TripSailor.com® Sailing Blogs

5-08-08

We had a pretty frustrating morning after leaving Harbor Village Marina.  This is a private marina, and Cool Breeze and String of Pearls were the only transients.  They do not monitor Channel 16 on the VHF radio, so you have to call 20 minutes in advance to make sure they are there.  They don’t work on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, so there was no one there to help us leave the dock, but it proved to be no problem.  We left about 9:30 allowing 1 ½ hours to get to the first swing bridge, which proved to be too much time, so when we reached the bridge 35 minutes ahead of schedule; we anchored.  Bill read his book and I did my exercises.  At 10:55 we pulled anchor and awaited the opening.  The bridge tender came on Channel 13 at 10:59 and said, "We won’t open at 11:00 as we have to hold the bridge open for an EMS vehicle."  Now of course we are sympathetic to someone in Surf City who is having a heart attack or similar emergency.  The ambulance roared across the bridge.  We thought maybe the tender would then open the bridge.  Not so.  After being questioned, he said he had to hold it open until the ambulance returned.  We waited and waited.  Several other boats joined our original three as the minutes ticked away.  Finally, at 11:40, the bridge opened.  We never saw the ambulance return, so hopefully the person in distress was o.k., but it was a delay of an hour and 20 minutes for us.

Nevertheless, we reached our anchorage by 2:00.  We were just preceded into the anchorage by a trawler who had already anchored by the time we got there.  This anchorage is next to Camp Lejeune, a Marine training base, but they are alright with private boats anchoring in the harbor.  We were the second boat to anchor, but before you knew it, the harbor was filling up.  Presently, we have 18 boats anchored-obviously there aren’t too many anchorages in this neck of the woods of NC.  This has been a most entertaining anchorage-lots going on.  First, a helicopter buzzed our boat.  Really thrilling as it powered right over our mast several times.  We could also hear the roar of jets in the distance, but we never saw a plane.  Then we saw a couple of platoons of Marines in inflatables heading out into the harbor.  One boat was paddling and the other had a motor.  We watched them swamp one boat several times, with the guys (or girls?) in the water, in fatigues.  The powered inflatable circled around and then began to throw off soldiers.  This repeated itself four or five times.  Then we saw a landing craft come in the channel.  It headed for the ramp where it disgorged a pick-up truck and two four-wheelers before proceeding to the dock.  The inflatables came in for a brief respite, where the guys ran ahead of the pick-up, presumably going for a meal, before returning at 7:00 p.m. for another go at inflatable derby. 

We dined on Dinty Moore Beef Stew and biscuits tonight and are settled in to spend what we hope is a peaceful night with no shelling or helicopters buzzing overhead.  Then it’s on tomorrow to Beaufort.

Mike, you’ll be happy to know that we weren’t shelled by the Marines, but I did have dreams of the Marines firing sea buoys at us.  Actually, it was a pretty entertaining dream!  We left the anchorage about 8:15 and were the next to the last of the 18 boats that had been anchored there to leave.  We made it to the bridge in plenty of time to wait for 15 minutes, but the saving grace was that it is our last draw bridge for almost a hundred miles.  We were happy to hear the captain of the marine barge coming up behind us call the bridge and say he would hang back until the traffic cleared.  However, after passing through the bridge we were a little nervous as he seemed to be steaming full ahead toward us.  I guess he noticed Bill turning around and watching him, so he called and said that he was about to take a side turn-not to worry.  We have certainly had a show from the Marine Corp in the last two days.

We had a pretty fast trip down to Beaufort. Bogue Sound is very long and wide, but very shallow except in the channel.  Every sea inlet gives us shallow water, even in the channel, but we were able to use the head sail a good portion of the way.  Our speed over ground topped out at over 8 knots.  Therefore, we made the 40+ mile trip in about 6 hours-a long day for us, but we had thought we’d reach Beaufort by 5:00, not 2:30. We were threatened with rain almost the whole way, but managed to stay ahead of the storms.  We are now safely at the dock, known as the “basin.”  Bill did a great job getting Cool Breeze around a huge boat docked on the outside of the first dock in the basin and in to the end slip.  However, our exit may not be quite so smooth.  One of the dock hands catching our lines said we’d have fun leaving.  I asked him what his idea of “fun” was, and he just laughed-not a good sign. 

I guess our dock is about as far from the restrooms and showers as one can get in a 98-slip marina, but it’s good exercise, so I won’t complain.  The marina here has Wi-Fi, and 4 loaner cars, so we’ll head to the grocery store tomorrow and possibly to West Marine.  Also, it seems that there is a good Maritime Museum and a wooden boat works where you can watch students work on building wooden boats.  Now I ask you, will Bill be in his element?  There are plenty of shops for me to while away the time while Bill watches boat makers. 

After a close watch of the weather, it looks as though Saturday is the best day to head out to cross the Neuse River.  Winds should be fairly mild (10-15), as compared to Sunday and Monday when crossing such open water with 20-30 knots would be a very uncomfortable day.  Hopefully, my next post will be from Oriental-supposedly the sailing capital of the world.

By the way, TripSailor has remedied the map problem, so we’ve finally been able to move our marker from the Boat Shed and traverse a great distance.  Seems we’ve hooked up with a great and responsive web site.