2014 Florida Cruise: Wrightsville Beach, NC

Our goal for today is to get to Wrightsville beach, perhaps another 25 miles down the Intercoastal -- it had been "touted" to us as a great place to stop by Stan, a "live-aboard" we met in Elizabeth City. He made it sound like a peaceful place to stop and recharge your "emotional" batteries -- we were really looking forward to it.

The tide cycle was such that we ended up leaving Topsail Sound at about the same tidal point as we arrived -- low tide, but at least it was rising. I had learned about some of the idiosyncrasies of the channel on the way in yesterday, so I was determined to try and pick my way out without running aground -- I bumped a couple of times, and had almost made it out when I ran the keel softly up on a bar -- easy enough to get off, but it spoiled my "perfect exit" attempt :-(

It also took out our knotmeter -- it stopped working. I was pretty confident that the problem was sand kicked up into the paddle wheel during my "ungrounding" attempt -- I would have to go over the side at some point down the road to try and fix it.

The route transited two new bridges; like yesterday, one only opened "on the half hour" and the other "on the hour". We managed to have to wait almost the full period for both --so it goes.

The second bridge connected to the mainland to Wrightsville Beach, our destination for the evening -- we had to go through it to enter the side channel to get to our anchorage. From about a mile away, we could see there were lots of buildings and boats on our side of the bridge -- as we got closer, it became evident that this was a "happening" place -- both sides of the Intercoastal were lined with huge Power Boat marinas and there were boats moving every which way -- think the Times Square pedestrian mall on a busy afternoon -- people crossing every which way, heads down and focused on getting to their destinations -- that's what it was like, only the people were boats..

One of about a dozen similar marinas right on the Intertcoastal in Wrightsville

The tedious task of waiting for this bridge fell to Sue (we rotate the helm every couple of hours) -- not only did she have to be mindful of the strong current running through the area, she had to avoid boats moving everywhere as she circled to kill time -- a tough job. When the bridge eventually opened, there was a "rush" for boats to go through the opening from both sides. Sue did a masterful job weaving her way through this mess and turned down the channel for our anchorage -- which, by the way, was also lined on one side with Marina, restaurants and condos.

At this point, it was clear that Wrightsville Beach wasn't going to be the "peaceful" anchorage we both had imagined -- something "got lost in the translation" from Stan's description. Indeed, the anchorage turned out to be lined with Condos and Town Homes on both sides and ended at a low causeway connecting the mainland to the Wrightsville Beach Barrier Island.

The good news is that the anchorage was roomy (there were about 8-10 boats in it), the holding was good and the town provided a nice dinghy dock nearby nearby So, instead of swimming and hanging out in a peaceful anchorage, we opted to get some grocery shopping done, take a walk and have dinner ashore.