Lightkeepers Marina

We made it!  We have finally left the great state of North Carolina!  Seems like we've been there forever, but we crossed over into South Carolina late in the afternoon.  Using ActiveCaptain (a service I absolutely love, by the way), we scanned for suitable marinas or anchorages for the evening.  We found a nice potential anchorage behind Bird Island, but reading up on it in ActiveCaptain made us doubt whether we could safely anchor there (and reprising our "Escape from Carolina Beach" post tomorrow morning).

Looking down the ICW a few miles, we found a cluster of nice-looking marinas with excellent reviews.  We picked Lightkeepers Marina in North Myrtle Beach and pulled in around 5pm.  No Lightkeepers employees were still around, but we snagged one of the empty slips for the night.  A really cool thing - next to us is a 2003 Beneteau 361, almost identical to ours!  We've been visiting with them all afternoon, comparing notes and getting lots of good ideas.

This marina is very nice.  Not too many amenities, but they have a GREAT swimming pool, plus washer/dryer and nice showers.  All for $1 a foot!  Pretty cool!

As we were getting ready to walk to the road to find some dinner, we bumped into a gentleman exiting the men's room.  Ben and Jeannette struck up a conversation and before you know it, we were all involved.  Turns out this fellow, Jack, spends half his time just down the road from us in Bonita Springs!  On top of that, he has friends in Westerly, RI!  Crazy!  Since he had just arrived from Ohio, he offered to let us pile into his car and drive us over to Bob Evans to eat dinner.  Before we departed, Ben, Reece and I went with him to visit his boat - an incredible Symbol 51 motor yacht.  We then had a wonderful meal with Jack, sharing stories of our journeys and our plans for the future.  It was great to meet you, Jack, and I hope we can keep in touch!

The plan for tomorrow is another day in the ICW, then pop out on Thursday morning for an off-shore run to San Augustine, FL.  The weather looks to finally be cooperating, so we'll see!