TideChaser Followers  Day 13 and making it Home

December 3, 2014

Walt and Gary got up at 6:00am to start our trek home. The fog was still as thick as it was last night but at least it was becoming daylight. When I got up at 9:30am it was still really bad. Slow and steady. Now we are in the ICW no telling what is floating around in here and are there any other crazy boaters like ourselves out there? Gary had the fog horn, flashlight, and binoculars when I went to check on things outside at the helm. Cold, cold ,cold was the air outside. I bundled up, got coffee, and went out to help watch. The water was like glass and the trees along both side of us hung with Spanish moss that gave an eerie Halloween feeling mixed with the fog. On and on this went until we hear a horn in the distance. We blow our fog horn back two times to make sure they heard us. The next thing we know a big white cabin cruiser comes out of the fog to our port side and passes us going south down the channel. YIKES! That was a bit scary.

11:15am the fog lifts it’s gone. Anyone want a breakfast burrito? More like Brunch I suppose. Now it is beautiful here. There are still some trees with fall leaves on them along the shore. So pretty. 4:10pm we are passing Myrtle Beach area only 47NM to Southport. Super excited now.

5:00pm we stop in at Grande Dune Marina in North Myrtle Beach to get diesel. Thank goodness we do because we are almost out. Once we start talking to the guy who manages it he offers to take us any where we want to go. We decided to go pick up some supper and of course celebratory beer for when we arrive at our home port. We were so happy or maybe it was just me because I didn’t have to cook supper. I wish my dad was here on the intercostal trip. He would love seeing Myrtle Beach from this side……….waterfront all the way baby! And he would toast me with a beer!

As we travel down the ICW the tide begins to change. You can really feel us moving fast as the tide was coming in but once the tide changed and started going out it was a whole different story. It was against us pushing us away from our destination and on top of that the water became shallower and shallower. Yes, we did have a couple of close calls with sandbars but nothing permeant. This night was beautiful with an almost full moon but not quite. That did help but every once in a while a pier from the shore with no lights on it came mighty close to our beautiful TideChaser.

We arrive in Southport, North Carolina at 2:30am. Tired, dirty and cold but very excited to think that we had really done this. We really made it all the way! Walt and I talked several times about if we had to stop the trip where would we stop and go back to easily to get her and start again. We don’t even have to think about that anymore. Home, she is home. Nicki, our daughter, will be here around 11:30am to help us take things to Hope Mills, take Gary to the airport and do general clean up. Kyle, our son, will be here soon too. He is just down the road at UNC-Wilmington. If I know Nicki she will bring a measuring tape and start in on decorating ideas to turn TideChaser into our home away from home.

It’s has been 1450 miles from start to finish and I want to thank my best friend Chris Beaman for going as far as she could with us in the beginning to help make the journey so much easier for me.  Thanks for all the TideChaser Followers that we had also. I hope to have a real blog-site soon because this is not the end of the Walt and Julia 2.0 story on TideChaser It is JUST the BEGINNING!

This journey of a lifetime is just the start to many journeys we have planned with family and friends in our very near future. Stay tuned for Savannah, GA and Bahamas here we come!

Love Juls