May 16, Tuesday, Day 36, ICW MM 205 – Morehead VA
We left our lovely anchorage before 8am yesterday without checking ahead for any low bridges. Not too far up the intracostal river was the Surf City swinging bridge that opens on the hour, and we noticed it from about 30 minutes out. So Dirk reduced speed to about 5 mph and we crept up to it and still had to idle a while before it opened. Lesson – maybe check on bridges the night before? 🙂
All was going well until the next swinging bridge a few hours later- we were only 10 minutes before opening and thought the sailboats on the other side were waiting to go south. Nope – we were all at Camp LeJeune where they were having target practice with big guns, and they shut down the ICW! No one could travel on it until they took a break at noon! We stopped the engines and let down the anchor and waited. I didn’t take any pictures near there – afraid to be accused of something. But here is a photo from their web site of a artillary range… which is the thunder we were hearing as we waited.
We were only there 45 minutes – the others had been there almost 2 hours – and we were on our way again. Dirk then had the challenge of slowly and politely passing all 6 sailboats that were ahead of us. Tricky when they are doing 6-7 mph and we are doing around 8 mph.
Many more river neighbor hoods or estates. Some interesting ones. Our most bizarre was the blue and pink estate with it’s own matching lighthouse and boat.
And a few scenes of the river as we headed to Morehead VA, next to Beaufort, VA. Not my best choice of marinas this time – the reviews made it sound great but tugs were parked next door running engines all the time and there were boat wakes from the river rocking our boat most of the night. But really nice people running it! We are leaving early.
Wandering Star 