Safely Anchored

Camp LeJeune, June 7th

Today Kinvara left the dock in Southport at 6:30AM. Our route for today was a 67 mile journey to Mile Hammock Bay. This is an area dredged by the US Marines to use as an amphibious practice staging area. We are joined by 6 other boats anchored around us tonight.  So far since arriving at 6PM we have seen 2 types of helicopters flying around and heard lots of heavy gunfire. Tomorrow we pass through an uninhabited area through Camp LeJeune, a US Marine military base. Sometimes they shut down the ICW for a few hours for "target" practice.

The trip today was uneventful. Weather was sunny and 80'...beautiful This was the first day in a week that we did not have rain.  Sometimes we were against the tide and other times we ran with the current. When we got to the route leading us off the Cape Fear River there was a large barge being pushed by a coast guard cutter. They volunteered to pass us  port to port and pulled off to the red side of the narrow channel. We turned off the river into the green side of the channel and briefly pushed through a soft bottom. It was a nervous moment as the barge passed very close because the channel was so narrow! We came through unscathed and kept on moving. The day was long because we had 3 bridges to pass through. Unfortunately they do not synchronize and we had to slow down our travel in order to arrive on time. Our last bridge of the day had us waiting for a half hour circling around. We cheered after passing through because it signals the end of lift bridge for a while. We think there are only 2 more before we get to Norfolk, VA. 

Our last half hour of travel to the anchorage brought us through the New River Inlet intersection which is flagged in our guides for shoaling. After calling Boat US and not getting much information Peter hailed a trawler ahead of us to radio back the depths he had. We were passing through right at low tide...and only saw 2' under the keel briefly. Whew! It was a relief to get through that. Our journey from here on will depend more on weather than tides. We are pretty much beyond worrying about shoaling inlets.  We haven't done this trip since 2009 coming south so much of it seems new to us. We are hoping to be in Annapolis by the end of next week if the weather stays good.