Shortly after leaving Savannah, we passed the entrance to Moon River, not quite that one of “wider than a mile” fame but a distant namesake. Johnny Mercer wrote the words, Henry Mancini composed the music and Andy Williams made it famous. I love the lyrics and think that in a small way, it’s apropos of this year of ours…

“Moon River, wider than a mile,
I’m crossing you in style some day.
Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker,
wherever you’re going, I’m going your way.

Two drifters, off to see the world.
There’s such a lot of world to see.
We’re after the same rainbow’s end,
waiting ’round the bend,
my huckleberry friend,
Moon River and me”

Schmaltzy yes, but just try to get it out of your mind now. Jeannie of Estelle sang it through the VHF to us and from that point on, we were thinking about it all day and as soon as we got into our anchorage, Blair dug out his guitar and learned the chords.

South of Savannah, no-one leaves dock or their anchorage on a falling tide. We flag all the shallow spots on our route and then calculate our departure so as to arrive at these shoaled areas at either high tide or before. Consequently, boats travel in packs and if there’s a more shallow draft boat willing to take the lead and stick a toe in the water ahead, we’re all quite happy to fall in line behind it. Seabird, drawing less than four feet, was our leader through an ominous sounding cut called Hell Gate and called out the depths as they proceeded. As the tide rises, the faster boats get braver and pass on by to take the lead. Without fail though, if there is a bad spot ahead, the VHF radio hums with comments and advice so all the boats behind get fair warning.

Wahoo River

There were six boats traveling together south of Savannah and at the end of the day, we all made an exaggerated swing south, then west, to head up into Wahoo River to anchor for the evening. It was a work of art; each boat was anchored 300 feet apart down the creek, swinging with the current at a graceful angle to the shore which was thick with the tall marshgrass, green and gold in the setting sun. If I’d painted it, no-one would believe it; even the photo above doesn’t do it justice as I only captured the boats behind us.

We took the inside route all the way through Georgia because of persistently light winds this past week. If the winds are light, we’ll motor anyways so we thought it would be far easier to motor on the ICW without the big waves and swells of the open ocean. Beautiful scenery aside, from the Wahoo River down to Jekyll Island, near the bottom of Georgia, the ICW channel is tortuously windy, alternating between wide open sounds and narrow channels 300 feet wide. Looking ahead, the windiness was obvious as we could see the mast tops of a long line of boats, some heading west, some south and some east depending on what section of this maze they were in.

Tabby wall

We anchored 10 miles short of Jekyll Island in the Frederica River, a muddy creek that left the ICW to meander through tall marsh grass for five miles only to rejoin the main channel further down. At its edges, the grasses were flattened where the alligators come down to slide into the water. Fortunately, this was the only sign of alligators we’ve seen so far. We dinghied ashore to St Simons Island and explored the remains of Fort Frederica. We really had to use our imagination here as it was one of those historic sites that is mostly grass with a few bare outlines of buildings and walls still standing. These buildings, and many of the older ones in South Carolina and Georgia, were made of tabby, a mixture of lime, oyster shells, sand and water. It’s amazing that some of them are still standing considering these primitive materials. The grounds were full of pecan trees and the occasional orange tree. Ignoring our mothers’ warnings to never eat anything off the ground, we all tried the pecans; they definitely tasted like pecans but not rich like the ones you buy – more chalky tasting and quite a bit smaller. We’d heard earlier that the oranges were terribly sour and not to be eaten so we left that experience to the braver in the group.

In the Frederica River, we didn’t lift our anchor to leave until two hours before high tide after spending most of the morning listening to the myriad of boats reporting their depths via VHF. Channel 16 has a long range so we were hearing boats a good distance away. There was a boat aground near red buoy 208, another boat was reporting 4.5 feet through Jekyll Creek channel and periodically we’d hear a terse comment without any location; ‘six feet over here’. Presumably this was a lead boat in a procession through skinny water.

Wild horse

If you can get past the shoaling waters issue, the Georgia ICW is not to be missed. It’s isolated and winding and you’ll see nothing but autumn gold marshes for miles interspersed by wide open sounds leading out to the ocean. At the bottom of the Georgia ICW is her jewel, Cumberland Island. This is the most remote of the barrier Sea Islands, most of it being owned by the government with no development permitted. We anchored beside the island with a line of sand bars and low islands separating us from the ICW. We spent two nights here to savour the beauty and quiet of this area, knowing that just one hour south we’d be into Florida and the more bustling Fernandina Beach. Cumberland Island is only about a mile wide and it was an easy hike from our dinghy landing area through the dense Live Oak forest and dunes to the Atlantic, to a wide flat beach that ran the entire length of the island (all 17 miles of it). Wild horses wander all over the island, although they didn’t seem very wild to us. In fact most of them were fairly nonchalant as we walked slowly by them, stopping now and then to snap some photos. At one point, one of them followed us for awhile, being careful to stay off to the side under some palm trees and keeping at least 25 feet away.

Dungeness Ruins

Cumberland Island, about the size of Manhattan, was owned almost exclusively by the Carnegie family, of steel mill wealth. Thomas Carnegie bought the land for his wife, Lucy, and after he died quite young at the age of 43, she raised their nine children here on this remote island with a staff of 300 who ran her house, raised crops and generally allowed her to be self-sufficient. When the developers of Hilton Head started making noises about developing Cumberland Island, with the first stage being construction of an airstrip, the Carnegie’s donated the land to the National Park Service which has led to this beautiful park open only to those who arrive via private boat or the Cumberland Lady ferry. This is the island where John Kennedy Jr and Caroline Bessette were married – in the First African Baptist Church, a tiny whitewashed church with only a few rustic pews for seating. At one end of the island are the remains of the Carnegie mansions in a plantation-style setting called Dungeness. The Carnegie’s entertained American’s high society here in grand style. Much of the brick understructures remain after a fire in the mid-50′s and standing by the huge front lawn fountain, it was easy to imagine this as the center of all social gatherings before the Depression.

Cumberland Island

Jeannie and Jim from Estelle, after returning from a bike ride on the beach, insisted that we had to go ourselves and generously loaned us their excellent foldup bikes again. It was a wonderful feeling to bike along the beach, hard-packed at low tide. It was a hot day at 81°F, the sun was shining and we rode far up the beach to check out a huge red buoy that had washed ashore in some fantastic storm we imagined.

Leaving Cumberland Island, we had a short motor down to Fernandina Beach at the top of Amelia Island. Amazing to think we’ve arrived in Florida finally after leaving Trident Yacht Club and Ottawa almost six months ago. It’s also more than a little odd to think that our trip is almost half over and we’re not even to the Bahamas yet.

Here in Fernandina Beach we had an excellent reunion with Steve and Sandi of Hillary which we will have to now refer to as Steve and Sandi of Princess now that we’ve formally met their “southern” boat, a Hinkley Bermuda 40 which they keep on Amelia Island. We met them in Summerside PEI when we docked behind their Oyster 41, Hillary. Steve and Sandi split their sailing time between the Atlantic provinces and the Bahamas and they live in a wonderful area called Amelia Island Plantation.

They opened their doors to us and all our friends these past few days. On Thursday, with Madcap and Estelle, we celebrated American Thanksgiving at Steve and Sandi’s house complete with turkey, sweet potatoes, collard greens and ham hocks as well as a stuffing that rivals that most excellent Buchanan family stuffing. The next morning they helped us infiltrate Fernandina Beach’s secret breakfast spot, T-Ray’s, where we ate some standard southern fare of biscuits and grits (although none of us felt young and healthy enough to have the heart-stopping biscuits and gravy). These two are the epitome of American hospitality and I just want to hug them and then hug them one more time; in spite of being in the middle of house renovations as well as readying their own boat for a gulf stream crossing, these kind and generous people played chauffeur while we provisioned Strathspey for the next four months in the Bahamas. They ferried us back and forth on multiple trips to more than one grocery store as well as the local chandlery. Because we’re crossing over to the Bahamas in the next two weeks or so, we basically did a shop-til-you drop day on what the Americans refer to as Black Friday (the Friday after Thanksgiving). It’s one of the biggest mall shopping days in the US leading up to Christmas but for us, we had our eye on the finer things in life; food and wine.

Now, Sandi has a good philosophy on the whole shopping for a winter in the Bahamas thing, having done this crossing 20 or so times and spent many winters over there. She says they’ve traveled all over the world and they’ve never yet been to a place where people don’t eat – “they will have food there Mary”. Right. So, taking that in stride, I tried to limit my purchases to things we wouldn’t find over there and things that would be prohibitively expensive. Even so, Blair, who did not accompany us on our grocery foraging expedition, said, “okay I can find a place for all this stuff but you better cross your fingers that we don’t have to get at the batteries at all in the next four months”. That comment was mostly because 90% of what I purchased, got stored in the stern berth overtop of our battery bank.

Good friends and food

Yesterday was my birthday and I’ve got this great big smile on my face because I love a party and it was a good one. We celebrated with a group of new and old friends, all sailors, and all tops on my list of who to share my birthday table with. We filled a corner of Restaurant 29, a small place in the historic district of Fernandina Beach with nine of us (Jim from Madcap, Jim and Jeanie from Estelle, Bruce and Nancy from Seabird, Steve and Sandi of Princess and Blair and I). The food was excellent, the company even better and best of all, Blair played my Strathspey tune for me. I missed Beth of Madcap here for my celebrations but we are sending many good vibes towards Amherst, Nova Scotia and her mom right now.

Happy Birthday Mary

Clagamore

We spent three days in Charleston and saw a fraction of all she had to offer I’m sure. We spent the entire day Saturday at Patriots Point Naval & Maritime Museum; a collection of floating WWII memorabilia consisting of the USS Yorktown aircraft carrier loaded with vintage airplanes, the Clagamore submarine, the destroyer USS Laffey and the Treasury class Coast Guard cutter Ingham. This was Veteran’s Day weekend (the US equivalent of our Remembrance Day) and the place was jumping, especially with at least 500 boy scouts who were camped in various areas of the USS Yorktown. Can you imagine being a scout leader on an overnighter on this aircraft carrier? Better yet, can you imagine losing one of them on this huge ship! The kids were having the time of their lives from the looks of it.

The Charge

We spent an afternoon at Boone Plantation, a 320-year-old plantation, where we were privilege to a Civil War Re-enactment of the Battle of Seccessionville, a battle that the south actually won in the Civil War. We’d seen these re-enactments on television but it’s quite an event in person; it’s loud, it’s confusing and it definitely gives you a good idea of how up close and personal this fighting was. At the end of the battle, the troops lined up in front of the audience and upon command, inserted their bayonets and charged towards us. En mass, every one of us turned and tripped over ourselves to get back a safer distance. Later on, we met the soldier in this photo who’s a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (to join you must be a male descendant of a veteran who served honorably in the Confederate armed forces). He was quite a character and insisted that although the north called this war the Civil War, southerners still call it the War of ‘Northern Aggression’ or War of ‘Southern Independence’. He was quite adamant that “there was nothing civil about it!” One of the highlights was a young black woman telling stories under a huge canopy of Live Oak trees. She had a captivated audience of mostly adults and told old stories rooted in the Gullah culture. Gullah (pronounced more like gull than gulag) is a little bit creole, a little bit African and definitely well-preserved in South Carolina. Even though we have little room for souvenirs on this trip of ours, I did buy one of the sweetgrass baskets so integral to the Gullah way of life; it was small but absolutely perfect.

Sweetgrass basket

At the Charleston Harbour Marina, we were docked quite close to the marina entrance so each morning we had a good show as the “overnighters” rolled in. These boats arrived, like us, from Cape Fear or even further north, Beaufort, North Carolina or sometimes Norfolk, Virginia if they’d had a long enough weather window. Without exception, the sailors were bundled heavily against the cold with toques, heavy gloves and full foul weather outfits top and bottom. It’s warm here during the day (18°C) but the cold nights tell us this warm weather is not going to last long. So, we’re headed further south, into the winding, more narrow South Carolina and Georgia ICW where the marinas are smaller and the anchorages are more remote.

Plantation Shade

We rented a car for a day in Charleston and explored the Isle of Palms and Sullivan’s Island, barrier islands on South Carolina’s Atlantic coast. South Carolina is known as low country and these were definitely low lying islands. So low that they were under water during Hurricane Hugo in 1989. We were sent to Shem Creek Bar & Grill along the way and for shrimps cooked in all manner this is the place to be – shrimp creole, shrimp Étouffée, shrimp and grits and if you’ve ever had some thoughts about okra, this is definitely where to order it. It was delectable; lightly tossed in fine breadcrumbs and sautéd in butter.

It’s nice to rent a car periodically, although the cost varies widely depending on where and who you rent from. Charleston was cheap at $40 and touring by car was a nice change from the megadock marinas which seem to be the standard fare since we entered Long Island Sound. These huge marinas hold hundreds of boats and the washrooms and laundry facilities are a good 20-minute walk away. In the most extreme case at Harbour Village Marina, Blair roughly measured the distance from Strathspey to the showers at a half mile. Way too far to get there only to find the shower already occupied! The fuel docks are different too. As soon as we hit the US, the dock boys started simply handing us the gas nozzles to fill up the tanks rather than doing it themselves. In Yorktown, Virginia, we docked at the fuel dock, used the self serve pumps after swiping our Visa through the card reader and motored away, not having seen anyone at all (just like being in a car and definitely very odd).

Long-necked docks

Beyond Charleston, it was indeed low country that the ICW wound through; low and marshy. The houses are tucked deep into thick woods and sometimes the long docks stretching from the shore to the channel’s edge is the only sign of civilization on shore.

Not only is the land low, the water is skinny in this area too. South Carolina and Georgia have little funding for dredging the ICW and consequently quite a few boats are getting stuck in places that a few years ago provided fair passage. Even though we followed Skipper Bob’s advice going through one such section, we felt that sluggish slowing that meant we were in soft mud. Running into this soft mud is a bit like the old Chinese finger puzzle though – the more you squirm, the worse you’re stuck. So, we elected not to squirm and just wait for a higher tide to continue. Seabird, who draws a foot less than us, was stuck briefly but powered on through to deeper water (10 feet deep and only about 8 feet away- so close and yet so far). About 1 1/2 hours later, we floated free and continued on our way. So, we can say we’ve seen both sides now; the freedom and the fatigue of sailing outside and the scenery and the shoaling of the inside passage. One thing for sure is that the grass is usually greener on the other side. When we’re sailing all night, I wish we were anchored and fast asleep. When we’ve motored 10 miles yet only covered five miles in a southerly direction because of the winding channel, I wish we were sailing on the outside. Either way, I know that the grass is greener in the south so we keep moving.

Bull Creek

We’re in the heart of Gullah country now. On our port side are the long line of closely-packed Sea Islands that shelter us from the Atlantic. These are islands mainly because of all the rivers that skirt around them, draining from the low-lying marshes out to the ocean. The ICW follows the rivers and we wind back and forth, at one point cruising down a wide river, five miles later in a narrow canal dredged to connect us to the next river. These Sea Islands were the birthplace of the Gullah culture as the black slaves tried to carve a little bit of home, religion and society out of the rice fields they tended. The rice grown down here, Carolina rice, is small, round and when cooked is sticky; perfect for sushi. We bought a bag of this rice at the Boone Plantation and quickly realized it had little or no resemblance to our favourite Basmati rice.

Beaufort wrought iron

After leaving Charleston, we stopped for a night at Bull Creek and in this isolated little anchorage, Blair changed both the transmission oil and engine oil. Yes, it’s easier to do these kinds of jobs while at dock but because that happens so seldomly, we want to use our land-access time to tour the area, get groceries, send emails and stretch our legs. The following evening we spent anchored in Beaufort harbour. Beaufort was old and southern; Spanish moss-festooned oaks, shaded narrow streets, huge (huge!) mansions with wrap-around porches, gardens, narrow paths and white (white!) fences, gas-light front-porch lamps, wrought-iron window screens and curved sweeping staircases leading up to thick carved doors. We went ashore in the early morning before most houses were awake and walked through the streets long before even the dogs started challenging people. It was a peaceful little stop on our way downstream towards Savannah, Georgia.

We booked a two-night stay at the Isle of Hope marina about a 15 minute drive south of Savannah because of a high wind forecast which never did materialize while we were here. No matter, Blair used the time here to install a solenoid assist relay on our engine. For quite awhile now, our engine would only start after repeated pressing of the starter button. This was caused by a drop in voltage on the starter battery so this little installation eliminates that annoyance and hopefully will continue to perform well as we press on. It’s unusually cold here for this time of year (or so the locals insist). It was down to zero°C last night so this morning we had both our espar heater and our electric heater running and by ten it was warm enough to contemplate going outside. This marina is comfortable and in a pretty little area but fairly remote from Savannah. We had tried, unsuccessfully, to book a spot at the Thunderbolt marina which is quite a bit closer but it was booked up a few days in advance. The marinas are getting quite small and few and far between at this point and we feel lucky to get space here because the manager was turning boats away all day; everyone wants to be safely tied to a dock in bad weather.

Southern scenery

House construction

In North Carolina, the inside route down the ICW feels more or less like we’re out for a Sunday drive. On the drive, we inspect all the houses along the shoreline and note how built up the western shore is, up being the operative word. Most of the houses are built on huge pilings or 10×10′s with their front doors usually up on the second floor. This likely has much to do with the extensive flooding that goes hand in hand with their hurricane season which runs June through November.

In front of most of these houses are long docks leading out to deep water, sometimes almost to the middle of the channel. We were constantly double-checking our chart plotter as we cruised by, just to make sure that we were still in the middle of the channel when the docks were a mere ten feet away from Strathspey. As well as contending with long-necked docks, the local fishermen were stringing their nets across the waterway to catch mullet. As we approached the nets, the drill was for the fishermen to grab one end of the net and motor towards the other end gathering the net as they go. They miscalculated once with us and we had to put the brakes on pretty quickly; for some reason, they folded up their net for two boats just ahead of us and then strung it out when we had less than 20 yards to go.

Dredger

We’ve been seeing quite a few dredgers too. These are long vacuum cleaners that take up most of the channel and rarely answer if a boat asks them which side of them is safest for passing. These dredgers suck up the sand and mud from mid-channel and blow it over to the side. This is definitely like sweeping the dust under the carpet because it’s a never-ending job as the mud gradually settles back in, especially when the larger power yachts blow on by at high speeds.

Pelicans

Sighting our first pelican while in the Chesapeake was really exciting yet now they are everywhere, congregating in crowds to fish and socialize. Initially, I took photo after photo of them and even though they’re pretty common now, they are so awkward and prehistoric looking that they still hold a fascination. After leaving our storm haven, where we had hidden from Hurricane Noel, we continued down past Wilmington, past where we’d driven by car to view the huge waves kicked up by Noel. The day was sunny but stupidly cold for sailing so we had more than a few layers on, even wearing winter toques to keep us warm in the cold north wind. By Carolina Beach though, it had warmed up considerably and we made the turn into the Cape Fear River towards Cape Fear, the southernmost point of North Carolina. At the mouth of the river, the ICW turns west but we kept going straight; down to Bald Head Island.

Quiet beach after Noel

Bald Head Island is definitely worth the 2.5 mile detour off the ICW. It’s only accessible by boat. No cars are allowed on the island and everyone gets around using electric golf carts. This is an upscale neighbourhood definitely; the price of a 35 foot dock slip in this harbour is $126K but the marina is reasonable at $1.25/foot and it was fun to explore the island. One of its claims to fame is the largest nesting colony of the endangered Loggerhead sea turtle. It’s beautiful here – pristine beaches and beautiful forests with Spanish Moss hanging from the trees. Much of the land here has been deeded to the state of North Carolina so it will not be developed and it’s nice to think that it will be like this for generations to come.

Biking around island

Every night here we’ve noticed a distinct static sort of noise on the boat. We were continually cocking our heads, quietly walking the length of the boat and occasionally putting our ear down to the VHF radio, the SSB radio, the refrigerator and even just the walls of the boat, trying to figure out where that dang noise was coming from. The mystery is now solved; this noise is just the krill or shrimp nibbling on the growth stuck to our hull and apparently quite common.

A tight fit

We stayed on Bald Head Island at the marina for five nights, three longer than planned, because we were waiting for parts from West Marine. Our inverter/charger was misbehaving. Our batteries would charge when we motored but when plugged into dock, our inverter display showed wildly ranging values from dead flat batteries to full charge. The charger itself had simply shut down. There could be worse places to be stuck waiting for parts but once they came, Blair immediately went into full bore contortion to squeeze into our starboard locker and install the new charger in short order. I will never complain that his toolbags take up way too much space! Everything is working just fine but at this point, we’re more than a little suspicious that the failure of this expensive item has something to do with our SSB radio operation. Jim from Estelle, who has the same unit, provided a good troubleshooting manual and we think that we need to change some of the points of connection for the SSB. It’s a real power hog and Blair and Jim both think that perhaps some stray VHF might have blown the circuitry in the charger.

While waiting for our parts delivery, we took advantage of the down days to spruce up our teak which was definitely showing signs of wear after almost five months in salt water. We also cleaned the boat top to bottom. You’d think that would be a relatively quick job, given the size of the boat, but it’s not. Think of all the dirt that gets into your entire house in a week (not bad, but certainly enough), now spread it into a space smaller than an average-sized bedroom and you get the picture. So, we did some boat chores, some biking on Jim and Jeannie’s cadillac foldup bikes (the brand is Montague and they run a pretty close second to our mountain bikes at home), tooted around in golf carts, lay on the beach at night enjoying the stars and did lots of socializing. But it was time to move on so we turned our back on the ICW for awhile and did an outside passage from Cape Fear down to Charleston.

Dolphins

The winds were right for Thursday and we made the 23 hour trip to Charleston overnight with Jim and Jeannie from Estelle and Nancy and Bruce from Seabird, a Bristol 35.5 we met back in Cedar Creek. At 9 am Thursday when we left the mouth of the Cape Fear River, the air temperature was 1°C so definitely time to get further south. We had a great sail ’til dusk, motored ’til 1 am and then sailed again until we reached the long channel into Charleston. At one point, we had four dolphins that joined us, racing alongside Strathspey and weaving back and forth diving under our bow.

Although the winds were from the right direction (north) to blow us down to Charleston, the swell was on our broadside, setting Strathspey up for that rolling corkscrew kind of motion that never sits well with me. I thought a lot about that wish for sailors, “Fair winds and following seas” during the night. For me, following seas is not what I’d wish for on an overnight passage because in the dark, I couldn’t see much of a horizon and the trick that usually helps with seasickness (focus on the horizon and steer) didn’t work. Other than that, it was a fast trip down and cut a good four days of winding ICW off our trip.

Charleston

We’re in Charleston for three days now, staying across the river at the Charleston Harbour Marina. We’re docked right next to the USS Yorktown aircraft carrier that’s open for visitors so that is definitely on the agenda. We’ve seen a bit of the historic area of Charleston by foot, met Madcap for a southern BBQ last night and hope to catch a blues band at some point too over the next few nights.

We’re moving steadily southward now, trying to cover reasonable distances each day yet still manage to be close to good anchorages at night. It’s not easy. Up until Belhaven, we had excellent anchorages, well protected from the winds and well away from the ICW channel. ICW night number one, we were at dock in Coinjock, night number two, we (and five other boats) were tucked into a small anchorage with good protection from the wild north winds that started howling around 2 am. The next day, we made a short trip into the Belhaven harbour and sheltered from those high winds for two nights before continuing on.

Cotton

Belhaven is one quiet town; the only thing open on the Sunday we arrived was the pool hall. On Monday though, Blair snagged us a golf cart from the marina to do some exploring. We found a Food Lion with great wine at confusingly low prices; I know our dollar is soaring but their selection of Australian wines was not only extensive, it was downright cheap! The highlight, besides touring Belhaven at a stately 5 mph in the golf cart, was finding miles and miles of cotton fields, all the plants bursting out of their pods, ready to be picked.

Shrimpboat

We left Belhaven early, heading down to Oriental, North Carolina, sailing slowly in the light winds while Blair did some emergency maintenance on the engine. He had checked the engine that morning and all was fine but once we got out of the harbour and started south, he noticed a bolt had shaken loose from the oil pan and needed to be reinserted (easier said than done when the engine is hot, Blair has no clear view of the oil pan and is feeling around the pan to find the hole that bolt fit into). Once that little job was out of the way, we started the engine and motor-sailed the rest of the day towards Oriental. The route to Oriental led through biggish creeks, wide sounds and one skinny canal. In the canal, we passed quite a few shrimp boats and at one point, had to squeeze over to let a shrimper come through with his wings spread wide.

Hurricane Isabel

All last year, one of my morning routines to jump start my day was to check Oriental’s town dock web camera, noting the boats heading south in the fall and then north again in the spring. We’d really been looking forward to standing in front of the webcam, waving like fools and then posting the time and date in this blog so everyone could see us. Unfortunately, by the time we got into Oriental, the anchorage was pretty tight. We skirted around all the other anchored boats for a bit and decided it was too close-quartered for us and reluctantly headed for the next anchorage, six miles on at Cedar Creek. While we slowly exited the harbour, I strung out our wifi antennae and managed to download a whole slew of emails. One of them was from Estelle, a Bristol 41.1 we had met in the Chesapeake. Among other things, the email said that Cedar Creek was an excellent anchorage so that cheered me up measurably. They were right; it was a quiet anchorage, well off the ICW with only about 10 boats in a good-sized bay. A prominent land (sea?) mark on the way in was a mast sticking out of the water; a victim of Hurricane Isabel two years ago.

Camp Lejeune

Our next stop was Mile Hammock Bay in the middle of Camp Lejeune, a military base of about 150,000 troops and support personnel. The military allows sailboats to anchor here but they use the entire area (156,000 acres and 11 miles of beach) for training; that means live target practice, tactical landings, amphibious operations, you name it). The ICW, at the Camp Lejeune entrance, can be closed at any time if the military judges it unsafe to boaters. We cruised on past the entrance, past the amphibious landing craft full of soldiers with rifles and made a right turn into Mile Hammock Bay as V22 Ospreys, UH60 Black Hawks and a pair of A10 Warthogs roared overhead. It was a warm night and in the protection of this isolated little bay, we had our dinner in the cockpit, listening to the roar of the surf beyond the dunes and the distant ratatat of heavy caliber and gattling guns- how’s that for a romantic dinner?

Mile Hammock Bay

Because of the bad weather this past week, the boats are starting to stack up now, filling all the good anchorages and marinas. We noticed this in our stop at Mile Hammock Bay which easily had three days worth of boat traffic anchored here. This is the only anchorage between Beaufort and Wrightsville, North Carolina and that night there were 23 boats floating here. Unlike Oriental, it didn’t feel tight though as there was good space between us all so no one felt their personal boat space was being invaded.

Dunes in North Carolina

The ICW scenery is getting more interesting at this point, from the tall dunes shielding us from the Atlantic to the low marsh islands with their tall grasses. This part of the waterway is very close to the Atlantic and, as well as hearing the pounding surf, we can see the backside of all the vacation homes built right along the ocean. All the retiring ‘boomers’ are looking for waterfront property and North Carolina is the place to get it. In fact, all the real estate glossies tout North Carolina as a “Boomer’s Paradise”.

Tree decorations

The channel is narrower now and sometimes not very deep. The depth can range anywhere from 6 feet up to 14 feet at low tide and we often hear the boaters further on down the water warning those behind to watch out for shoaling in various spots they’ve passed through. Getting further south in North Carolina, we’re seeing lots of wildlife, even though we’re so close to civilization. Rounding one corner of the channel, we saw trees covered with big white blobs. It looked like the tree had been toilet-papered for Halloween but as we got closer, we could see that it was full of what we think were a group of Egrets sitting in the tree. A few of the low-lying marshy islands we passed had goats grazing near the water and at most of the inlets, groups of dolphins break the surface in quick succession and sometimes even leap out of the water in pairs.

The weather since we entered the ICW has consisted of a succession of one cold front after another and on top of all that we’re getting the side effects of Hurricane Noel as it makes its way up the coast on a track for the Canadian Maritimes. Because Noel’s track and arrival was uncertain, we waited perhaps a little longer than we should have to book reservations into a marina to sit out the high winds. Lesson learned: the marinas get booked up fast when bad weather is predicted and next time we’ll hustle a little faster. To sit out Noel’s passage, we managed to find space in the Harbour Village Marina near Surf City. It is probably the most expensive marina around this area and likely the reason it had some vacancies. No matter, we’re in and glad to be in this particular marina especially as it’s well off the ICW, down a narrow channel in a well protected basin. We’re squeezed into a single slip between two floating docks here and have all our fenders out and are tied stern, bow and spring on both sides.

Unusual ballast

Late last night, a huge sailboat came ghosting into this marina. David, her owner and captain usually sails Aratinga, a 60 foot Alden with an 80 foot mast, outside on the open ocean but he said he thought this year he’d like to try the ICW. Now…this is quite the accomplishment, given that the fixed bridge heights on the ICW are all around 65 feet. David ingeniously rigged up a way of tilting his boat over so that she “slides” under the bridges, healed up on an angle. He has two one-ton (yes, 1 ton) thick rubber bags of water hanging midway up his mast. His boat has a slight tilt to starboard anyways and when he wants to tilt Aratinga over to pass under a bridge, he lets the line out on these bags of water so they hang over the side and that increases his starboard list. He figures that to cut 10-15 feet off his mast, he has to let the bags hang out 10-15 feet to starboard. It’s worked up to this point and I’ll bet this New Zealander will be the talk of the ICW for years to come.

Wrightsville Beach

We shared a rental car with Jim and Jeannie Lea from Estelle and drove to Wrightsville Beach to check out the Atlantic Ocean in all its fury. The wind was howling on the beach and the waves were wild, yet even so there were some diehard surfers out there catching the waves. We went over to the Wrightsville Beach anchorage recommended in Skipper Bob’s Anchorages Along the ICW, a must have booklet for anyone traveling this ditch. In this area, there were about 15 boats, some of which had been with us in Mile Hammock Bay the night before. They were all swinging wildly on their anchors, pitching up and down and generally making us feel pretty good that we’d sprung for our expensive shelter further inland. We found an excellent seafood store, picked up Wahoo filets and shrimp, stopped for a fine lunch at Airlie Seafood Company (fish all ’round) and then a stop at my new, most favourite grocery store chain, Harris Teeter.

For all those who sent us “stay safe” messages, I post this blog to say we’re tucked in away from wild winds, we’ve stocked up on large quantities of excellent seafood and had some fine company today; life is good.