April 4-6 update

We borrowed the courtesy car and did some grocery shopping and went out for lunch.  Later that afternoon Emma-Jean docked beside us, we had met them last week at Osprey.

At about 4:20, Betsy Rhew arrived from Timberlake NC, which was over 3 hours away.   She was Andy’s Grand Representative counterpart in 2012, and is currently Grand Adah for the state of North Carolina.  We had met Betsy at North Carolina’s Grand Chapter in 2012 at Raleigh.

We went to  an Eastern Star meeting at Stump Sound Chapter #338, and enjoyed a delicious supper and a great meeting- their 1st of the year, as installation was only a couple of days ago.

Here’s Betsy and Andy.

We met some very nice people, who asked Andy to speak about our boat trip.There is  no shortage of men in this chapter- 7 of the officers were men.

Betsy stayed the night and she and Andy had a good visit chatting and looking at pictures.

 

In the morning, the winds started to gust at about 6:00 and there were whitecaps.  After Andy made breakfast, Betsy left to drive home.  We conferred with Larry and Shannon on Emma Jean, and learned that the Swing bridge 7 miles up the ICW, was not opening because of the winds.  So we stayed an additional night in Sneads Ferry, as there was no place to go.  On Tuesday afternoon, we once again borrowed the courtesy car and drove into Jacksonville.  Our mission was to go to the Verizon store and determine why our Mifi had not been loaded with the Gigabytes that we had purchased in Myrtle Beach.  We had called the Verizon call centre several times over the last 2 days and had not been successful in having our jetpack credited.  Finally at the second Verizon, Kimberley, with the aid of someone on the phone was able to get us our data.

On our return we had Shannon, Larry and Brian, another boater who tied up to stay out of the wind over for docktails.

We had an early night,  the forecast was for temperatures close to freezing, so extra blankets came out.

On Wednesday, we departed at 7:50 and headed for the cut through Camp Lejeune.  We made the 9:00 opening of the swing bridge and continued on through the base.  Here’s a picture of military vehicle along the waterway.

 

Here’s the view of the Atlantic near Bogue inlet,

by the village of Swansboro, which we passed through at about 10:30.    We continued up Bogue Sound for many miles and reached  Moorehead City just before 13:00.     Here Beaufort inlet flows into the ICW.  The water flow from the Atlantic ocean affected our progress– at times we were going almost 11 miles per hour and at other times less than 6.  At 13:30 we entered the Adams Creek canal.  We caught up with Emma Jean, and passed them, as they were going to a marina along the cut whereas we had opted for anchoring out about 5 miles farther along the canal.

Here’s their boat and then Shannon and I taking pictures of each other’s boats.

Also saw this house along Adam’s creek that caught my eye.

At 15:15, we set our anchor in Cedar Creek, where one other boat, Otter, was already anchored, along with about 30 crab pots.