Finishing the Loop #4 - North Carolina

Monday 29^th – Wilmington, NC

Woke at daybreak, being told by the skipper that we were entering the Cape Fear River and were 10 miles or so from Wilmington. This is the largest port in NC and the Cape Fear river is the only one that flows directly into the sea. The city downtown area is dominated by the campus of the Cape Fear Community College (CFCC), and there is a market area within walking distance of the marina – although we found a free trolley to take us on a tour round the area and drop us back to the boat. I did go take a peek at Finkelstein’s Music and Jewelry store, but they only sold new, top brand, guitars (Martins and Fenders etc) and had nothing under $150 –so I didn’t buy one this time. Wilmington is also the home of the USS “North Carolina”, a WWII battleship that is moored just over the river. There was a tour of it by the cruise line, but having already seen USS’s Alabama (Mobile) and Missouri (Hawaii) plus the Aircraft carriers Intrepid (New York) and Yorktown (Charleston), I was about battleshipped out.

We departed at midnight – again heading out to open sea, but I didn’t stay up to observe.

Tuesday 30^th – Beaufort NC

Woke at 6am entering the approaches to Winyah Bay after a "plate of porridge" (very calm) crossing of Onslow Bay, in the Atlantic

As we entered the Beaufort river, we could see the aftermath of Hurricane Florence in September last year. There had been a 13ft tidal surge which had knocked about many of the marinas in the area (and there are a lot of them) as well as flooding houses and towns, as we were to see later in the day.

Beaufort marina is a small marina but plenty of posh boats, including a few Loopers

On arrival, we made contact with Don Shirley, my Nth Carolina electrician buddy, and he picked us up to do a tour of the area. First we visited his Silverton 453, which is at a marina on the Neuse River at Bridgeton, which was also hit by Florence, but their pier poles are15ft above HW, so there were few issues. However many other marinas weren’t so lucky and there were plenty of broken boats lying around nearby In fact he told us that his house at Havelock, 44NM up the Neuse River from the sea, had 12ft of his front lawn  washed away.

It is full tide - see how high the poles are!

We travelled over the river to New Bern, founded by Swiss 300-odd years ago and sister city to Berne in Switzerland. Home to Tryon Palace, the dwelling built for the first Governor on Sth Carolina

We were dropped back to Beaufort marina after dinner in a quaint local restaurant

Tuesday  1^st May – Coinjock NC

Another early departure at 4.00am and we were to spend all day on the ICW, so I got up at 5am to watch the world (or ICW, anyway) go by. At daybreak we were through the Adams canal,

and into the Neuse river where we saw our first tow on this part of the ICW

 We took another canal to reach the Pamlico sound & river  (where Don Shirley’s house is – but further upstream) and then the Pungo river & Pungo -Alligator canal. In this canal, we met our second tow who was sporting a large blue flag, which read “TRUMP – making America Great Again” (so someone supports him)

It was a great day – sunny and light winds – so lunch was a BBQ on the top deck. This was followed by “Bloody Mary Bingo”, which is  self explanatory but was dominated by one table of ladies, who referred to themselves as the “Bingo Babes” and picked up all the minor prizes. However, there was a last minute dash to the line by yours truly to pick up the final major prize and thus redeeming the men’s status aboard. We continued on across the Albermarle Sound and into the North River to the canal that leads to the Currituck Sound. About halfway along that, we stopped at Coinjock which is a small town with nothing much more than a marina. However the marina was full, including some large and posh boats and a number of Loopers, and the restaurant has a reputation for excellent Prime Rib – so it was well patronized, even at 9pm when we arrived. A long day of 16 hours and 120 miles of ICW!

Thursday 2^nd May – Just outside Nth Carolina)

We departed Coinjock at 5am and by 7am we were in the Currituck Sound, heading for Norfolk, Virginia where the is a tour of the Naval Base (largest in the world) and for which I am booked. We entered the North River, which runs to the Albermarle and Chesapeake canal and on to Norfolk at around 7am.

Shortly after we passed a couple of areas of sunken boats and were heading for the North River swing bridge, when we began to slow down. The captain informed us that the bridge had a fault that would not let it open far enough for us to transit (although smaller vessels could) so we would have to stand by until they could fix it. The alternative route is through the Dismal swamp canal, about a 60 mile detour, but it is too shallow for us to navigate. The next alternative is to go back to Cape Hatteras and go out to sea and back up the caost to the Chesapeake, and Norfolk. This is a round trip of over 200NM – we are presently about 20 miles from Norfolk as the crow flies! So as I am writing this (since I won’t be touring the Naval Base today and don’t have much else to do) we are cruising up and down a 4 mile stretch of the North river just over the border into Virginia – However if we have to detour, we will end up back in Nth Carolina for quite a ways.

But the smaller boats keep going by…. They can squeeze through the broken bridge. 

Well, we've just finished lunch and the 4th lap of this section of the ICW. The tour of the Naval Base has been cancelled and we've been set up for lectures and movies and opened the bar for the rest of the afternoon while they fix the bridge (hopefully). If they can't...plan B might be an interesting change to our itinerary.

Still, worse things happen at sea!