We have a boat, now where do we put it?

Brian and I have now officially had a boat since early June but it has seemed a little like a dream because we hadn't set foot on it again until mid-August when we moved it from it's long-time home of Beaufort (that's BEWfert, ya'll), SC to Shallotte, NC. The trip from Beaufort to Shallotte, which takes about 3.5 hours by car, took us a leisurely 4 days to make by catamaran and was a trial by fire if ever there was one. There were too many firsts to enumerate here but they included: my first extended period of time on a boat, our first time anchoring a boat, our first time docking a boat, my first time trying to sleep on a boat, my first time living in a 27' oven and bugcatcher, and the first time either of us has seen the Intracoastal Waterway from the water rather than land. Oh! And I can't forget our first time spending a night at a marina, which was nothing short of blissful since it included my first shower in 3 days.

The ICW that I know and love, in North Carolina, is a nice stretch of water that typically runs between the beaches and 'mainland'. It's just a hop over to the ocean. The water is oceany and there is typically a nice ocean breeze. That's North Carolina. In South Carolina, which is where most of our trip was, the designers of the ICW must have been full of hooch when they planned it out because it mostly winds through the buggy, not-so-breezy backwaters of the state, which I've decided should possibly name the mosquito as its state bird. According to ICW history, however, it sounds like this stretch, which was the last part of the ICW to be constructed in its first phase, was even more torturous in the past and it has been improved at various times since its creation in 1913. The ICW actually has an interesting history but I'll leave that for you to discover on your own and will reserve this space for the tales of our trip. I will say that, even though I'm grousing quite a bit about it, there was some lovely and peaceful scenery on this short voyage and the many dolphins and birds and lovely sunsets are what stand out in my mind the most, in spite of the horrifying greenhead that I will tell you about in excruciating detail later.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here. Get back, self! We started this "vacation" in the bustling metropolis of Shallotte, NC, which truly was a sleepy little town when my grandfather bought land there in the 1970's but has turned into a "real" town that has actual communities, paved roads, traffic and, of course, a Wal-Mart today. When we arrived in Shallotte we planned to go retrieve our boat in a few days but still had no idea WHERE we were going to bring it. A detail that some people might think was pretty important. My new, less-prone-to-anxiety, self didn't have my underwear in a wad though because I knew that things would somehow work out and they surely did. Long story short, we spoke with a super nice lady that was working in her yard one afternoon before leaving for Beaufort and our boat is now docked at her house in Shallotte on the Shallotte River. It's a lovely spot overlooking the marshes and I'd give anything to be sitting in the cockpit with a glass of wine right now.