Monday May 6: Dudley's Marina in Swansboro, NC

Go? Don't go. Go? Yes. No. Maybe.

Finally this morning with the bridge opening in five minutes we decided to GO. Under the bridge and after 10 minutes we were in the lead of the pack! 5 sailboats, 1 trawler, 1 power boat and 1 catamaran.

Eventually we all settled into our spots: the powerboat first, the catamaran second, the trawlers third and the sailboats bringing up the rear.  It's the cruising speed that matters.


It was a day of timing bridges and watching the rains come and go. We actually thought we would miss most of the worst of the rains. I think it was wishful thinking! The storms would kind of come and go from off shore in a circular fashion.

Some wearing itself out before reaching shore (and us) and others not.

One was a REAL downpour that opened our eyes to the fact that our flybridge canvas clearly needed to be waterproofed again!

Fortunately Steve came up to the flybridge using an umbrella to try to stay dry coming up. Little did he know that I was going to confiscate it in order to stay dry under the canvas! Water was coming in everywhere through the canvas. The chart was soaked as was anything laying around inside what we though was a dry area. Guess that goes on the list of thing to do :-)

The timing of the bridges could not have been more perfect. First the one 5 minutes from the dock and the next one 3 hours away. We were hampered by currents again us big time (like 2 mph) so we had to compensate by exceeding our normal cruising speed.

The result was we made the 12 noon bridge by about 2 minutes! This is just too much stress. If we had missed the bridge, it did not open again until an hour later at 1 pm. The picture above are the sailboats behind us that just didn't quite have the speed to make it - sadly they have almost an hour to wait. Sometimes it sucks to be a sailboat .......

The friendly giant giraffe is still living at the same home as before! We enjoy seeing him every time we make this trip :-)


Then it was on to Camp Lejuene. The marines were out in full force with their what appeared to be 'duck boats' although we don't really know what they were. As you can see there was a long string of them. Fortunately we were very near the front when we joined them at an intersection in the waterway. They waved us forward - thank heavens - they are MUCH slower than we are! Really cool though!! There must have been about 30 of them.

And as always, there is the usual assortment of old equipment lining the ICW through the Camp Lejeune area. There are sometime live round (like gunfire) along here and then the Marines just close the waterway.

As you can see in the background we are just traveling along the Atlantic with narrow land masses between the ocean and the ICW.

After an overall rainy cloudy day, we arrived in Swansboro with a wonderful blue sky. Steve is finishing tying up the boat.

We saved an hour at the second bridge by not having to wait for the next opening and 30 minutes by just also making the 3rd bridge. So in and tied to the dock by 4 pm instead of arriving at 5:30 pm.

What a difference that made!

And a great sunset to boot. Can't ask for anything more ....