Bring back Daylight Savings Time, November 6, 2012

Just like most of the country, we turned the clocks back on Sunday. On the East Coast, the sun now sets at 5:13 pm. It is now a struggle for us to stay up past 8:00 pm.

Lately we have been trying to alternate short travel days with long travel days, which seems to work out pretty well for us.

On November 3, we left a nice anchorage at Slade Creek, near Bellhaven, NC and made a long a long jump (60 miles) to Morehead City. The next day we had a short ride (20 miles) to Swanboro, followed by yesterday's trip (55 miles) to Wrightsville Beach. On the way here we had to clear three swing bridges that open only on the hour or the half hour. The timing is not set up for our average rate (7 miles per hour) of travel. We cleared the first bridge without slowing down, then pushed as hard as we could with the sails up and engine running to try to make the next bridge. We missed it by five minutes, then had to circle for 55 minutes waiting for the next opening. The next bridge was only 5 miles up the line, and we ended getting there early due to a favorable current and had to circle for 20 minutes. In the past two days there have been four boats caught up on shoals. We have to pay close attention. We can be in 15 feet of water with only three feet of water within a boat length on either side of us. That's life on the Intracoastal Waterway.




On the way we passed through Camp Lejeune. This is a Marine Corps Base Camp. The Marines will occasionally close the Waterway to travel because they are conducting "live fire exercises." We did not get stopped, but a short time later we began to hear loud explosions and wondered if somebody didn't get the word.




It continues to be a parade of boats heading down the ICW, looking for warmer temperatures.




We have been seeing a lot of dolphins in our travels, but it is hard to get good pictures of them because they refuse to stand still.




There are lots of interesting houses along the ICW.

Today we are anchored out in Wrightsville Beach, NC. It is cloudy, breezy and cold. It is only 46 degrees, so we have decided to not travel today. We took the dinghy to shore and are enjoying warmth and an Internet connection at a bagel shop. Next we are headed to the store for groceries and more fuel for our space heater.

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Location:Wrightsville Beach, NC