Our journey back north in the spring was delightful.
We left Stuart and headed north for a day, exiting into the ocean at the Ft Pierce inlet. Terrible night with steep and confused seas, I could barely stay in the helm seat we were being pitched so terribly. We ended up heading into the New Smyrna inlet and motoring up to Daytona Beach, where we dropped the hook and got a good night’s sleep.
We continued north inside on the ICW, spending several days at St Augustine again to wait out a bad storm, finally moving further north, out the Jacksonville inlet, and had a really nice overnight up to Charleston Harbor. We spent a few days at Isles of Palms which we were surprised to find that we really enjoyed. Lots of good walking.
We stayed on the ICW as it followed the Waccamaw River north from Georgetown in South Carolina, which is one of the parts we missed going south, since we sailed outside from the Cape Fear inlet down to Winyah Bay on our way south. I have to say that the Waccamaw River might just be the prettiest section of the entire ICW.
We stayed a couple days at the Heritage Plantation Marina, where we found some decent walking in the upscale neighborhoods in the area, and I spent a day doing repairs on our refrigeration system.
Next day we made a short but beautiful day of it to a little side creek called Prince Creek, which is certainly in my top 5 beautiful anchorages we’ve found. The weather was very settled so I didn’t put out a stern anchor in the narrow creek, which was quite dumb of me. We were lucky in that the current always kept us in the middle of the creek, but I should have set a stern anchor. Some great birding there, and I added at least one species to my life list, might have added two, I just don’t recall. It was Easter morning as we woke on Prince Creek, a gorgeous morning.
The next day took us through the “rock pile”, a narrow section lined with rock formations barely above water on both sides. It also took us past monster mansions lining the ICW, and rows and rows of canals cut back into the land either side and lined with 3 story ticitak houses. We once again had the conversation about the obscenity of the ostentatious display of wealth in these big houses. All this resource tied up in these taj mahals built to the ego of these people is disgusting. That night we stayed up at Calabash Creek, which was not a great anchorage, but was the last one before a long stretch without anchorages. The shore was littered with boats from recent hurricanes, one of which was Isiais which was the hurricane that got to us in Maine last summer.
Next day on to Carolina Beach where we took a mooring ball for a couple nights, doing some walking in one of our favorite places, then up to Wrightsville Beach for a night, then outside up to Beaufort and up the ICW to a great little anchorage at Cedar Creek for a night.
Then a sporty day up to Belhaven, NC, where we spent two nights. We’d heard to many great things about this place so had rather high expectations. While it’s a cute little town, and the folks are quite friendly, the marina we stayed at really wasn’t well protected, so our first night was not comfortable. Left in the morning, back through the Pungo Canal up to the Alligator River, where weather came in again and left us a little uncomfortable, but the next day it cleared and allowed for a comfortable ride across the Albermarle Sound to Elizabeth City, where we tied up at the town free dock, which is actually right alongside the Mid-Atlantic Christian University.
Then spent the last two days of our spring trip on the Great Dismal Swamp, which we loved. Very pretty, though you’ve got to take it slow and be prepared to touch either the bottom or a log now and then. We spent two nights at the Great Dismal Swamp visitor’s center, where there is a dock to tie up to, and had some great hiking there. We had not bugs at all, though I can easily imagine that bugs are bad some times of the year.
Parked the boat at Atlantic Yacht Basin in Chesapeake, VA, and spent the next couple months with kids and grandkids in both Virginia and Colorado.
