Bucket List Sail

There's an old saying that sailing is 80% boredom and 20% terror. We think that the two are more in balance for us this week. It seems there is at least one dramatic happening each day. And Wednesday (stay tuned for Thursday, too) was no exception. While at anchor in Swansboro, Al got up at 5:30 to call the Marine Corps, not to join up but to find out if we could get through a restricted area of Camp Lejeune. We had read of sailors getting to a certain spot and have to anchor for hours waiting for live firing exercises to finish. Al was promised that if we got to the check point at 0900, we would be allowed through. So after hastily eating our morning treat of fattening but yummy banana fritters which al dinghied to shore to buy at a local eatery, we left our anchorage at 7:40. We timed it very well, enjoying the early morning peaceful ride. We wafted through marshy areas, complete with dolphins swimming alongside Summer Semester.
Arriving at the checkpoint, there was a patrol boat with flashing lights. Ugh! I called the same number and was assured we could go through; the patrol was just there to caution us that a boat "is stuck on a sand bar", so we were to be especially careful of shoaling. As we motored along, I spotted the aforementioned sailboat ahead and tilted at an unhealthy level, his rudder out of the water. Two other boats seemed to skirt him to the right. As we came closer, we saw two additional red and green marks that weren't charted, so we assumed they were private navigation marks and not to be honored. You can see where this story is going. We got really close to the sailboat, making sure we watched the channel markers carefully. But the water got more and more shallow and we only then recognized we had to zigzag around the other two marks that were very close to each other. It all seemed illogical, but we started to do that. Too late. Bam! We, too, were hard aground. We flew into action, me pulling the dinghy in close so her line wouldn't get caught in the prop of the big boat, and Al just gunning the engine. First in reverse to no avail and then hard ahead. I looked up once and saw 2.4 on the depth which means we were about a foot low. Al was able to get the boat moving/plowing forward and suddenly we were in 9 feet of water. This all happened in about 2 minutes or less. We kept envisioning the two sailboats taking up the entire 90 foot channel and completely stopping the US Marines from doing their work. And we still wonder how/if the other boat got off that sand bar.
Our nerves were frayed after this encounter but little by little, we calmed down. We debriefed the incident and the lesson learned is that we must be more attentive to our online resource, Active Captain, that would have warned us of this issue. As the day went on, we had two bridges open just for us. As we started the day so early, we were able to get 35 miles to Topsail NC where we found a wonderful little anchorage with just us in it and about 100 feet off the ICW. Perfect.
A note about the unusually cold weather. We were prepared and despite my earlier posted photo, we have made out well. Granted, we layer on lots of clothes and hats while outside; even though the temperatures haven't been that low, the wind chill really can get to you. But we have had great options for heating the cabin. 1) I can bake a nice chicken dinner in the oven which heats up the whole place. 2) We bought a propane heater from Tractor Supply that is amazing but requires us to vent the cabin so we don't die of carbon monoxide poisoning. So we use it sparingly. 3) We have Aunt Emily's electric mattress pad that works off our battery invertor even at anchor. So cozy. 4) Al installed a heating system that works off of the engine. 5) When at a marina, we have an electric heater. We have used every one of these methods.