12-15 Jan - Beaufort, Hammock Bay and Masonboro, NC

 

   We stayed 3 days and 4 nights at Mayo Seafood waiting out the passage of the major winter storm with multiple embedded tornados in the south. 

   After the storm front had passed and another day waiting for the strong westerly winds to die down we headed out and up the Neuse River for several hours before turning south into Adams Creek.

   The sun was out and the winds were light. We were able to sail for a couple hours before we had to turn and head up into the wind up the Neuse.

   We spent a quiet night anchored off Sugar Loaf Island off Morehead City in the Beaufort, NC area. It was a bit cool jumping into bed, about 50 degrees. The nighttime temp was about 45 but once you have the bed warmed up it is toasty under all the blankets. The next morning when we raised the anchor we had a hitchhiker clinging to our anchor. 

   The next morning we were off for Hammock bay, our anchorage halfway down to Wrightsville. There is one shallow spot in Bogue Sound along the way and as we approached it we saw this tug, basically stopped, right at the shallow water spot. There is not room to go around him so we had to wait for him to clear the area. 

   It took him awhile to feel his way through the shallow water. We asked him what water depth he was seeing and he told us he has a 8ft keel and was plowing through the sand. We only need 5ft so once he cleared we were able to proceed through without any problems.

   Passing through Swansboro. Sue loves this tiny house on the island off Swansboro. You can only access by boat. Not sure what they do, if anything, for electricity. 

   There's one opening bridge to pass through today, the Onslow Beach bridge. They are putting a new bascule bridge in to replace the old and slow swing bridge. Sometimes the barges are blocking the waterway but we didn't have any problem getting through.

   We arrived at the Hammock Bay anchorage in the mid-afternoon. No other boats in sight. That's good as there are strong winds coming tonight and we will have to put out 150+ft of anchor chain. In the Spring, this anchorage is always crowded and that much anchor chain and resulting swing room could be a problem. 

   The wind did blow at 20-25kts all night and most of the next day, so we stayed put. Fortunately the temperatures were not bad with 60s in our enclosed cockpit and 40 at night. We decided not to bother getting the generator set up to heat our blanket. We do have a small 12volt electric blanket that Sue heated up and put in the bed and quickly jumped in before it cooled off. I guess next year we should mount a 12v outlet up in the bedroom.

    After waiting a day for the winds to die down, we were now off for Masonboro. It was good we waited for the winds to die down as there were two shallow and complicated ICW sections to pass through and I would not have wanted to go aground with 20+kts of wind blowing us further aground. We made it through without any problems but it was still a little white knuckled. 

   There are multiple dredges working along the ICW. Here we are passing a tug and barge towing the dredging pipes to another work area. 

   We arrived at Masonboro mid-afternoon and just about low tide. Our first attempt to get into the anchorage area ran us aground into a 3ft deep sandbar. We were able to back off, then go further down the ICW and come into the anchorage area from the other end successfully.

  There's always work to be done on a boat. As they say, cruising is performing boat maintenance in exotic places. We were sitting at anchor when we heard a thump and noted fresh water being drained into the bilge. As I suspected, the hot water hose going to the cockpit shower had come off the T junction. We had to unload the back room to get access to the hot water tank hoses. It's easiest for Sue to work back there in the cramped spaces. Sure enough, the hose was unconnected. It should have been a simple job to put it back on and tighten the clamp, but it turned out the reason it popped off was the clamp would not fit properly because the other clamps were in the way. I had to readjust the other two clamps, then I could push the 3rd clamp properly up tight against the T and properly secure it.  All fixed in a short time and we had running fresh water again. Now to restore all our provisions in the back room.

   It was a fairly mild night in the low 50s for our 4th night at anchor. Tomorrow we are off for Holden Beach and will pull into the town dock and plug in to electricity for the next couple nights.