Anchoring on the ICW in North Carolina
Monday morning while at Southport Marina we took a cab to WalMart for reprovisioning — out of things like milk, eggs, bread, head chemical. Cab ride was $10 each way!!!! — Highway Robbery!!!!! On the way back I was dropped off at the post office &, after picking up mail (thanks, Gene!!!), I walked back to QAR, visiting along the way with people who live in Southport. They’re very proud of their town & they have a right to be. It’s small (about 3,500 people), with darling Victorian houses & several very good seafood restaurants. I also met some “loopers” who live in Southport who would have loaned us their auto for shopping — a little knowledge too late, but we’ll remember them next year - nice people!
After leaving Southport, we traveled 22 miles & anchored at Wrightsville Beach — the first time with our new anchor, which held beautifully. I cooked shrimp scampi for dinner & we slept great at anchor. Hank was startled the next morning by swimmers passing close by & “visiting with him”. So when we weighed anchor, we were diligent about looking for swimmers, as well as other traffic.
Tuesday we motored up the ICW to the Marine Corps’ Camp Lejeune. We had planned on going to the marina there, but were discouraged from another looper (“Houlegan”) because of very shallow water — it was a good decision. So we decided to anchor at a bay within the base, but just off the ICW (named Mile Hammock Bay - which is listed as a good & popular anchorage in our cruising guides). We were the first boat there, but were joined later by another trawler & 5 sailboats. Later, the folks on the trawler, “La Grace”, told us of anchoring there several years ago with 28 other boats — can’t imagine where they all fit. It’s not that large a bay.
It was an exciting afternoon for us at this anchorage because the marines were there do maneuvers with their amphibious crafts & we got to watch it all around us. At the same time there was a helicopter & an V-22 Osprey doing fly-bys & humvees on the shore with people standing around “discussing it”. There were 8 amphibious crafts out in the bay & we think that it was their first time “at sea” —- so moving to see our men training hard (I imagine that all the guys in the crafts were under 21 years old). After motoring around smartly & practicing towing dead-in-the-water crafts they rolled out of the water & then all rolled back into the woods of Camp Lejeune.
This morning, we weighed anchor (another good holding — I’m loving anchoring out!) and are now in Moorhead City for the night at the Sanitary Seafood Market & Restaurant. Docking for $10, but no amenities. But, we going to dinner at the restaurant (about 10 steps off the boat) with the crew of “La Grace” who told us about this place as a good stop.
