Day 255
Yep! Right on schedule, the Bald Head Island Ferry’s horn blew loud and long at 6:00 am, on Sunday morning, 05/23/21, announcing its first departure of the day from Deep Point Marina. Thankfully, I was already awake and making the 52-mile trek from our slip all the way to the marina restrooms! Several hours later, at 9:00 am, Legacy left Deep Point Marina in between ferries. It was mostly cloudy, but the sun was valiantly trying to peek through, as we cruised northeasterly on the Cape Fear River. After a full year’s time, I’m finally getting this docking and casting-off thing down! I’m noticing more purpose and stability in my movements, which is always a plus, and I’m not falling all around quite as often. 🙂
Not surprisingly, the Cape Fear River is extremely wide and looks more like a lake for miles. As with many others, this river is wide, but shallow, which means its cruising channel is quite narrow. We had to pay close attention to avoid veering out of that channel and running aground. We cruised past Kure Beach, Wilmington Beach, and Carolina Beach, until we reached Carolina Beach State Park, where the AICW veers east off of the Cape Fear River and heads toward the coast again.
We passed the town of Sea Breeze, NC, and then cruised by the Carolina Beach Inlet, which leads directly out into the Atlantic Ocean, to our starboard. The waterfront homes through here boast long, and high wooden dock piers built on really tall pilings to accommodate the drastically changing tide in this area. We were coming through that day at super-low tide, so Steve’s eyes stayed glued to the depth gauge.
We passed Masonboro Island, Wilmington, and Wrightsville Beach, then Shell Island, NC. Once again, non-stop, side-by-side waterfront homes are before, during, and after Wrightsville Beach. Legacy had to idle in place for about 15 long, hot minutes, awaiting the opening of the Wrightsville Beach drawbridge. It was right at 20-feet above the water, which is 6 inches too low for us to pass underneath without damage to antennae and wind-gauge.
As we approached the Highway 1402 drawbridge, we heard on the radio that it couldn’t open at its scheduled time because “EMS was on the island” (Figure Eight Island), so the bridge must stay closed until the EMS team had crossed back over it to the mainland with their patient. Luckily for us, that bridge was plenty high enough for us to safely pass underneath even with the drawbridge down.
We started to realize that traversing the Wrightsville Beach area on a Sunday probably wasn’t the best idea, as the ICW was extremely busy on that day. All kinds of differently-sized boats flew around Legacy, coming from all different directions, at high speeds, which waked us continuously from all sides. Stressful and NOT FUN. Once we got through the busiest parts, I was able to relax and look off to our east to see endless beachfront houses and condos facing the Atlantic Ocean, all crammed in side-by-side for miles and miles. What a crowded area!
As we cruised south of Hampstead, NC, to our marina, Harbor Village, located north of Topsail Beach, the water madness lessened dramatically (and pleasantly). Just outside of Harbor Village Marina, Steve had to put Legacy into reverse to make a sharp turn. I was down on the deck and suddenly heard a loud POP! coming from the port side of the boat. Steve heard it too from up in the flybridge. Simultaneously, some jet skis were whizzing by us, jumping Legacy’s wake, so I attributed the loud pop to one of them slapping back down onto the water after being airborne. Just in case, once we got inside Harbor Village Marina, Steve went down into the engine room to check on things. Sure enough, his fears were right – instead of coming from the outside of the boat – that pop we’d heard was the port side stabilizer pin breaking yet again! UGH!! This was the third stabilizer pin to break since we acquired the boat in July of 2019. 🙁 When you can’t even put your boat in reverse while the stabilizer fins are activated, that’s just absurd. Stabilizers are great when they work, but otherwise they’re far too fragile. And every single time a pin breaks, a new one has to be ordered (not cheap…), and we have to pay a marina’s service department to install that new pin and then to synchronize that stabilizer with the other stabilizer. We’ve heard it said that once you’ve owned a boat with stabilizers, you’ll never own another one. We get it!!
We arrived at Harbor Village Marina, in Hampstead, NC, at 2:00 pm, but had to wait for about 30 minutes for the fuel dock to free up so we could pump-out before we went to our slip number A25, where we spent the night. Boating involves a lot of hurry-up-and-waiting…
Position: N 34° 23.161, W 77° 38.291
Distance traveled: 39 SM
Total distance traveled: 3468 SM
Total marina nights: 232
Total nights at anchor: 22
Locks today: 0
Locks Total: 27