Southport Hospitality

4/25/22

After an overnight stay at Osprey Marine, we headed off to revisit Southport, North Carolina. This was one of our favorite stops on the way down and this time we planned a 2 night stop, to enjoy a little more of the town.

We had reserved a slip at Southport Marine because it is conveniently located within walking distance to town, and we planned to meet our friends the crew from Netop, for dinner. Along the way we learned that this marina is not favored by the locals because of its heavy-handed handling of boat owners following hurricane Isaias in 2021. This storm inflicted severe damage to the marina with reports of boats and docks left piled up in the parking lot. Apparently, the marina had told boat owners that they had to remove their boats from the slips in the event of a named storm. While many did, many did not and those that chose to keep their boats, in their slips, were blamed for the damage to the docks. Each owner was billed $20,000 for the damage caused by their boats. This riled the locals who now patronize South Harbor Village Marina, a little way out of town.

We enjoyed an exceptionally good dinner (at Mr P’s) with Rhode Islanders, Wayne & Julie and spent Sunday doing general boat stuff (reprovisioning, cleaning and chatting with other boaters). About mid afternoon we were approached by Robert Creech, who introduced himself as a “AGLCA Harbor Host”.

The American Great Loop Cruising Association is organized to provide information and support for boaters doing The Great Loop (circumnavigating the eastern United States by traveling up the east coast in the spring, across the Great Lakes in the summer, going from Chicago to Mobile in the fall and hanging out in Florida before continuing north) we have met many couples enjoying this year-long voyage, some doing multiple laps!

Robert invited us to join him and his wife Kay for ”Porchtails” (like “docktails” but on their front porch over looking the harbor). Robert & Kay are gracious and experienced boaters who generously share their knowledge while we all swap sea stories and learn a bit about each other.

Robert gave us 2 items that have become permanent fixtures aboard SkipStone. The first is a red & green tongue depressor. (I know this sounds crazy but it is really useful!) Generally speaking, our course is marked by red buoys on one side and green buoys on the other. Also (generally speaking) we keep the red buoys on our starboard side and green buoys on our port side when going south and vice versa going north. However, this pattern is sometimes reversed when transiting rivers that intersect the ICW. We also found that undoing decades of

”red right returning” brain programming proved challenging when starting our North bound travels and we put a post-it note at the helm to remind us. (I know this sounds like a simple thing to remember but we have both looked at that post-it hundreds of times while sorting out a safe path through a field of buoys that look like a hyper active display of Christmas lights. Now we have a color coded tongue depressor- elegant, simple, and useful. Thank you Robert!

The second gift was a list and review of every marina and anchorage that they have visited, in Geographical order. This information is so very valuable that when he handed it to me I felt lime Moses getting the tablets. We found less expensive fuel in one spot and a new marina to try. Thank you again, we will consult this every day!

Tomorrow is a long day…headed to Swansboro NC.