Tonight finds us at anchor in Wrightsville Beach NC.
The rain that was falling on and off on Friday evening ended up as pretty much continual rain through the night and on into most of Saturday. The rain did stop early in the evening on Saturday, so we managed to get off the boat and go for a bit of a walk.
Yesterday was cold and very windy, so we ended up spending an extra day in Lightkeepers marina. I took advantage of the extra down day to take care of a couple boat projects. Afterwards Dar and I once again borrowed the courtesy car and headed into town to do some grocery shopping. We took advantage of having a car and picked up a cart full.
We headed out this morning to a much calmer day on the water than yesterday. With lots of sun and a clear sky it warmed up quite nicely as the day went on.
As we were approaching the Cape Fear River I did a quick check on the state of the tide and found that it was currently an ebb tide. This means that the current would be flowing down the river, in the same direction as the wind, which was around 10 knots. This was good news as far as the wave conditions on the river, but was bad news in that we'd be fighting a stong current as we travelled north up the river.
This is the conundrum in situations like this. When you have strong winds you have the choice of having the current in your favour, but the potential for rough waters, or the current against you, giving calmer waters, but slowing your travel down. Even with the reduced speed, I'd still rather have the winds in the same direction as the current. It slowed us down, but I'd still rather that than the rough alternative.
The current is the strongest in the southern end of the Cape Fear River, so as we entered the river we were hit head on with about 4 knots of current. I pushed up the throttle a bit to maintain some speed, but even with that we were only making about 4 knots of speed at the start. The further we went up the river the less the current, so our speed picked up, but we still had over an hour on the river.
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| This is what 4 knots of current looks like! |
After leaving the Cape Fear River the rest of the day's travel to Wrightsville Beach went well. Just after 1700 we pulled off of the AICW into the Wrightsville Beach harbour, and by 1730 we had the anchor down and set.
Tomorrow morning we'll continue on with Swansboro NC as our destination.
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