On Monday we departed North Myrtle Beach & headed for Southport. This would be a 5-6 hour journey, depending upon the tides & river currents.

The weather was overcast & some light rain was predicted but conditions were fine for traveling on the ICW.

The LCD TV monitor that I have at the helm station on the fly bridge works great with my TIKI Navigation system but it is not weatherproof. My solution for that was to purchase a clear plastic table covering from Walmart & fashion it into an envelope that covers the entire unit & protects it from the rain. We sealed the edges with clear Gorilla tape. It worked out great & we can see the charts on the monitor with no problem at all.

This setup may not look very elegant but it gets the job done & it should get us home to Ontario. I’ll have lots of time this winter to come up with a more permanent & better looking solution.

This was Ed’s first day on the water with me so I spent time getting him familiar with the boat & it’s systems. Ed has been boating & sailing for many years so he was right up to speed in no time at all & he looked after the helm for most of the day.

A lot of the ICW on this part of our journey is heavily developed so we spent a lot of time admiring the homes & boats along the shorelines.

Some of the homeowners are very creative in personalizing their properties. The home in the photo above has a “picnic” shelter on its dock that is made to look like the back deck of a large sport fishing boat. Very nicely done!

We also saw a few fixer-uppers along the way…. wonder what their story is?

We arrived at the marina in Southport in mid afternoon & immediately saw that we were in high-roller country & we tied up just behind one of the big boys. I took the photo below just after sunset.

She’s a beauty! I was thinking about inviting her captain owner to my boat to show him my upper helm monitor innovation but they seemed to be pretty busy scrubbing & polishing so Ed & I focused on our plans for the next day.

Cheers!