Saturday, 2. April

Carolina Beach State Park to Mile Hammock Bay



Astute readers might find that I've changed directions. Indeed - I had to change plans, as one often does when cruising. My original plan was to reach Florida, ideally Indiantown, on this trip. My next cruise would be in summer, and I wanted to go to the Bahamas. It's an unusual time to head to the Bahamas, but my timing is all messed up primarily because I'm cruising only part-time.
With my delays initially in 'Little Washington' (the name the locals have for Washington, NC), and the detour to Cape Lookout, and then my stayin in Masonboro and the State park much more than imagined, my progress was so slow that I couldn't even be sure to reach Georgia this trip. That would then mean that I'd be cruising Georgia and Florida in the heat of summer.
With the predicted wind and current for today going NE, I made a decision to reverse course and plan an entirely different trip for the summer - the Chesapeake. I always felt it was a shame when I had to bypass this last fall (although I'm glad I experienced the trip down the coast, including the grounding). So I'm heading back to Cape Lookout, my favorite anchorage so far, and then back through the sounds to little Washington, and store Caprice there one more time. It's actually a good base for a boat, I think.

I had planned to stop at an anchorage just south of Figure Eight Bridge. The description in Active Captain sounded nice and I found it indeed easy to reach, and enough depth. Notice by the way how much of this area looks - the beach is developed with many cottages and homes, and then a bank of wilderness, and in there the ICW.



Unfortunately the wind was rather strong today, and predicted to become even stronger overnight. This anchorage also has a lot of current from the tides, so I felt it was going to be too wild overnight, and decided to keep going. I was able to motorsail almost the whole day, which was great to make good time. At some bridges where I had to slow down I actually just sailed. It was a great day.
Just before Mile Hammock Bay I scraped the bottom again, this turn of the ICW is really bad and there's continuous dredging going on. It was just a ridge and Caprice plowed through it.
I reached Mile Hammock Bay at sunset and found only three other boats in there (at peak season it's often full with 20-30 boats). The wind howled all night but this place was well protected.