Saturday, December 17, 1994 - Hampstead, NC

current, but we finally made it. Drenching rain limited our visibility, but we managed to find our way down the ICW. I would have preferred to go outside, but there are gale warnings for tomorrow night, so Roy decided to stick to the inside channel.
The rain had stopped by 11, and the sun started to come out, but the sky remained overcast, with light drizzle off and on all afternoon. Visibility was adequate, however. "Adequate" meaning when we reached one channel marker, we could see the next one down the line, but just barely.
We had to go through the Camp Lejeune firing range, but this is Saturday, so no one took pot shots at us.
We zoomed along at 6 1/2 knots until we reached the Surf City swing bridge. Got there at 3:30 but found out they only open on the hour, so we lost half an hour hanging around waiting for the opening.
By then, we were seriously thinking about finding a place to spend the night. We had passed only one marina, and that was around noon. We were afraid we might have to anchor in the channel. Outside the channel, the water was only one or two feet deep, which was rather nerve-wracking. The technique I'd developed farther north continued to work well, fortunately, so we didn't go aground.
Passed a guy fishing from a dock. Asked him if he knew of a place nearby to tie up or anchor. He said we could tie up at the Exxon fuel dock a couple of miles down the road, so we kept going. Didn't find an Exxon dock, but we saw a BP dock and a sign that said "Harbour Village Marina." I contacted them on the VHF, and they said they had a vacant slip and the water was deep enough, so we went in. Boy, were we lucky! Got tied up just before dark, and this is a beautiful place. Everything looks brand new, but the dockmaster said it has been here 8 or 9 years. The restrooms and showers are beautiful! So we did get to take another shower this year after all.
They even let us use their courtesy vehicle -- an old beat-up pickup truck. We were going to drive into town to buy some groceries, but we had to make so many turns, we were afraid we'd get lost, so we turned around and went back to the marina.
We covered sixty miles today, in about nine hours! Really zooming.