The plan was to depart around 0730 Monday morning to transit to Holden Beach and arrive mid-afternoon and stroll along the beach. But, this was our Monday morning visibility.
There are a great many things to run into on the ICW if you can't see, even with radar, so we are waiting for the fog to clear. The forecast calls for clearing at 0900, which will still give us time to get to Holden Beach before dark.
By 0900 conditions were marginal but good enough to go traveling slowly and using the radar and fog horn. We set off from our anchorage spot towards the ICW.
By the time we transited from our anchorage spot to the ICW, the fog had almost completely cleared by 0930. We did encounter two center console power boats speeding down the waterway at 25mph or so in the fog - very dangerous, but fortunately far enough away from us.
By 1030 we were at Carolina Beach turning into Snow's Cut, a narrow, winding, tricky passage over to the Cape Fear River. Murphy's Law, the most dangerous section today was fogged in.
Initially the visibility was good enough to allow us to make all the twists and turns through the channel around the red and green buoys. But, it just kept getting thicker and thicker. As we exited Snow's Cut we spotted a sailboat anchored right at the western entrance to the cut, safely off to our port side but a very dangerous place to stop (I did detect them on our radar as well, so knew to be looking out). I'm not sure what they were thinking. As we passed by they were retrieving their anchor and they followed behind us.
We passed another sailboat that was heading northbound toward Snow's Cut and he told us it was clear in the Cape Fear River. Maybe if you were heading north with the sun behind you it was clear, but for us heading south into the sun we could see very little. We have our radar and we have an AIS (Automatic Identification System) that shows you where all the commercial ships are (and shows them were we are) so it was relatively safe proceeding down the river.
Initially we could pick up the buoys visually at 500-700ft. As time went by the visibility improved until it was perfectly clear at Southport.
As we rounded Southport and proceeded back into the ICW out of the Cape Fear River, the visibility cleared up. We could see a fog bank sitting just offshore south of Southport.
The ICW transit was perfectly clear for the next 2 hours until we came to the next dangerous passage point at Lockwood's Folly. This is another tricky place where you have to zigzag around the shoals on either side of the ICW. Another Murphy's Law, the one tricky point along this section of the ICW is the one fogged in. (The fog forms where the cold air is blowing over the warm inlet waters.)
Besides radar, we have a chartplotter with GPS that shows you exactly where you are and, most recently, now shows you where the deep water is according to the latest Army Corps of Engineers surveys (which can be several months old, but are generally accurate). You can follow the survey data and maneuver along the deeper water channel displayed, rather than the navigation buoys which can be out of position. We passed through without any problems, just some white knuckles.
After Lockwood's Folly it was a quick trip to the Holden Beach Town Dock, easy check in, and we walked right over to the beach for Sue to check out the shells. The skies were perfectly clear all afternoon.
That evening the fog moved back into Holden Beach, but was gone by the next morning.
Tuesday morning and Sue is up walking Rivah along the beach checking out the shells. Haven't been any strong storms lately so not many unusual shells on the shore. Mostly clams and scallops.
No fog today.
Sue walked way down the beach to the Lockwood's Folly inlet. At the island's end is a mailbox you can leave messages for other beachcombers and boaters.
One reason we stop at Holden Beach in addition to plugging into shore power to give us heat, is the free laundry facility. Unfortunately, the dryer was not working properly. Sue figured out if you held the start button down manually, the dryer would run. If you let off the button, it stopped. So she and I took turns holding the button down for the next couple hours trying to get our bedding flannel sheets dried. But it was ultimately not successful as there was also a problem with the heating element so only lukewarm air was being circulated. We never got the sheets fully dried.
Here we are with our laundry hanging to dry. At least the heat is on in the boat and the clothes should be dry by morning.
So it was a partially successful stop at Holden Beach. We are off to Myrtle Beach area tomorrow and have to pass through 3 opening bridges that will slow us down, the worst being Barefoot Landing that does not open between 1100 and 1400. So we will be anchoring somewhere in the Waccamaw River as far south as we can get after passing through the 1400 opening. At least the weather has finally warmed up to the 40s at night and our electric blanket is sort of working off our new batteries.
