But reading the reviews, it was a place not to be missed. Since we were not in a hurry and the weather was forecasted to be good for the week, we gave it a try.
We had no trouble transiting over from Beaufort in the light winds and the anchorage turned out to be very protected from the southwest winds we had all week.
We ended up staying for 3 days. The winds were mild for the whole visit. We did have rain showers a couple times but no strong winds.
We made two trips to the beach each day at low tide, morning and late afternoon. The only challenge was dragging the dingy back to the water after the tide would go out during our walks and shelling.
Sue is in shell heaven. Laid out on deck are the shells she collected in Holden Beach, a good place for shells, during two days of shelling. The four plastic bags contain the shells she picked up this morning at Cape Lookout. The beach is loaded with shells.
Sue walks along the surf line looking for good shells. This is the southwest shoreline of the Cape Lookout spit. It had the most shells.
Mark walks Rivah along the high tide line looking for sharks teeth. In the 3 days, I found 2 probable worn shells that look just like sharks teeth, but I think are shells. No sharks teeth. There must be some on this beach, just hard to find.
Here's an Atlantic Welk just waiting for Sue to walk by and grab it.
There were normally 8-10 boats in the anchorage but, in the 3 days we were here we were the only ones walking this section of the beach. There were some campers up the beach a mile or so to the north and many people boat over from Beaufort to the southern tip of the island but no one where we were walking. So the nice welks were just sitting there.
We only found this one live welk the whole 3 days. He was trying to work his way back off the beach to the surf. Sue gave him an assist and dropped him offshore. He was a fairly old guy with lots of barnacles on his back.
Another live guy - I came across this large crab out and about. Most all the crabs burrow holes in the sand and hide out during the day, coming out at night to feed. Not sure why this guy was out in the daytime.
I did notice that he was extremely hard to see, blending right in with the sand and shells. You had to know he was there to notice him.
Note all the shells on what is now Sue's favorite beach.
Our last day we dinghied over to the lighthouse side of the bay. The Cape Lookout lighthouse has the diamond pattern with black diamonds orientated east and west and white diamonds north and south.
This is the northeast shore of the cape. Fairly protected from the southwest winds during our visit. I'm sure this shore is quite rough during a Northeaster.
Not very many shells on this beach. Turns out we anchored off the best beach for shells.
Some innovative photography - "let there be light".
Interestingly, we never saw the lighthouse working over our 3 day stay. But during our walk over on the ocean beach we were able to get it to light up for us.
After walking in the sand for 6 miles a day for 3 days, Rivah has had enough of shelling.
We've just about maxed out the available deck space to wash and dry the shells. Time to move on north.
We've been watching the weather to see if there is a good 2 day window to head north around Cape Hatteras with no luck. Its a challenge because the weather south of Hatteras is frequently significantly different from that north of the Cape because the cold fronts sit right on the Cape. If you leave Beaufort in ideal southerly winds, by the time you get to the Chesapeake the wind has shifted to the west or even north.
So we will head up the ICW and stop in Oriental, Belhaven and Elizabeth City along the way home. What a great time we had at the Cape Lookout anchorage. One of our best cruising experiences.
