2019: Southport to Morehead City NC

4/7/2019
Depart: Southport Marina 9:10
Arrive: Mile Hammond Bay, Camp LeJeune Anchorage 4:00
Distance: 57 nm

We learned that Cape Fear would be closed on Monday for a crane delivery to the port of Wilmington. Clark scheduled our travels to guarantee that we would be beyond that point today to avoid a delay in travel. When we saw what this looked like and learned that it had traveled here from China, we wondered how they managed to cross the ocean with it!

We passed an unusual sight on our trip today . . .

Small sailbot towing a person on a stand-up paddleboard

and some of the usual traffic, like the sailboat shown below.

There seemed to be some issue with the autopilot today. Clark said it was not behaving properly. He requested that I reboot the navigation system as well as the autopilot to address the problem he was seeing. After the reboot, I heard no more and assumed that all had been corrected with the autopilot.

Later, Clark gave me the helm for a short spurt so he could take a quick break. He pointed out the markers I needed to be aware of and went below. When he came back, I put the boat on autopilot, handed over the helm to him, and went to sit in the pilot house to be a bit warmer. Suddenly, the boat made a sharp U-turn. "What the heck!" I yelled up to Clark. My heart was pounding.

"I missed Snow's Cut", Clark replied. He had made the sharp U-turn to backtrack. The markers he told me to follow were not part of the ICW and following that route would have taken us up a dead-end river. Ha! And here I thought my captain was infallible!

We had two bridges to deal with on today's journey - both opened on schedule as opposed to "on demand". Wrightsville Beach Bridge has a vertical clearance of 16' in the center at high tide. Even if we lowered our mast, we could not make it under. We had a 10-minute wait for the 12:00 opening. As we waited, the sailboat shown above came along to await the same opening.

Having cleared the Wrightsville Beach bridge, we now had 25 minutes to make it to the Figure 8 Bridge, 4 nm away, if we did not want to sit and wait. At 8 knots, it would take 30 minutes to get there. With the current against us and slow downs for folks on SUPs, for example, it looked like we had no hope of making the opening.

We had two choices - speed up or slow down. Clark opted to up the RPM and go for it. At 12:27 Clark called the bridge tender. I thought we were too far away to get there in time, but the bridge tender said, "Keep it coming!" The bridge opened at 12:30 as scheduled. The tender held it open for the 2 minutes it took us to get through. We burned some fuel but saved 30 minutes of station keeping. The sailboat that went through the prior bridge with us had absolutely no hope of making the 12:30 Figure 8 Bridge opening.

The remainder of the ride was uneventful. We did pass a couple of osprey nests. The timid ones fly away. The brave ones squawk as we go by.

Brave osprey defending the nest as we pass
Squawk! Squawk!

I am sure the house below is lovely when it is not flooded.

Island Home

Arriving at Mile Hammond Bay near Camp LeJeune at 4:00 gave us our choice of places to drop anchor - no one else had arrived as of yet. We dropped anchor and kicked back to relax. A short while after we arrived, we saw two kayakers.

Kayaking in Mile Hammond Bay

Just after 6:30, more than six hours since we saw him at the first bridge, a sailboat arrived.

Sailboat we saw at Wrightsville Beach Bridge 6+ hours ago
arriving at same anchorage we chose.

Twenty minutes or so later, another sailboat joined us in the marina.

Sailboat "Wild Oats" at Mile Hammond Bay anchorage

Tonight's sunset picture ...

4/8/2019 
Depart: Mile Hammond Bay, Camp LeJeune Anchorage 8:30
Arrive: Morehead City Yacht Basin 1:15
Distance: 37 nm

A bridge with a too-low vertical clearance blocked our travels today about two nautical miles from our anchorage. The bridge opens on the hour. We decided to target the 9:00 opening. We started pulling up the anchor shortly after 8:00. With the depth of the water plus the large tidal change in depth, we had out a large amount of line.

Clark got the line in and then had to turn on the saltwater wash to rinse muck off the chain and anchor as it came up. He got a bit more than he asked for when the anchor came up entangled in fishing line attached to a medium-sized tree branch. He yelled for me to get a boat hook to try to disengage the tree branch from coming along on the rest of our journey.

I got it for him, but he did not need it as the weight of the tree branch broke the fishing line as soon as the anchor came out of the water. The branch and the fishing line dropped down below to be snagged by the next unlucky boater. With all the messing about, it was 8:30 when we got moving.

Half an hour to make 2 nm should be no issue, but the key word for today was F-O-G!
OMG FOG! Visibility was ridiculously low. Clark said, "When you see the bridge, let me know and I'll calculate the visibility level." My response, "There's a bridge out there???"

Finally a marker appeared out of the mist and Clark measured the visibility at that point as about 720 feet. He considered at one point having me go stand on the bow to get an extra 30 or so feet of view from where he sat at the upper helm. I declined his offer to go stand on the bow pulpit.

Finding channel markers in the fog was very challenging

Where's the next channel marker?

The chart showed the bridge up ahead, so Clark called to let them know we would need an opening. Since we could not see the bridge, the bridge tender certainly could not see us. Often, when bridge tenders cannot see the haling vessel, they ask, "Where are you captain? I can't see you yet." Typically, that is when the haling vessel is too far away from the bridge. Today we were almost upon it.

As if by magic, the bridge suddenly appeared in the fog.

At 9:00, the bridge tender said he would start the opening for us. He said, "It takes 90 seconds for the bridge to swing and it will swing towards you, captain". It took at least that long before we saw any movement.

Finally, the bridge is opening.

Through the bridge and into the fog beyond!

We found a small boat on the far side of the bridge that we could not see in the fog. Later, we saw another boat up ahead.

Small boat ahead!
Look for the wake on the left side of picture.

As our travels took us more inland, the skies cleared.

Twenty minutes later, we were closer to the ocean and back in the fog.

Although the sailboats that shared our anchorage left a long time before we did this morning, we caught up with them along the way and passed them both.

Same sailboat we saw at Mile Hammond Anchorage

"Wild Oats" approaching Morehead City, NC

We have never had the opportunity to explore Morehead City in the past. One other time we stopped here but the weather was so awful, we never got off the boat to look around.

Approaching Morehead City ...

As we traveled today, I posted some pictures of the foggy path on Facebook. In response I got a message from "Ramble On" that they planned on staying in Morehead City tonight. We decided to get together for dinner. We arrived early afternoon so we could tour the town. While we waited for "Ramble On" to arrive, we walked around to see what the town had to offer.

Unfortunately, we arrived on a Monday and most of the restaurants were closed for the day. The brewery pub in town had a fire in December and was closed until further notice. Some businesses are closed trying to clean up from Hurricane Florence. We stopped into the Visitor's Center and got some guidance from the woman working there.

On our walk about, we saw ...

Monuments devoted to the fisher people of the town ...

"Big Rock Blue Martin Tournament Winners"

Poseidon 

"Carolina Sounder" 

Town Docks ...

Being repaired

Foggy city sights ...

Men up in the scaffolding, working in the fog
to fix a building damaged by Hurricane Florence 

Church steeple barely visible a block away

Street corner electrical box artwork ...

After our stroll, we went back to the boat to wait for Linda and Scott to arrive in town. Although they originally planned on using the town docks, they ended up at the same marina we used. Scott said it was too dangerous with wind and current to dock at the town docks. I got a message at 5:30 that they had finally docked.

Clark climbed the stairs to the Captain's Lounge where he could see Linda and Scott walking our way.

Linda and Scott - "Ramble On"

Big hugs all around!

One of the open restaurants in town had a rather unusual name.

Sanitary Restaurant

Since the restaurant was established in 1938, I suppose it made sense they wanted to brag about being sanitary! As we entered the restaurant for dinner, Scott told Clark he needed to get tonight's sunset picture. Clark immediately took off with the camera to get one.

Tonight's sunset!

4/9/2019 
Morehead City, NC
No Boat Travel. 

We opted to stay in Morehead City for two nights to get some chores done. We used the marina's courtesy car to get to stores. I stocked up on vegetables, which always run out first from my supplies. I did laundry, on-line shopping, and blog updates. Clark took care of boat business and made a number of phone calls.

We are on the move again tomorrow and heading towards the Neuse River and New Bern, NC for a couple of days to visit looper friends.