Wrightsville Beach, NC
We had a nice, easy day (26 miles) from Southport to Wrightsville Beach (except for the aforementioned yahoos with fast boats) where we will get the engine serviced so we’re good for another 200 hours. There was a tremendous amount of boat traffic which we hope was due to today being a Sunday.
The Southport, located near the entrance to the Cape Fear River, was explored in the 1500s by Spanish explorers but it wasn’t until 1792 that Southport was founded as the town of Smithville after Benjamin Smith, a colonel in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. Smithville grew as a fishing village and through supporting military activity before being renamed to Southport in 1887. Today, Southport is a town of nearly 4,000 residents and boasts a long list of movies being filmed there including, Weekend at Bernie’s, Safe Haven, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Dawson’s Creek, The Summer I Turned Pretty, and many others. Of all the places I’ve been on the Loop so far, Southport is my favorite.
Nautical art in Southport.
The Fairchem Fortitude, a chemical tanker of DWT of 26,000 metric tons (carrying capacity) inbound toward Wilmington. We thought that was pretty big compared to Schuyler.
Then we saw this monster, the Al Riffa, a 1,200 foot long container ship leaving Wilmington. The Al Riffa has a DWT of 146,000 tons. We felt the wake from the bow before we had fully passed. That’s a long ship!
The Al Riffa and the Fairchem Fortitude passing each other just ahead of us.