One Front Plus Two Fronts Equals Two Fronts After Another

We left Belhaven under sail, and with the exception of motoring through a 12 mile canal, we were able to sail all the way to South River where we would hole up for the next onslaught of bad weather. Broad Creek would have been more convenient, but since it lies so close to the very busy ICW, we thought it might be too crowded for our liking.

After 5 very windy days and nights in South River, we were presented with a small window to make an outside run to Wrightsville Beach. We took advantage of a chilly but beautiful day to make a run to Cape Lookout Bight where we would stage for an early morning departure to Wrightsville Beach the following day.

Unlike our previous visits to the crowded bight, we were the only boat in the anchorage. Our 3:40 departure the following morning, brought terrific sailing for the first 3 hours, then the wind gave way to trawler weather. Fortunately, the forecast of 30 degree morning temps did not appear, and it was a spectacular day even though we had to play trawler for most of it.

As we neared the Masonboro Inlet, we had a strong urge to keep on going. The sea was comfortable and the weather beautiful, but a gale was forecast so we continued through the inlet and on to the refuge of Wrightsville Beach.

As forecast, the gale did arrive and brought with it some excitement, or stress, or angst depending on your disposition. This is a very popular anchorage, which translates into very crowded--especially in the midst of the southerly migration of 150% of all Canadians, and 125% of all Northeasterners. That's NFL math. It really does add up.

Thankfully, for the couple of days of big wind, most of the boaters anchored in a responsible manner, and a surprising number paid attention to the conditions. The few that dragged were on top of the situation pronto. Just before dusk, an unmanned (but not derelict) race boat began dragging through the anchorage. It started out near the bridge and dragged a mile or so until it ended up on an empty dock. One trawler had to weigh anchor and move to avoid being hit, and a catamaran ran one engine to swing over a bit to avoid a collision, but that was the extent of that.

A half hour later an unmanned McGreggor 26 took the same path through the anchorage until it's anchor caught the anchor rode of a trawler that was in his path. The rest of the night was spent on anchor watch until 4 or 5 am when the winds subsided to the mid 20s.


A calm Wrightsville anchorage after the winds laid down and many boats had cleared out.

We waited a couple of more days for the seas to subside (the Coast Guard reported some 28 footers) before making our way to St. Simons Georgia. To avoid a long detour around the Frying Pan Shoals, we took the ICW to Snows Cut, then sped down the Cape Fear River where we passed Southport before entering the Atlantic Ocean. At one point we were registering 10.4 knots with the aid of the ebb on Cape Fear River.


ICW on the way to Snows Cut. 

Once again, we were blessed with nippy, but beautiful weather with a nearly full and then full moon lighting our way for the 2 nights "outside". It was rolly with wind waves from the northeast being somewhat affected by the southeast swell from the tropical storm 700 or so miles to the southeast. It was basically a dead run, so we were yawing quite a bit. With the genoa poled out to windward, and the main secured to leeward, we had an exciting wing and wing sail until the late afternoon. At that point the waves were slamming our stern around causing the wind to periodically show up on the wrong side of the sails. Not good. So we took the pole down, dowsed the main and ran with the genoa. At some point the waves persisted in causing the genny to collapse so we reverted to motoring with a reefed staysail. We had tried gybing back and forth for a while, but on the one tack the beam seas were no bueno for our healtho. And we don't have a new genoa in our budget. After a period of motoring, conditions improved and we were able to sail the majority of the way.


Sunset on day one.

Our GPS/Chartplotter crashed at 2 pm yesterday, so I had to revert back to the old fashion way of navigating--I rebooted the chartplotter. I don't know if it was caused by the failed FEMA test or not. But instead of conducting a test, FEMA could save a lot of hassle if they would just get China to show them how our system works.

It's hard to capture a swell in a picture unless you have another sailboat posing in the adjoining trough--which we didn't.

We timed our Wrightsville Beach departure to catch a fair current down the Cape Fear River. The plan was to reenter at St Simons, Fernandina / St Marys, or perhaps St Augustine depending on our speed. It turned out we made very good time, but the word was out that Fernandina was very crowded, and I couldn't convince the Weather Babe to use the St. Augustine Inlet, so...we did my least favorite thing. We slowed down on purpose. Like I said before, our fast is slow, so to slow down from slow makes me crazy. We like St. Simons anyway. An hour after sunrise we were anchored in the Frederica River. Four hours later we had finished 6 loads of laudry, showered and made it back to the mothership before the winds and chop picked up.

We will sit out the next front which has already appeared, before moving on.