock was a long u-shape wooden floating dock with plenty of room and nine feet of water at the end at low tide. The current was strong coming down the river but we manage to get docked without issues. We climbed the stairs to the third-floor deck and had lunch with a marvelous view of the river, ICW, and the marsh beyond.

The lunch was very good but we probably shouldn't have had the side of hush puppies which were too good but also too filling. I had a fried oyster sandwich and Sharon a grilled shrimp gyro and both were delicious.

We learned a lesson about doing "dock and dine" on a Saturday afternoon, three different accidents happened while we were there. The first involved a power boat that ran up on a sandbar going full speed, no one appeared hurt so the guys did what guys do and opened a can of beer and stood in the knee-deep water around the boat trying to look like they had planned on beaching the boat there to enjoy the water.

The next accident involved an aluminum pontoon boat that was docked in front of us. The captain didn't account for the strong current and when he let go of his dock lines he slid back and scrapped along the side of Monarch in a panic. I warned his wife not to try fending off for fear of her getting hurt. I couldn't see any damage but what a racket the pontoon boat made as it ran along our hull.

I next walked over to the outer dock to take a look at the side of our boat when a power boat came in and slammed into the dock, hit full throttle to get away and almost plowed into the boat ahead of him. I helped him get secured to the dock and tie on some fenders while his wife berated him in front of his three kids about damaging their $90k boat they had just bought new yesterday. I tried to calm her down that it was just a little cosmetic damage but she had list of other past dumb things her husband had done and now was the time to let it all out. I walked away shaking my head. I am so glad Sharon just gives me her look with the raised eye brows that says it all and spares me the lecture in a public place.

We left the dock at low tide as the current started to let up and it was four in the afternoon when we pulled into the anchorage on the Calabash River and dropped the hook. We were too full from lunch for any dinner and had a quiet evening reading.