We had a good blow last evening with winds approaching 30 knots. I was up every few hours, checking to see if we were dragging anchor. The good news is that the new Ronca 25 held tight. The bad news is that I never really had a good stretch of sleep.
Today turned out to be our first day over 100 miles. It was also my first time with the boat out in the Atlantic Ocean....AND, it was the first time that I had seen Vic since September 26..a good day of firsts, but a tough sail for sure.
We pulled up anchor at 7AM and headed south down Adams Creek and then into a canal that took us south about 15 miles into Beaufort NC.
As we have journeyed south, the tides have been modest, usually less than a foot. From here to Florida, they will start to become a significant part of our planning. We are arriving in Beaufort about 2 hours past low tide. The tides here are about 3 feet, increasing to 8 feet in South Carolina and Georgia, and then diminishing back to a foot or so in South Florida. Note the height of the docks as we motor south along the canal.
This part of the ICW seemed to be comfortably wide until we passed this barge traffic. This fellow was pushing a load of phosphate from a plant in Beaufort.
We cross under a fixed bridge at MM197. Tides were down about 2 feet and the boards were showing 65.5' clearance. As we crossed under, we never touched the VHF antenna..we were breathing easy for a change.
Just before we entered the open waters north of Beaufort, we picked up a couple of visitors in our journey south. There were 3 porpoises that swam about 3 feet off our starboard sign for about 10 minutes...looked like a baby and parents..as we looked behind us, there were at least 10 more just playing in the channel.
As we entered the open waters north of Beaufort, we can see this plant as well as the next bridge to be navigated. I am guessing that this is a phosphate plant. After the last bridge, I was feeling pretty good about this next one. As we approached, it was also showing 65.5' on the boards, BUT, we only cleared the windex by about 4" (according to a passing boat) as we struck the VHF antenna at least a foot below the top.
Note the bascule bridge behind the fixed bridge. This one is usually open.
At this point, we decided to go outside, as the bridge at MM "206.7" at Morehead City is reported to be lower than published...so we turned to port and headed out the channel into the Atlantic Ocean for the first time. We did this with some trepidation as seas were forecasted to be 4-6' and winds over 20 knots from the southwest. It turns out that this forecast was conservative.
Exiting through the channel, a pair of tugs were really struggling to get this barge moving, not doing more than a couple of knots.
As we passed the last buoy around 9:30AM, our path headed west (the coastline turns west here from Cape Lookout) under both power and mainsail as we worked our way down to the Wrightsville Beach / Wilmington area about 5 miles offshore. It was rough. Seas were running 6-10 feet and we spent the first hour just trying to keep from getting seasick. It would be 6PM before our arrival at Mason Inlet at Wrightsville Beach. It seemed like this day would never end.
In this pic, we are about to bury the bow for the at least the 100th time. It was just a rough ride today. About 11AM, it seemed like we would never get there, but we just kept moving forward beating a path to the southwest. Around 4PM the seas calmed to about 4 feet as the winds dropped from 25 knots to about 10 knots. By comparison, it was as if we had entered a "glass smooth" lake. We were relieved..but only until the ominous black clouds of a thunderstorm overwhelmed us.
The rains arrived at 4:30PM. I managed to get the "connector" canvas over the cockpit of the boat to at least keep us out of the worst of the rain. It rained hard for 30 minutes. This ended up being a blessing as the boat was covered with salt spray, and needed a good bath. We were out of the weather around 5:15 with Mason Inlet on our bow. We even had a good rainbow behind us to lift our spirits after this very long day.
Twice Blessed motored past the jetty entrance to Mason Inlet at 6:05PM, and were thankful to have the rough seas and weather behind us, at least for today.
Wrightsville Beach has some beautiful homes as we are finally coming back in to the ICW at MM "285". We turned north on the ICW to head back to "Bridge Tender Marina". This will probably be the only time that find ourselves going northbound, at least for this trip/
Bridge Tender marina is on the west bank of the ICW, just past the draw bridge at MM283. Here we are tied up for the night.
As you can see, the boat needs a good bath. I will get around to it when we get to Longboat Key.
Tomorrow is going to be a layover day..a chance to do some laundry, provision for the next week, and spend time with family and friends. I am surely glad that this day is over. I am also thankful that we made Wrightsville Beach in one piece!
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