Southport, NC - The Eagle Has Landed

Another day on the ICW. We left Wrightsville Beach around 8am; most of the boats in the anchorage had already left and were well ahead of us. On the VHF radio we started hearing chatter about a boat aground about 10 miles further, near Carolina Beach. One by one, we heard all the other boats hail this boat ("American Eagle"), asking "are you aground?" and "which side should we pass you on?". As we approached the area, we realized why so many boats had been worried about the grounded vessel -- it wasn't just a boat, it was a 160-foot cruise ship! The ICW channel at Carolina Beach is only about 120 feet wide and here is this behemoth turned sideways and stretching nearly across the entire channel. If you look closely at the photo, you can see that the waterline at the bow of the ship is at least a couple feet higher than it should be. As we got closer we could see that one other poor sailboat had misjudged where to pass, and tried to slip by the American Eagle's bow. Yep, they ran aground too. We heard the boat ahead of us radio the ship and they were told to pass behind it, so that's what we did, although the water got pretty shallow. We passed close enough to talk to one of the passengers on deck, an elderly lady who seemed to find the whole situation pretty hilarious. Strangely, the cruise ship was keeping kind of a low profile about the whole thing -- they didn't radio the coast guard, they didn't respond when TowBoat US hailed them on the radio. Normally, a vessel that big would periodically announce a "Security Call" on the VHF, to inform other boaters of what had happened and to use caution. But maybe the captain thought that nobody would notice, and they'd be able to get going again as the tide came in. I'm sure it was embarassing, but he's lucky a tug and barge wasn't trying to transit that section of the ICW this morning, or there could've been real trouble. I'm sure the Coast Guard was pretty irked when they finally found out what was going on. Some other boater must have called them because about two hours later, as we were heading south on the Cape Fun And Games River (Cape Fear River), we finally heard the Coast Guard issue a Security Call warning on the VHF, and they didn't sound too pleased about it.

Where we are:
Location=Southport, SC
Lat=33 55.238 N
Lon=78 02.666 W