And Back to the Chesapeake – Day 26

Today was the day.  Jan was on board and we were up early.  We cast off from Barefoot Landing shortly after 7:00, and went all the way across the ICW to Barefoot Marina, directly across from where we started.  Wow, what a cruise.  No, we didn’t stop for the day there, but we did get pumped out so our holding tank was empty, and our water tank was full, our fuel tanks were almost full as well, so we were good to go.  We were off the dock there by 7:30, an early start.  I guess we were anxious to get started.

We cruised through the rockpile area without incident and made it through all the other traditional problem areas also without incident.  In fact, two of the most notorious areas had recently been dredged so they were no longer problems.  Shallotte’s Inlet and Lockwoods Folly were straight through shots.  Very nice.  On the way down In November we saw boats that had run aground at both spots waiting to get rescued or in the process of being towed off the shoal.  To get through you had to take a curved route through the crossing carefully following the buoys and markers.  Now it was just straight across, Very nice.  There are several more trouble spots along the way that we will negotiate as we go along. We had to open a couple bridges today, so Jan got to see how that worked, as well as working with some of the navigation tools I use as well.  All in all a good day.

We did finally stop for the day at Carolina Beach Marina, which is a state park with a small marina.  Reasonable priced, with electric and water.  We arrived at the marina about 3:30, a little shorter day for the first day.   Of course when we got to the dock to tie up, a ranger came to help us.  Well, he was about useless.  Jan tossed him two lines and he tied them to the wrong cleats.  We couldn't get the boat against the dock well enough to get off and fix it.  He just tied a couple of lines and left.  We finally did figure a way to get alongside the dock so I could get off and re position the lines.  I guess he doesn't do much with boats.  

We traveled 57 miles today for a total of 878 miles total traveled so far.  Travel time was 7hrs. 9mins. Tomorrow is a long day, probably about 80 miles, just short of Morehead City.  There are also a couple bridges we have to open along the way.  The Wrightsville Beach bridge only opens on the hour so we have to time it so we don’t have to wait too long to get through.  Hopefully we can get off here around 8:00 so we can make it to Wrightsville by the 9:00 opening.  It would really suck if we got there at 9:05 and had to wait for the 10:00 opening.  The other bridge opens on the hour and half hour so we have some more flexibility there.  Of course if we can pick up a shrimper and follow him, the bridges open for commercial traffic on demand…bam! No waiting.  If we have to wait for bridges, that will really slow us down.

I doubt we will have any sort of internet access for the next several days, we will be anchored in some fairly remote areas, we’ll see.

So boys and girls, until next time…..

P.S. Hi Tyler