**this is another possibly out of order post due to WordPress struggles. It was supposed to be posted Jan 13.
The anchor held overnight. Thank heavens. We were pooped! This week we are spending some time in the cute little town of Beaufort, NC. It’s totally adorable. The dolphins right off of Two Fish’s transoms, plus the wild ponies seen on the island through our port hatches when we wake up, was so refreshing.
Wren got out her rollerblades and cruised around town while the adults tidied up Two Fish and listened to the weather, wondering when our next chance to go south would be. We took the opportunity to do some laundry, eat some ice cream, and stretch our legs. We also had our first gale while on anchor come through. There was a fair bit of anxiety over our anchoring dragging in the mud with the varying winds and currents. A lovely neighbor on s/v Wind Song came over and lent us another anchor. Wren had a blast playing with their daughter, Pebble. We also had a diver come out to check our props and hulls to see if they were fouled/covered in growth since we weren’t making the speeds we had anticipated when going around Cape Hatteras. Spoiler: in the last 3 weeks they had been fouled by barnacles. We spoke to others at the marina we came from that had unexpectedly experienced the same fouling – not typical for this time of year in Gloucester Point. Hopefully cleaner props and shafts improves our motoring performance.
There was a short window to go out in the ocean to get to Charleston. We discussed and elected to go down the ICW instead. This was an experience in itself. We have a 62’ mast, and our instruments atop. There are several fixed bridges at 65’ requiring us to watch the tides (one says 65’ but general consensus is that it’s only 64’), and other that we would have to wait for the opening times. The other thing to be aware of is that though the waterway may look very wide, the channel boats can go down is quite narrow, and is subject to shoaling, meaning where you think the water is deepest may not be quite so. We downloaded Bob’s Tracks and uploaded them to Navionics on the iPhone and Aqua Maps on the iPad. Off we went.
Despite all of our planning, we did lightly brush one of the bridges with the tip of our antenna, ever so slightly. No damage done. There was also a sphincter-tightening moment when our gps stopped tracking and we had to weave outside of the markers to avoid shoaling and stay on the guided deepest water track. We saw 1 foot under our keel at that point. Puke. We did have two beautiful anchorages on this trip, one at Mile Hammock Bay, awakening to ice in the deck, and one in Wrightsville Beach. Dolphins at Wrightsville Beach surely didn’t hurt!
Our last stop in the ICW for the week was Southport, NC, which is also absolutely lovely. We tried to time our arrival to be around slack tide for ease in entering the marina where we would be docking. Our cruising down the Cape Fear River felt like we were crawling but in reality we had to turn our engines way down and we were still going 7 knots, thanks to the current pulling us toward the ocean.
Southport was a breath of fresh air and a much needed respite. We weren’t given the T-head on the fuel dock for our space as I had hoped (the fuel dock was full!), but we managed to maneuver onto a dock with 20-25 knot winds pushing us off the dock. We had an amazing on-shore shower with endless hot water (and endless water!) thanks to the generosity of our friends Paul & Beckie. Their smiling faces and warm embraces really meant the world to us. They then lent us their car so we could go out to eat (Peruvian chicken!) and take Amanda to the airport the following day (full on crying – she is going to be so greatly missed, but I know she is greatly missed at home by her family!).
