Ahoy from Moorehead City, NC!
Yesterday we made the LONG trek from Wrightsville Beach to Moorehead City via the ICW. That's 85 statute miles, which is a long day on a normal day, but when you include all of the boating traffic, it was a VERY long day. We left at 6 AM and pulled into the Portside marine at about 6:45 PM.
Our decision to go inside was probably a very good one as there were severe storm warnings on TV when we arrived and the sky looked very ominous. The TV radar loop showed a series of strong thunderstorms moving off the coast during the day. I suspect that we would have missed them, but one never knows. The wind was out of 110 degrees and our course would have been 75 degrees, so there's no way that we would have been able to sail. The distance via the ICW is actually shorter than the distance via in inlets when you include the distance in and out of the inlets, so it's really a toss-up. However, I would have loved to have just placed the boat on auto-pilot and to not have to constantly worry about the yahoos in their power boats.
The trek from Wrightsville Beach to Moorehead City was unremarkable. There are definitely some people with big bucks who live N of Wrightsville beach as there are wonderful houses along there. Our biggest issue was bridges. We had 4 to clear yesterday and the timing was difficult. Because we were at the Wrightsville Beach bridge before 7 AM, we were able to get it to open on demand which allowed us to just barely make the 7 AM opening of the Figure 8 bridge. Believe me, I had the petal to the metal as the Figure 8 bridge was 8 miles away and we had an opposing current.
The most frustrating thing is when you've got the current with you and you're going to arrive at a bridge too soon, so you have to throttle back and coast along so that you arrive at the opening time. What a waste of time. We had a sports fishing boat fly past us throwing up a big wake. He arrived at the bridge 40 minutes ahead of time, didn't know what VHF channel to use to call the bridge, didn't know the name of the bridge, and then started throwing insults at the bridge tender! Oh yeah, that's a good way to insure that the bridge will open on time!
Today we're headed further up the ICW as we want to do the Dismal Swamp route in a few days. From here on in there will be little traffic, few bridges and no current as we'll be out of the tidal zone.
-- Geoff & Sue
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