June 28, 2009: Southport, NC

The Southport Baptist Church is next to Franklin Square and a grove of old oak trees. We attended the 11:00 service and there was a wonderful solo with the message of the cross of Christ being our “statue of liberty”. This church is in search of a pastor and a layman made announcements about participation to build a Habitat for Humanity house with other churches in the community. There was a guest speaker whose sermon was on the relationship of a church to its minister. We will pray for this church in finding a God filled person to nurture them.

Southport is the host to the official NC Fourth of July Festival and the small happy town was full of American Flags and red, white and blue banners draped on porch railings everywhere. We are just here a week too early. We walked by a couple of art galleries, but they were closed on Sunday. Returning to the boat, we had a fun cooking lesson which resulted in shrimp panned in butter, cheese grits and tomato mozzarella salad for lunch.




Our afternoon was spent making our first trip to Bald Head Island. Bald Head Island is the point on the map of NC just below Wilmington. The mouth of the Cape Fear River was not too rough and we made it across in about 30 minutes into the sheltered harbor at Bald Head Island Marina. The first thing we saw was Eb & Flo's Steam Bar, the local restaurant.

The island is mostly populated with private homes, well kept large beach cottages. We took our bikes on the road around the island on a roadway that was two paved lanes with an open grassy median. Most residents use golf carts for transportation so that was most of the traffic we saw. We stopped for a while to bob in the ocean waves and enjoyed stretching out on the soft sand there. There were long concrete jetties extending into the surf to protect the sand. Amber topped sea oats were as bountiful as a farmer’s field of spring wheat.


As we circled inland back towards the boat you could see large houses tucked away in the wooded secluded neighborhoods off the main drive. We stopped just for a moment at the old Baldy Lighthouse. Constructed of brick encased with cement, it was built in 1817 and although it is the oldest lighthouse still standing in NC, but it is no longer in service. We couldn’t stay too long because we needed to get back to Southport Marina to send Julie Anna on her way back to Raleigh.

The sun was beautiful as it dropped behind the neighborhood of boats in the still marina.