November 12-13

Tuesday was a great day traveling along a surprisingly populated part of the waterway. Beautiful homes line the shores, almost all the way to Carolina Beach, where we spent the night.

It has been cool, especially at night, so we are trying to cover at least 40 to 50 miles a day. Although that doesn’t sound like a great distance in land terms, it is typically an eight to nine hour day of traveling.

On Wednesday morning we motored through the Cape Fear River. The guide book says the ‘Cape Fear River is appropriately named; winds always seem to be blowing at the mouth, the current runs to 6 knots, and there is ship traffic day and night … if the wind opposes the current, river conditions here can be treacherous.’ Does it make you wonder who does this stuff, or just who writes about it? We had a wonderfully calm passage while coming to the appreciation that this is a significant body of water.

We also had to pass through Lockwoods Folly inlet and Shallotte Inlet. These are two areas notorious for shoaling and shallow water. Gormã draws five feet, and so when our depth finder registers numbers beginning with four we begin to worry. With good planning we were making these passages during the upper half of the tide change, but imagine our anxiety wending our way through this fishing derby in only five feet of water.

We anchored in Calabash Creek and dinghied into the small town of Calabash with a couple sailing on Wayward Wind for an authentic supper of Calabash cooking.

November 11

We got an early start Sunday morning, hoping to get as far as Mile Hammock Bay within the boundaries of Camp Lejune. We have begun to see a number of shrimp boats the last few days. They make quite a sight as they are motoring along with their nets spread.

Much of this part of the trip was along Bogue Sound. It is a beautiful stretch of waterway through a channel along the western edge of the sound. This channel is bounded by sand dunes along the seaward edge.

Shoaling, however, is a constant problem along the waterway. By 8:30 am we had encountered a sailboat sitting helplessly on the wrong side of a green marker, just outside of the channel, waiting for the towboat to come and pull them loose.

Now you would know you’re having a bad day if you were driving this jeep, which we encountered along the waterway at Camp Lejeune, or if you had encountered this set of markers in the middle of the channel.



They tell you to make a zig-zag which you find hard to believe. Remember that sailboat from earlier in the day? Apparently he didn’t believe it, and was hung up, waiting impatiently I’m sure, for another tow. The sad thing is his boat blocked the markers for the boat behind him, and before you know it, two boats were hard aground.

I know what you’re thinking. No, it wasn’t us. We were able to sneak past and make our way to Mile Hammock Bay. This is a small man-made harbour that was created during World War ll to provide a place where marines could practice amphibious landings. It was peculiar to look one way upon a rusting relic of a troop ship secured at dock and the other way to a beautiful sunset in a secure anchorage shared with twelve other boats.