Making Miles South

 As we waited in Washington, North Carolina, we noticed the weather making a big change. We arrived on November 5th,  a beautiful 80 degree day. We departed on November 14th. We had a low temperature on that morning of around 36 degrees. It was certainly time to make some miles south. 

The first thing we had to do was to retrace our track the 25 miles back down the Pamlico river to the ICW. The side trip to Washington did add 50 miles to our overall trip, but I am so glad we decided to do it. We loved Washington and there is no price you can put on our safety. 

As we left the marina we had to go through a swing railroad bridge. It remains open most of the time and as I approached it looked clear to pass. I was within about 200 yards of the bridge and without warning the bridge started to close. OH NO! I quickly spun the boat around. Kim heard the bridge tender yell to us that he was sorry, and that he would stop the opening and let us come through. All of this communication was done by yelling, not on the radio. No flashing lights, no loud horns, nothing! Oh well, we were safely through the bridge, and on our way. 

It was not long before we had the sails up and the motor off. We had a nice 10 to 15 knots just forward of the beam and SHIFT was really enjoying stretching her legs after being cooped up for the past 9 days. We cruised up the river at 6 to 7 knots. 

You may be able to see in this picture we are cruising along at 7 knots. It was a very enjoyable sail. 

We made the 25 nm trip in just over 4 hours. It was then that we had to rejoin the ICW with a sharp turn to starboard. We then motored 5 miles to a nice anchorage called Eastham Creek. It was a cool day, but we were very comfortable for the night. We had the anchorage all to ourselves. 

The sun getting ready to set over Eastham Creek, North Carolina

We had this beautiful place all to ourselves. Not a house in site, just a few duck blinds.

OK, so I like sunset pictures.

We had a nice calm night.

The next morning we got up early and got underway. We motored about 4 miles to R.E. Mayo Seafood. This is a dock that has a number of Shrimp boats. They do have transient dockage for the incredible rate of $.40 per foot. We stopped for fuel. We took on 24 gallons of Diesel at $5.35 per gallon. Our last fill up was in the Chesapeake Bay. We also bought 2 pounds of jumbo shrimp at $9.00 per pound with the heads off. I fixed a Shrimp pasta for dinner that night. 

As we left the dock, 4 boats had just departed in front of us. We got out into the open water of the Bay River and then the Neuse River. We had pretty good wind the entire way. We sailed with just the head sail almost dead down wind for the trip to Oriental down the Neuse. We also had some pretty big swell coming from behind us. SHIFT did her job handling the conditions and we made a another long trip without the motor. The other boats turned to go to Oriental, we decided to stay on the ICW and stop at an anchorage we knew in Adams Creek. Those 4 boats joined us in Adams creek later that evening. 

Sailing on just the Genoa in the large swell.

It is always better to sail. 

We were only going 28 nm that day, so going 4.9 knots was just fine. This was early in the sail when the wind was on our port bow at about 70 degrees. 

 We had seen wind of over 20 knots as we headed down the Neuse river, but when we turned into Adams creek we had great protection. The wind also subsided as forecast, so we had a very nice night in the anchorage with about 10 other boats. 

I sure do love a calm anchorage.

This is Willet. We anchored next to him the following night also. They passed us the following day on the ICW, that was the only time we communicated. Very nice Ketch. 

Later this shot would have had 5 other boats in it.

We were up at first light the following morning. We were underway before 7 am. I wanted to make the early departure to hit the tidal flow at the best time. I was happy to see it worked perfectly. We had good current behind us for the 15 mile trip down to the coast and Morehead City. Then we turned to the southwest in almost slack tide and then it built behind us and helped us all the way past the Camp LeJeune Marine Base. We stopped for the night in one of my favorite anchorages along this route at Miles Hammock. We made 50.5 nm on the day.

There we lots of boats in the anchorage that first night, but the spacing was just fine for the calm conditions.

This was the view out the other side.

We enjoyed a beautiful sunset that evening. That is Willet again, the two masted Ketch just right of center. 

We had been moving for 3 days and made about 110 nm. We decided to take a day off and enjoy the nice anchorage. By 8 am the following morning we were alone. About 2 pm, a new batch of boats started coming in, some of which we had seen before. It is kind of cool how that works.

That is it for this entry. We were now on the coast of North Carolina. The weather was cool and we need to keep moving, but at the same time we have to pay attention to the weather. Come back to see what we do next.