Video Transcript

People say that you’re gonna get waked like crazy and that nobody has much courtesy, so we shall see…

Let’s start at the beginning, with another beautiful morning on a Great Loop waterway.

I know that we don’t film ourselves a whole lot throughout our videos. Our goal is to try to show you the actual Loop and not just our faces all the time. So if you are enjoying this type of content, do us a favor and let us know. Leave us a comment.

Welcome aboard! This is cruise day number 17 on the Great Loop, out of 29 so far. The adventure is going well.

I’m Captain Tom. You’re on Swamp Puppy. Today we left Calabash Creek, and that anchorage was probably our least favorite so far, but it worked. And we’re heading to the Provision Company, which offers a dock if you buy lunch. Now we haven’t been out to eat in a while, so we’re looking forward to it. And hopefully that will still be considered free. What do you think? I say free because so far we have not paid for any marinas and we’re trying not to along the Great Loop. We’re trying to anchor as much as we can.

We’ve anchored every single night except for two nights on a free dock. So this will be our second dock that we tied up to. And we’re looking forward to a meal from a restaurant. We haven’t been to one in a while. And we tried to go yesterday to two different places, but it just didn’t quite work out. So to us, it’s free because we want to have the meal. And if we have the meal, they allow you to stay. But I guess technically you do have to have a meal, otherwise they won’t let you stay. So I don’t know. Free to us at least.

Today is Cinco de Mayo. And since we’re heading to a place that is known to sell adult beverages, we’re trying to get there as early as we can.

We have about a 40 mile day planned. So we got up good and early and started as early as we could with the tides near the showing that we were at.

Well, we’re not heading to the Provision Company after all.

Once we put in the route [in the Aqua Map app], we realized it was taking us around the outside. So out of the ICW to the ocean and back in. So that’s why it was 40 miles.

Turns out it was only 23 miles, which is way too short of a day, since we’re trying to make up some time. We spent five days in Charleston, which was a nice time, but with this pace, it would be too late for us to get into Canada. So we’re trying to make a little bit of ground. And I’m being honest, this type of cruising just around a bunch of docks and houses is not our personal favorite. So we’re trying to get through this area.

We’re going to do a longer day, but we’re not sure where we’re headed yet. So trying to get in 50 miles or so somewhere around that. There’s not a lot of anchorage options and a lot of the reviews that we’ve read so far, people just say that you’re going to get waked like crazy and that nobody has much courtesy. So we shall see.

For us, the Loop is a seasonal adventure. That’s why we’re in a little bit of a hurry because we started later than we wanted to. We’re trying to make up some ground because we personally want to spend quite a bit of time in the Great Lakes area and around Canada. We’re having to make up some time now.

You don’t have to do it in one year. You can definitely sloop it or slow-loop it like someone like Technomadia. They’ve been doing it over multiple years. So you don’t have to do it all in one season, but that’s what we’re trying to do.

Well, we’re leaving the South and going into the North Carolina, that is. Joke’s courtesy of Hobo Boat. Now, technically, we anchored pretty much on the border of North Carolina. We’re in North Carolina right now, but we’re celebrating South Carolina with some good old grits. Can’t go wrong with grits. Unfortunately, we didn’t grab any shrimp, so we’re just having grits and eggs. But what a beautiful, delicious breakfast I’m looking forward to right here.

Oh, this is our fourth state. So we started in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, now we’re in North Carolina.

We’re only a mile away from our anchorage. We’ve got to turn right here. We’re going to do 50 miles today. We’re at like 49.8 right now. It’s only 1:23 p.m., so pretty good for a 50-mile day. We’re happy with that.

We finally got some miles in. It’s too bad that the restaurant didn’t quite work out. We’ve been trying to go out to eat for like the past, I think, four days and it has never worked out.

But that’s okay. It’s all good sometimes. We started our morning in Calabash Creek, and we’re just south of Wrightsville now.

We’re near a estuary. Let me see what it’s called. Masonboro Island Estuary. We’ll be anchoring pretty much near there. Looking forward to dropping the hook, shutting the engines off, and the beaches look nice. So maybe we’ll take Zed to the beach, or maybe I’ll just dangle my feet off the back a little bit.

No, you said beach!

And this is the most consistent, discourteous boaters that we personally have ever experienced while we were moored. At one point, there were four boats, so us and three others, two were fishing, and one of them was anchored with people just swimming around, and that didn’t stop people from flying right by them on plane, which in my opinion is not a safe manner to operate a boat. To me, it would be like speeding through a parking lot at a park, because that’s where we were. We were in Nature Preserve.

There were numerous beaches right near us, and almost all of the boats that passed us got off plane not long after they passed us and went right to the beach to do some swimming. They actually could have got off plane maybe 10 seconds earlier and not waked all those people, but that’s just not what we experienced, which is just telling it how it is. I’m not trying to complain.

It didn’t cost us anything to stay there. It was absolutely beautiful in the evening once everybody was gone, but yeah, we did unfortunately experience the most discourteous boaters of our loop and of our entire boating travels so far. I do want to mention that a few people did slow down and give us a slow pass, which was very much appreciated. When you’re on anchor, getting waked is kind of just part of it, especially when you’re in a very busy area like this.

It’s not the most enjoyable thing, but it’s just kind of how it goes. Not every day can be full of rainbows and sunshine, as they say.

Hopefully you enjoyed this video. If you did, don’t forget to subscribe, leave us a like, comment, hype it, do all the things, share it somewhere, and we’ll see you next week. Thanks for watching.