Carolina Beach - November 7

It was 42 degrees this morning at daylight, far too cold. After checking weather and sea conditions on the computer, I went to shore and hiked about a mile to a store and bought stocking hats and gloves. Now I know that a few of you so called friends will be pleased to hear of our suffering... but in truth, temps did climb about 70 in the pm so we didn't really suffer for too long. We said good bye to Carl and left Wrightsville Beach at about noon. After topping off our fuel tank and taking on some water we drove down to Carolina Beach about 12 miles to the south. We are staging here to head down the Cape Fear River with the tide and then outside to Charleston which is about a 24 hour sail. The weather looks perfect.

We had some excitement today with shallow water and folks on the radio giving constant advice as to which markers to get close to and which ones to keep at a distance. We disregarded them all and kept between the navigational beacons to the best of our ability. (We were heading directly into the sun and the glare was tough). There were a few times that we had less than a foot of water under our keel, but it seemed to be enough.

Tonight Mike fried some fresh grouper for dinner. He got things a little hot and we had a serious fog bank going down below. He wants to open all the hatches and I say it's too cold out, keep the warm air inside! We compromised and opened a few until the fog cleared. The grouper was excellent - with fried potatoes and a tossed salad.