May 23, 2014 Friday Southport

06:30 am- Clear, wind calm 73 degrees, high tide 1004, Low Tide 1627.  Won't leave Southport until High tide due to high water current in the Cape Fear River
0900  Departed Southport Harbor MM 309 and motored to Southport Marina where we bought 4 gallons of gas and waited for the tide to come in.  Met a nice couple, the Smith's,  heading back to Oriental their home port.  Visited with them about a good time to head up the river around  the tide time. ;Much discussion with others that worked at the marina about when to head up the river, 1 1/2 hours before high tide or after.  Skipper Bob said before, another gentleman who said he knew the area well, on a boat anchored said the same before high tide.  We had watched boats the night before trying to come across the current, which appeared to be much like rolling rapids where the waters met going against each other.  An earlier this morning watched a sailboat head up the river as the water was flowing rapidly out.  Apparently they had just bought the little 28 ft sailboat with no sails and small motor.  Saw them suddenly going down sideways rapidly towards the ocean, after 5 minutes finally got turned around and started up the river against the rapid current once again, next thing we knew, the gentleman in the anchored boat by our boat and said he just went out to help them, their engine had quit again and floated onto a sand shoal in the middle of the river.  He gave them an anchor, helped them throw it out and told the young boys to wait a couple of hours for the tide to come in, but a local motor boat went out and was trying to pull them off the shoal.  Their boat was leaning from one side to another, looked like the motor boat was going tip them sideways in the water.  We were watching with fear that their boat would become damaged and sink out in that fast current.  Definitely could see the current going out which was the same current we would be going up against unless we waited for the flow to change directions and push us up the river towards Wilmington.  We then saw the motor boat towing the sailboat by the marina, apparently damaged so they couldn't make it back to the slip.  So sad, the young men had just bought the boat, hope that doesn't ruin their dream of being sailors.  Anyway after the show, we not to wait 1 1/2 hours after the tide started coming in, got nervous and left an hour after the tide started coming in.  No rapids when we left the river to go into the Cape Fear River, but our speed certainly increased after awhile.  We started at 4.3 kts, the tide on the marker poles was still going out .  Curt was right  we should have waited the 1 1/2 hours then would have had the tide pushing us.  Oh well, we were still making better time than if we would have went  1 1/2 hours before high tide. 12:30 Tide almost slack 5.3 kts.  1300  Turned into Snows Cut-like running the rapids upriver,  Strong tidal current 3.5 kts till past the Carolina Beach Inlet then 6 kts.  1540 Docked at Wrightsville Marina to wait for the bridge to open.  1600  Dockmaster told us they were private docks and we couldn't dock here, but since we were only going to be 10-15 mins...he  wouldn't come back to make us leave but if the owner of the slip came he hadn't given us permission to tie up there.  All is good.  We left in 10 mins., boat traffic going in all directs once we were back in the waterway, young kids horsing around, others waiting to go into slips out front the restaurants immediately off the waterway.  The beginning of Memorial Day weekend.  Finally the bridge tender called and said he was opening the bridge, another sailboat on the other side was waiting to go thru also, big boat, and he wasn't waiting even though we had the right away since the current was pushing us thru.  Happy to finally be out of all the holiday weekend boater craziness we cont. on ready to tie up to Billy Glover's 80ft. dock off the ICW.  With Billy's good lat. and long. we made it thru the water canals with lots of funny looks, no sailboats in this housing area.  Some yelling out "what's the size of your fin?" or that is what we figured he was saying, once we tied up and had time to think.