A Very Cold Day on the ICW
24 October 2013 | Mile Hammock Bay, North Carolina
Donna
After I posted the blog yesterday afternoon the wind really kicked up. We never have a problem with our anchor but we weren’t feeling real secure there. We were banging into an empty mooring and way too close to the shore. Bill decided we needed to re-anchor. We tried to pull the anchor up but it was tangled around the mooring. Bill had to cut some of the lines from the mooring away to get us free. We looked for somewhere else to anchor but there isn’t much to find on that creek so we decided to go back to where we were. The current was really strong, the wind was really strong, we were not having much luck. There was a boat at the dock next to us where they had been working on the boat the whole time we were anchored there. He yelled over to Bill that he had a mooring up toward the head of the creek that we could use. We gladly accepted and we turned back around and went to pick it up. It was right next to our French friends, if anything a little too close in that much wind. There was much less current there so it felt much calmer but it was still a rough night. After we got settled we went back down in our dinghy to thank our benefactors. It is such a small cruising world – it turns out we were both in Hatchet Bay in the Bahamas at the same time last winter.
This morning we woke up to a very cold day. Not quite as bad as last year but the coldest we’ve had so far this trip. It will be this way for a few days now unfortunately. We bundled up the best we could and kept going south. Today was the day we went through Camp Lejeune, the Marine training location. Last year when we got to this spot they were about to close the ICW for live fire exercises. They let us through but we could have just as easily had to wait for three hours. No live fire exercises today , although there were lots of helicopters flying over us for part of the day, as you can see in the picture above. We think they were practicing taking off and landing. Even now as I write this blog, at almost 10pm, the helicopters are flying overhead.
The ICW is getting more crowded. We had a number of power boats going past us today and we even passed a sailboat or two. We meet other cruisers all different ways but today was a new one. We met them as we passed their sailboat. Bill called them on the radio to tell them we were passing them and we had a conversation about where we were going. We also passed the sailboat of a young couple who have just started cruising. We had met them at the dinghy dock in Beaufort. There aren’t many anchorages in this part of the ICW and since it was so late in the day we were all going to end up in the same place. Mile Hammock Bay is also on the Marine base. You are allowed to anchor here but you aren’t allowed to go to the shore at all.
Our French friends were already here and we anchored next to them. Bill decided it would be fun to invite them, the young couple we met in Beaufort, and the couple we met as we passed them, over for drinks. So we took the dinghy down and went to all three boats to make the invitations. Everyone accepted and we had a nice time telling stories and getting to know each other. After everyone went back to their boats, and we were all probably appreciating a nice calm quiet anchorage, two small, loud boats started darting around the anchorage. We went out to check it out and we are pretty sure it was a Marine training exercise. The boats were very stealth looking inflatables and it looked like they were chasing one another. Fortunately it didn’t last very long.