Day 12 - Southport, NC to Georgetown, SC

Today started out at 7:20 leaving St. James. The cranky two year old had left and I was back to enjoying the trip. We ran to Georgetown, SC. Once we crossed into South Carolina the scenery went from one of homes on canals to a more rural setting in parts. We saw two bald eagles in a tree. They are huge and quite majestic. We saw many turtles sunning themselves on logs and we saw a great deal of dolphin. There was a lot of debris (logs, trees, branches, clumps of grass) floating in the canal. Doug and I both agree that today was one of the prettiest parts of the trip. It was a winding and often slow trip but quite enjoyable. We went through two swing bridges. These bridges were on demand opens so we didn’t need to wait too long. Today we traveled 78.6 miles and it took us almost 6 hours. Tomorrow we will travel 58 miles to Charlestown. We are staying there to visit with our friends, Kim and Miles, for a couple of days. It will be nice to take a break from the daily travels. Hopefully Doug can repair the scooters with our new parts we had shipped from China. We will restock some food supplies as well. Friday we will get back on track and keep moving toward Florida.

The highlight of today’s trip, for Doug, was that he got to meet a “legendary navigator”. Doug follows Bob423 on youtube. He has done this trip several times and offers a free download of his actual course down the ICW. Doug has been using it on his iPad along with his Garmin GPS. There were several times where the course has to be altered due to shifting channels but the navigational buoys may not reflect the shift. It turns out Bob423 was tied up at the slip right in front of us. Doug went and introduced himself and thanked him for all his great information that we had used several times. Doug got a picture with Bob. He was thrilled! We also passed them on a slow pass just as we were leaving the harbor. I think this may have been the highlight of Doug’s trip!