Craunological II -- 2024 Cruise

We had a lovely run today through various wilderness areas that cover the peninsula between the Pamlico and Albermarle Rivers. The Intracoastal runs in a 21-mile canal connecting the Pungo and Alligator Rivers with much of the way going through state or federal wildlife refuges and nature preserves. There was very little boat traffic and few signs of civilization for many miles. There are just two bridges in this stretch, both of which are high level. It's hard to convey this landscape with cellphone photos, but here's our attempt. It started to rain as we left  the canal and entered the Alligator River so we left the flybridge and rode in the cabin the rest of the day. The rain brought welcome relief from the heat and humidity. The ride out the Alligator River and then across Albemarle Sound was very choppy, just like we experienced two years ago. They are both very shallow and with a northeast wind the waves build and funnel.  The marina at Coinjock was very pleasant and the...

We weighed anchor and were underway before nine this morning, figuring we would have a long day to get to our targeted destination of Belhaven (110 miles away). We stayed there two years ago at a marina connected with an old mansion and liked it very much -- especially the free golf carts and washers and dryers. We called and the marina is still in business, with the same great amenities but with new owners who have added an on-site restaurant that gets good reviews. So we booked our reservation and got underway.  We ran into a challenge within our first hour -- the old Onslow Beach swing bridge within Camp Lejeune. The bridge is owned and operated by the Marine Corps but only opens on the hour and half-hour and is notoriously slow and unreliable. We didn't want to wait given the long day ahead of us and we made the 12-foot clearance by lowering the mast and Bimini top and ducking. We would have bumped our heads if we sat up straight.  We would have cut it very close on fuel i...

We were a bit late getting underway today, as we slept in after a long travel day, washed down the outside of the boat (amazing how dirty it gets sitting in an urban atmosphere) and got fuel. When we finally got underway just after eleven we had lots of fun boats to see heading down the Cape Fear River, starting with this 2018 Spanish reconstruction of the Nao Trinidad , Magellan's flagship for his 1519-22 voyage of circumnavigation. She was captured by the Portuguese in the Malukus and never made it back to Spain. Only one of Magellan's five ships returned, and he didn't make it either.  The Port of Wilmington was busy, with four ships docked. Meadway Shipping's Ability is a bulk carrier built in Japan in 2021. MSC Texas is one of over 800 cargo ships operated by Mediterranean Shipping Company, which is "the world's largest container shipping company both by fleet size and cargo capacity, controlling about 20% of the global container ship fleet" (quotin...

We had a four-and-a-half-hour run today to Wilmington, NC, which is about 14 miles north of the Intracoastal on the Cape Fear River. We didn't stop here two years ago because it was out of our way (and still is), but we needed to this year because it had the only marina we could find where we could dock for twelve days while we travel north to see the kids and grandkids. It turned out that we really enjoyed Wilmington and our run up the Cape Fear River.  We decided to spend the night at the Embassy Suites downtown right next door to the marina because it was very hot (high of 95) and our dock at the marina didn't have power so we would have had to run the generator all night for air conditioning. (The boat doesn't need AC power while we're gone because we will only be running the refrigerator, which is DC and can get all the current it needs from the boat's solar panel.) This turned out to be a very good decision, as the Embassy Suites had a nice restaurant overlook...

Today was another day when we had a pretty good idea what was in store for us based on our ICW trip two years ago. A lovely first hour or so running the upper reaches of the Waccamaw River followed by three hours in long, straight dug canals -- lined with homes and docks along much of the way -- from Socastee all the way to Little River near the North Carolina border. There were lots of speed control zones and two swing bridges during this artificial stretch of waterway, so we covered 37 miles today in four hours versus 87 miles yesterday in six hours. Doing the math on average speed tells the difference. But it was still an interesting run. There are always fun things to see on the Intracoastal.  Here's a photo representative of the first eight miles on the Waccamaw River... and these photos are representative of what the next thirty miles were like. We got to pass a "river boat" along the way somewhere around Myrtle Beach. We talked with its Captain by radio. He was ver...

We set the alarm for 8 a.m. so we could get an early start for what we knew would be a long run to the Wacca Wache Marina in Murrell's Inlet, SC. This was our target because we knew from our travels on the ICW last year that it is a nice marina (with a great name) just ten minutes from the home of dear friends from our college days -- and we knew how long it took us to make this trip the last time. The marina is on the Waccamaw River almost twenty miles upstream from Georgetown, SC and 35 miles from the ocean via the Winyah Bay Inlet. Despite this distance, we had to contend with a tidal current running about one mph upstream while docking. The dockhand was experienced and guided us through it well. The Waccamaw is one of our favorite stretches on the Intracoastal, with a big national wildlife refuge full of cypress trees in its northern reaches and big grassy stretches full of abandoned rice plantations at its lower end. The rice plantations, which lined many of the major rivers i...

We only had a two-hour run to Charleston today. This lovely map, which was on the floor of the Charleston visitor center, shows our route. Our anchorage was just east of the bay along the left edge of the map. We worked our way north along the Wadmalaw River, then east on the Stono River, and finally through a narrow creek and dug channel to the Ashley River, which runs down the west side of Charleston. (The next day we ran out Charleston Harbor to the long, straight, dug channel that parallels the coast along the Isle of Palms.)  Our marina was on the Ashley River close to downtown. We had some interesting neighbors. They had very nice facilities but they were a long hike from the boat. Janet did some research and found us a nice 90-minute bus tour (air conditioned) and a reservation at a very hip southern-style restaurant. The tour guide did an excellent job. We'll just share this one photo of one of the grand old homes along the Battery.  After our bus tour we walked around...

In the spirit of earlier comments about trying to take it a little easier on this trip, we decided a couple days ago to give up on getting to Norfolk by June 14 and instead changed our target to the vicinity of Wilmington, NC (probably Wrightsville Beach). We can get nonstop flights from Wilmington to Boston and back from NYC and it will take 280 to 300 miles fewer miles than going all the way to Norfolk. We can make up those miles when we start cruising again on June 25 after our time in Boston and NYC with the family. All this is by way of background for explaining today's and tomorrow's trips, which will both be relatively short runs intended to give us another night at anchor and some tourist time in Charleston.  Our anchorage was in Church Creek along the northern edge of Wadmalaw Island about 15 miles east of downtown Charleston. We had a rainstorm come through in the early evening, which is fun because rain makes the boat seem that much cozier. We had sporadic TV recepti...