Our friend Ken was in front of his house Monday afternoon when the mailman passed by his mailbox. He stopped the carrier and asked about my mail and was informed that there was nothing for me. Ken pressed the issue and she condescended to check again. She rummaged through the back of the truck and came up with our package from the Milford Post Office. If Ken hadn't pressed the issue we may still be at St James Plantation! I wonder if the package was in the truck last Saturday?
Yesterday morning the weather forecast called for strong thunderstorms in the afternoon. We had just about decided to stay another day when there was a knock on the hull. (8AM) The dockmaster informed us that a dredge would be working in our area and told us we would have to relocate to another dock within the marina. Instead of going through that hassle I decided we would leave and get underway. We made it through the Cape Fear River, Snow's Cut, Myrtle Grove Sound and passed the Carolina Beach Inlet before arriving at the Seapath Yacht Club in Wrightsville Beach just in time to beat the line of thunderstorms that moved through the area with strong winds and heavy rain. The marina had a loaner car that we made use of for a short to Wilmington for some provisioning. We had dinner on the boat and after the storms passed we took a hike to a beautiful beach along the Atlantic Ocean.
This morning we planned our departure to time the 8AM opening of the Wrightsville Bascule Bridge. We are in an older area area of North Carolina where several of the bridges have yet to be replaced by newer bridges with 65 ft clearance. We were able to barely clear the Figure Eight Swing Bridge by two feet because the tide was low but had to wait for the Surf City Bridge, about twenty miles later, that only opens on the hour. Also, for the first time during our journey we came upon dredges working on the ICW in three separate areas. I was beginning to wonder if there was any maintenance dredging being done to the ICW but we have seen a few commercial barges the last few days which may be the influencing factor for the work being done in this section. Also, we saw two of the ferries that are operated by the State of North Carolina to provide service between the mainland and the outer islands. That is a great service that Sue and I used when we drove down this way few years ago.
Mile Hammock Bay is located at the southern edge of the Marine Corps Base. Nobody is allowed to go ashore - not even to walk dogs! It's a popular stop for cruising boats for there are not many choices for miles in either direction. Ours was the first boat into the anchorage but we were joined soon after but four other trawlers and three sailboats. We must be very near an auxiliary landing field for there were helicopters and Osprey tilt rotor aircraft landing and taking off just beyond a tree line along the shore. Tonight there were two heavy duty helicopters doing touch and go in formation. And I just saw on the local TV news that Michelle Obama visited the base today. Gee, it's too bad that we couldn't go ashore to see her.....
The original owner of our boat used a broker whom we met at the closing in Texas. He told us that he had just sold a 49 ft DEFEVER to someone in Niceville, FL who would be moving their boat to North Carolina at about the same time we would be traveling. He asked us to watch for the boat and possibly travel together. We watched for 'ESCAPE' along the way and would you believe that was the other boat that was timing the bridges with us all day and came into the same anchorage about an hour after us (they didn't make one of the openings with us and had to wait an hour for the next opening). They had looked at this boat when it was for sale last year and were interested to see what we have done with it. They came to our boat by dinghy for happy hour, an inspection tour and to shoot the bull. So after traveling all this distance we got to meet up with them on their last day before they reach their destination of Morehead City. We also plan to stop in Morehead City tomorrow and will be in the same marina where they will be keeping their boat so we will probably be seeing them again.
Y'all stay vertical,
Capt John and First Mate Sue
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