Colin and Dawn do the Loop: St James to Marine Base.

The alligator, whom we made famous on our last blog, was later seen that evening lurking near our boat. We watched, in horror, as one of a pair of ducks we had seen earlier, paddled serenely and directly in line towards this predator. Predictably he made a great lash at the duck but, hooray, it escaped in a flurry of feathers & flew away.( this was real live David Attenborough stuff).
Next morning we headed north to the Pine Is. Cut and the infamous Rock Pile - a particularly nasty, narrow ditch that could be trouble if passed by another boat, the wind got up or the currents were bad. None of this happened - we sat alone in the cut, had an 8 knot pass helped by the current & no wind. This was a cut that had been made more difficult when the engineers came across an unexpected 3 mile patch of solid granite that had to be blasted leaving behind boulders, rock piles and granite shelves on both sides of the cut. The many miles past this were lined with skinny houses - many still being built and golf courses. One golf course was split by the river, So they have built a gondola over the river to take the golfers and their gear over. We were running up Myrtle beach & North Myrtle. Little River, a smaller town further on could not match the houses but had Casino Cruisers & a "Sea Screamer" - like a huge version of the red Shotover jet boat in NZ except it was 50 ft + & yellow.
We stayed at St James Marina (near Southport) for 2 days & sat out some bad weather. This is set in a huge residential gated estate as big as a town - we drove at least 10 minutes to get to the main road. Think of Sanctuary Cove on the Gold Coast & multiply by 10 to get the size. We met an American couple here on their yacht who gave us a lift to town & then came & had "docktails" on our boat. Another couple we met earlier bought us down some fresh vegetables & home made cookies.
We approached Cape Fear with warnings about strong currents & warnings about crossing the many inlets on the way. Note how they name these places giving no hope for optimism & emphasising the problems. To be honest we have found nothing really dangerous (we had the Whakatane bar to cross in NZ) unless you stray from the charted route.
We passed two more army areas which have restricted access; the Army's Military Ocean Terminal on the Cape Fear River which is the "largest ammunition port in the US" and Camp Le Jeune "largest Marine Corps base in the world". We are anchored tonight in the area and are fine as long as we don't set foot on land or cross into secure areas. There were many helicopters & other strange huge aircraft working above us for most of our afternoon journey.