Author: Neil Hanson

On November 16, 2020 we set sail from Carolina Beach, North Carolina. We arrived in Georgetown. South Carolina early the next morning. It was a pleasant and uneventful overnight cruise. We were sad to say goodbye to Carolina Beach since it was so well suited to us with great walking and a safe grocery store, but the southern migration needed to continue, and the winds were favorable for the short sail.

We pulled up the anchor early in the afternoon and motored at a very leisurely pace down the Cape Fear river, arriving at the Cape Fear inlet about an hour or so before sunset. We set the sails, made a pot of coffee, and enjoyed a gorgeous sunset before settling in to our darkness routines when sailing in the ocean.

I find that I enjoy sailing overnight. Sure there are a few things about it that I don’t like, but the good outweighs the bad, at least for short passages. For example, the density of stars in the ocean sky at night is hard to describe. In our modern world, there are few times that we are treated to a night sky unpolluted by stray light, and nighttime ocean sailing is one of those rare times. The Milky Way wraps it’s thick band of brightness around the sky, with a dense mat of stars stretching from every horizon to every other horizon.

On this night, we were treated to an amazing meteor showed that lasted all night long. The Leonid meteor shower happens every November, and this year it was peaking on this night. All night, I could lean over the side or the back of the cockpit, and it was not unusual that I could see a streak or two in a couple minutes of watching.

I had to slow down quite a bit to make sure we didn’t arrive at the inlet prior to light, and our first few buoys actually were in darkness. By the time we were in the thick of the inlet there was good light, which significantly reduces me stress levels! Our trip up the river to Georgetown was fast as the flood tide was scooting us along with an added three or four knots.

We spent a couple nights at the Harborwalk Marina in order to get the lay of the town. The smell of the paper mill was bad, and we were afraid we wouldn’t get to spend much time here because the mill smell was awful and made our eyes burn.

But after a day the wind shifted, the air cleared, and we fell in love with Georgetown. We moved back to the back of the harbor and dropped our anchor with a fantastic view and excellent protection from winds. Really a good anchorage. It should be noted that part of the view was also the paper mill in the distance and the steel mill right along the back of the harbor, but hey ya take the good with the bad!

Turns out our boat name is well known in the area, as there was a Civil War era boat by the same name that was sunk in the river. It was fun to be in a town where our boat name appeared lots of places!

The town is doing a great job of revitalizing itself after the collapse of it’s old economic base. There was a big steel mill that operated in the 20th century, but closed in recent years. The mill still exists, dominating the back end of the harbor. Apparently there was a sugar mill too, but we don’t know where that was. The paper mill is obviously still running. But the town is working hard to become a quaint tourist destination, catering to migrating boat people like us and also working to attract land tourists. Folks are friendly and accommodating.

Walking in town was excellent, with old homes lining the sidewalks, streets draped with archways of live oaks, and a general sense that folks who lived here were happy.

We were disappointed that there wasn’t a better grocery store in town. Funny how we come to judge towns by their grocery. It was a two or three mile walk to the decent store (which was surprisingly a Food Lion) and the Piggly Wiggly–while only a little over a mile–turned out to be an awful store. There was a nice little general store (Indigo Mercantile) that was right downtown, which is where we bought several things. Was nice supporting a small business there too instead of the big chains.

As we were approaching Thanksgiving, lots of the homes had started to put out their Christmas decorations. Seemed a bit early as the weather was so nice, but I suppose November is when lots of folks start putting up Christmas decorations.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, we celebrated Thanksgiving on the boat, anchored in the Georgetown harbor. We baked a couple of Cornish hens, baked a couple of yams, had some stuffing that we bought at the Indigo Mercantile, and a really mediocre pie from the Indigo Bakery.

We’re hanging out on a mooring ball in Carolina Beach, waiting for the unsettled weather to pass us by. The unsettled weather we’re most worried about is this fickle hurricane that’s mean meandering around down around the tip of Florida and Cuba for the last week–Eta (not sure that’s the correct spelling.)

Of course, there’s other weather that effects us as well, but all these systems seem to be working together to create unsettled weather for us. It’s Thursday, and both the major models right now predict that the path of the storm will pass just to our south tomorrow, which will bring us heavy rain and wind.

But we like it here, and don’t mind hanging out for a week while we wait for settled weather again. A short dingy ride away is a dock to tie up to and then a short walk over to the beach on the Atlantic shore, where we can walk up and down a nice sandy beach, enjoying the pounding surf of an unsettled Atlantic ocean. Then a slightly longer dingy ride takes us to a town dock from which we can walk to the state park about a mile away and walk trails, then hit the Publix for any groceries we need on the way back to the dinghy.

In many ways, this is pretty ideal for us, since we have good places to go walk and get exercise. Were it not for Covid, we’d be able to enjoy more local culture as well. But it’s a trade-off we’re okay with in order to stay safe. Outdoors we stay distanced and we don’t go in anywhere that doesn’t require masks.

Which makes me wonder about all these folks who whine about how behaving safely hurts business. To me, it’s the opposite. For example, in Maine we saw businesses open and operating. I have no doubt that business was down, but they were operating. ALL businesses required masks. You couldn’t enter the state of Maine without a 2 week quarantine or a negative Covid test.

They didn’t behave like a bunch of selfish children, but behaved like responsible adults. We spent the summer there. We spent our money there. We ate out a few times. We had a beer at a tavern a couple times.

We felt safe.

Here in the SE United States–from Virginia down to the NC/SC border so far–people generally ignore pandemic precautions. Nobody wears a mask in public. A few stores require masks. The Publix does, and they’re very clean and strict. The TrueValue hardware store said they required them, but folks inside weren’t wearing them. I needed something at the hardware store, but turned around and walked out. I tried the ACE hardware store in town, and they indeed were requiring all to wear masks. I spent my money there.

So far, here in town, the ONLY businesses that have gotten money from me are the ones who behave responsibly.

So tell me again how behaving responsibly is bad for business…

But I rant.

Today it is supposed to rain all day, so we might be confined to the boat. We’ll probably cook a roast. We’re hoping for a bonus break in the weather to go do another beach walk.

From Oriental (our last post) we continued down the ICW and spent the night in Beaufort, NC. The town is listed as a “must see” for cruisers, and it was a fun little town, though Covid kept us from going into any shops. We actually thought a coffee shop might be safe, but walking into the door we saw that at least one customer and at least one barista were not wearing masks, so we turned right back around and skedaddled out of there.

The marina that we fueled up at was not easy to get into at all, and we struggled a bit exiting. The morning moon let us pull out of Beaufort before dawn the next morning, which is kind of nice but quite stressful. You’re navigating through a busy harbor in the dark relying on a chart plotter and radar, hoping that your eyes help a little. The eastern sky was showing a little light by the time we hit the ocean, and we had a beautiful motor sail down to the Wrightsville Beach inlet, arriving just before sunset and in time to get the anchor well set for the night.

We would have loved to be able to make the run under sail only, but the wind was from dead behind us so the only way the sails would work would be to pole out the genoa and prevent the main. I’m not proficient enough yet to feel comfortable on the deck poling out the genoa by myself in rough seas (and the seas were rough enough), so we opted for keeping the wind just off our stern and motor sailing to move it forward a bit, allowing the genoa to work.

We also caught a nice skipjack tuna, which we then enjoyed for supper!

Harvest Moon spent about seven weeks parked at Atlantic Yacht Basin in Chesapeake VA while we visited family in Colorado and Virginia. Since that location put us several miles into the ICW, we decided to make our way south at least part of the way through the ICW.

We’re currently in Oriental, NC, headed a few miles further to Beaufort today, then we’ll likely go outside for a day down to the Carolina State Park to spend a few days enjoying some hiking there.

Our first day we traveled about 50 miles to a pleasant anchorage south of Buck Island. Then day two we travelled a little over 70 miles to the south end of the Pungo/Alligator Canal. Both days were calm and gorgeous. Day three was beautiful as well, and we got to sail a bit in the Pamlico Sound before arriving in Oriental where we could finally get off the boat for a little walking.