The Sign Says It All
07 November 2017 | Topsail Beach, NC
Another great day of travels started before the chickens woke up. We got up to catch the 6AM Beaufort Creek Bridge in the very dark. Caught the sunrise about an hour later just south of Morehead City, NC. The Beaufort Channel is one of Lana's favorite areas to navigate as there are three channels and lights and markers and boats everywhere, even the occasional sailboat anchored just off the channel (not us). Boats from 15 foot fishing skiffs to 400 feet offshore cargo carriers in the same channels. Plenty of traffic and definitely keeping the heads on a swivel with the common question from me of "what color is that mark?"
Plenty of wildlife in the Bogue Sound, seagulls, pelicans, cormorants, Great blue herons, white herons, and then the dolphins start jumping. Now we are in the area where the locals modify their fishing boats with tall stands in the front where they can see over the marsh grasses when they are back in the small open waters. From a distance it looks like people are standing in the grasses in the middle of nowhere. At the dock the boats look kind of silly.
Later we crossed into the Camp Leguene safety zone which can be a bit weird when you see the sign in the photo and hope the lights are really off not just not working. We got about 10 miles into the zone and then hear loud explosions ashore. Quite a jump from both of us but nothing in our area. Later several large helicopters fly over followed by several Apaches and then two V-22 Osprey. They must have been having quite a bit of fun.
Later crossing the New River Inlet I went underwater farming (aka ran aground slightly) enough to make you slow way down and hope you are able to keep going. Even had a sailboat we were following call back on the radio to see how we were doing. Oh great was our reply. Then with the authority of years of experience (I presume) proceeded to tell me that when crossing an inlet the bottom shifts around quite a bit and you should follow the temporary markers very closely. Thank you very much sir.
Lana went drag racing to catch the 3PM opening of the Surf City Swing bridge and got there with about 1 minute to spare. It only opens on the hour so if we missed it it would have been a long hour just sitting with daylight burning. Glad we didn't have to anchor in the dark tonight.
Tomorrow the weather turns and we have N winds and 55 as a high with rain and T-storms. Shooting for Southport on the outlet side of the Cape Fear river. Based on my look at the timing we should be on an ebb tide so we should have quite a speedy ride in the afternoon. The wind is out of the N at 15 kts and the tide should give us about 1.5 to 2 kts plus if we continue motoring we could be upwards of 8 or 9 kts. Maybe we will just sail depending on how much daylight we have left. Need to get to Southport before the marina closes as there is not much for anchorages in the area.