12 May 2013 -- Sunday - Mother's Day...
Good morning...
The tides in the Cape Fear river decided our fate yesterday....at least as far as stopping early at the South Harbour Village Marina... (a place we really like, anyway).... We would have been fighting an ebb tide on the Cape Fear river... NOT GOOD....
But this morning (as I write the first part of this message)... we're doing 8.4 knots to 8.8 k. speed over the ground, going WITH the flood tide...

PLUS... Susan and I had a great dinner at the Italian Bistro there in the harbor, last night: ... a Celebration of MOther's day.... a congratulation, if you will, to Susan, for contributing so much to raising our Daughter.... and how well she 'turned out'. :)

Docking at south Harbour Village Marina was a trick.... Just before we were to dock the wind picked up to about 24 knots.... Although it was an "ON-Dock" breeze, the linear length of space that the dockmaster (Bill) gave us to get into was really tight. so we turned around; put our bow into the current.... and 'shoe-horned" the AB into the spot.... then the on-dock breeze (20+ knots) PINNED us there for the rest of the evening.... (Fenders half flat with the forces).

One plus for the South Harbour Village Marina; .... they've added Cable TV... so we had movies all evening...and an NCIS re-run
Getting a Pumpout this morning... required a move of AB OFF, and then ON to the dock in a different location.... but that's done!

and now (as I write this), we're on our way up the Cape Fear River, toward "snows cut" (over toward Carolina Beach)....
If we're lucky, we'll make Mile Hammock Bay by this evening...
Three major bridge openings between us and our goal


OK... It's EVENING now....

Still Sunday... and we ARE anchored in Mile Hammock Bay in Camp Lajune (NC).
But it wasn't easy.... we missed ALL three bridges by less than 10 minutes each... so we had to wait nearly 80 minutes total for the day...

Just milling about in the channels, waiting for the timed openings of bridges (Wrightsville Beach - Figure 8 - and Surf City bridges)....

The way the tides worked today... It was Impossible to make it between the last two bridges... no matter how hard we ran, even with the sails up.
No SOAP!!!!

It was a typical Sunday on the ICW, if not more crowded because of Mother's day.... Anyone who had traveled the ICW on the weekends knows what I'm talking about...
Everyone that passes you is in such a hurry... flat out, full Throttle, and only one or two boat WIDTHS from your beam.... Why so close???? the channel is WIDE !!!!
it was a 48.5 nautical mile day... but we lost an hour and a half due to bridge waits.... The anchorage here in Mile Hammock Bay is FULL, but I suspect all these people started this morning from Wrightsville Beach.... considerably closer to here than Southport NC (where we started from this AM).

Tomorrow, if things go well, we should blow though Beaufort NC, and start NORTH toward the Pamlico. How far we get...we'll have to see.
Right off the bat, we have to wait for the Onslow Beach bridge....
(the photo is of AB at Barefoot Landing, where we met Nick and Lyn)