Day 177: Haven’t Anchored for A While

Southport, NC to Wrightsville Beach, NC (anchored)

July 11, 2022

Cloudy, gray weather is both a benefit and a challenge. Clouds help keep the temperatures from getting too high, which is a benefit when we are traveling in the open air of our cockpit. The challenge is how it feels like it sucks up all of our energy.

Experiencing a familar place from a different perspective is interesting. In past years, we’ve traveled by ferry from Southport to Fort Fisher and to Wilmington and have watched cargo ships navigate the Cape Fear River as we ate at the Provision Company. This year we had a Lailia-level view.

Out of the mouth of the Cape Fear River we were back in the narrow ICW ditch. As we got closer to the Wrightsville Beach area, we saw more people and boats. Unfortunately, we also saw several sailboats who had run aground probably due to past severe storms and seemed abandoned.

We were unsuccessful with finding a slip in a marina tonight. Fortunately, there are some spots off the ICW for us to anchor. While boats can anchor anywhere out of the main passage of the ICW, there’s not always enough depth (or width) for this to be practical. We also have to consider how well the bottom will hold our anchor and what the currents are like in any place. It’s really helpful to find a known anchorage (on our app or in our guide).

This is a nice, wide anchorage that gets great ocean breezes. There is a public dinghy dock we can use if we get motivated to go ashore.

Those lovely ocean breezes died down as the evening fell so we decided to run the generator so we could have air conditioning. Unfortunately, we didn’t think about running the generator earlier in the evening to get our boat batteries to the float level, a level that requires nominal amperage to stay steady. Our inverter charger (Xantrex)prioritizes the battery level when there is an external alternating current such as when we plug into shore power or the generator. Since our Honda generator has a 2000 watt limit it is unable to both charge the batteries and run the air conditioner at the same time. If the batteries are already charged up, then it can maintain the batteries at the float level and run the air conditioner at the same time. This is a very long explanation of why we had to forego the a/c for the night. Our little fan is circulating the air and it’s not terribly hot – but it’s not awesomely cool, either.

We need to get up early tomorrow so we can get through two restricted bridges that only open hourly. We’ve got about 50 miles to go to get to Swansboro and don’t want to deal with too many delays. We also are hoping that there is no firing range practice at Camp Lejeune: that can close the ICW for three or more hours.