Day 9, Year 10: ICW—Morehead City, NC to Camp Lejeune, NC
Date: Sunday, October 19, 2014
Weather: Sunny, but Cooler (60’s F daytime), Winds NNW 10-15
Latitude: 34 33.065 N
Longitude: 077 19.484 W
Total Miles Traveled: 622 Nautical Miles
Miles Traveled Today: 35.9 Nautical Miles
Location: Anchored in Mile Hammock Bay, Camp Lejeune, NC, ~Mile 244.5 on the ICW

Cool New England weather seems to have followed us here. The days have been so beautiful with not a cloud in the sky, but the temp today was only in the mid-60’s and tonight it will be in the low-50’s or possibly only the upper-40’s. During the day the sun warms up the cockpit so that we don’t need to wear jackets, but people on boats that pass us that don’t have a cockpit enclosure are all wearing heavy jackets. When we got to Norfolk we put the down comforter away, but tonight we will get it out again. Hopefully this cool weather is going to be short-lived.

Today was a short one as the next possible anchorage was just too far for one day. We pulled into Mile Hammock Bay here in the 246 square-mile Camp Lejeune Marine Base. As you come down the waterway, it seems to go on forever. I read that the base has 14 miles of beaches and on the land side of the waterway, those 14 miles are salt marsh with danger signs posted everywhere to let you know that there are unexploded ordinances—so no going ashore here. The Intracoastal from Morehead City to here (and a little beyond) is challenging in that there are shoaling areas that constantly move and are there now always marked. We bumped the bottom twice today, but Windbird just kept on going. Tomorrow morning there will be another stretch of tense navigation. This boat is as big as you would want to transit the Intracoastal. The fixed bridges are just barely tall enough to accommodate our mast height and our depth of 6’3” is just a little too deep for comfort. We made it just fine, but you really can’t just sit back and relax. We are contemplating going outside for the last leg on Tuesday from Southport to Little River Inlet. If we stay inside, there are two more places where we could go aground. So winds and seas permitting, we’ll go outside and sail.

A quick wildlife report . . . Yesterday we saw our first porpoises and today we saw the first pelicans. So despite the cool temps, the bird life indicates that we are really moving south. We talked on the phone to our friends Linda and Mike Stuart who are biking south and they are now in alligator territory. I prefer pelicans!

141019 Day 9 Passage to SC, USA–Intracoastal, Morehead City to Camp Lejeune