We left the dock at Barefoot Resort with the wind on our nose and some wet weather threatening. Much of this part of the route is chugging along through a relatively narrow channel. One 5 mile section is known as the "Rock Pile" and the books give ample warning of the dire consequences of straying out of the channel into the submerged rocks that line this section. They advise that you announce your intentions to traverse this section with a VHF "Securite" broadcast in case any large working vessel is coming that may squeeze you out of the safe channel. Our passage today was an easy one and we barely saw another boat. After passing through a couple of inlets we crossed over the border of South Carolina into North Carolina and headed towards the town of Southport. The rain that finally came meant pulling out our full rain suits, which we have not used in a long, long time. We decided to tuck into a nicely protected anchorage called the Pipeline canal. It was partly full of local moored boats and there was a handful of other cruisers there as well. One boat, named Nessie, we had met before down in Marathon. This boat is a small 19 foot sailboat that Rich on board is single handing up the coast. In the evening he comes out and plays the bagpipes (in picture) as the sun goes down. If we are there we blow the conch shell when he is done. A nice touch to the end of a day.
The shore by the anchorage is a nice community park with a beach to land the dinghy. The next morning we decided to paddle to shore to give Sea Jay 2 a good bottom cleaning. When we flipped it over we were amazed at the mass of barnacles growing below. It took some serious scraping to get them all off. And we had just cleaned it near the beginning of April.
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