Beach House Marina at Surf City, NC – at a dock

Enjoying the ocean view

We had 50 miles to travel today so we got an early start, around 7:45 am to take advantage of the incoming tide. We had to go up quite a ways on the Cape Fear river where the outgoing tide can run to 4.5 kts! That takes quite a chunk out of our 7.3 kt cruising speed. As luck would have it, our departure time from the marina coincided with the start of the incoming tide so we rode the tide up the river at 10.0 kts! That was the good part of the trip. For the rest of the way we had a foul tide and had three bridges to pass, two of which only opened on the top of the hour! North Carolina is not as accommodating to boaters as Florida or even Georgia or South Carolina. We went through 16 bridges on one section in Florida with less waiting time than the three bridges today!

Nice place for dinner

However, we finally made it to the Beach House Marina which is nothing much but is a place to dock a boat. Location is everything since it’s at just the right distance between stopovers for us. It’s a short walk to the ocean which we haven’t seen since Ft Lauderdale. The wind was whipping in from the east so the waves were building and several surfers were visible trying out the waves.

For dinner we tried out Daddy Macs right on the ocean. It’s very nice inside and the food was good. The surrounding area is typical of any beach with stores selling flip-flops, beach towels, surf boards, fins, etc. For us it was back to the boat. We were up at 6:00 am so it’s early to bed tonight. From here north it’s all anchorages, at least for the next week.