Some mornings you wake up and you find you are happy your anchor did not drag and other mornings you wake to find you are a little closer to the guy behind or next to you than you had hoped you would be. This poor gentleman was anchored next to us at Mile Hammock (across the bay) and somehow avoiding colliding with other boats as he managed to drag to the shore where he set both a bow and stern anchor. He was not awake when we left so I can only imagine he was up pretty much all night fighting the wind and current, single handed to boot.
Our desire for the day is to get to an anchorage at the Cape Fear River Inlet known as Tina’s Pocket. We have two bridges today to deal with , both of which claim a 20 foot clearance. The first bridge opens on the half hour and is called the Figure Eight Bridge. Five miles away from that bridge is the Wrightsville Beach Bridge which opens on the hour. The trick is to get through the Figure Eight at 12:30 and time your speed to get five miles in 30 minutes. For us that would mean running at 10 knots and we typically cruise at 7.5 knots. It is doable……..but not today.
We approach the Figure Eight and notice a few boats waiting when an announcement comes from the bridge tender that there is an EMS vehicle on the island that the bridge feeds into and they cannot move the bridge until the vehicle has left the island. While we are sorry to hear that paramedics have been called to the island our next thoughts switch to how long will this take and will we be able to make the Wrightsville Beach Bridge at 1:00.
It was not in the cards…..remember we are at 26 feet with our VHF antennas and the bridge publishes a 20 foot clearance. We sat until the bridge tender came back about quarter to one and said that he was showing a clearance today of 24 foot. Well…..if we drop our antennas we can get through as we only need 21 with the antennas down. I am the likely candidate to drop the antennas so I go up on the flybridge and remove and secure them so that we can clear the Figure Eight Bridge. It was a thing of beauty but the problem now becomes ever more chaotic. We won’t make the 1:00 opening at Wrightsville as we only have five minutes with five miles to go……so now you give the engines a much desired break and coast for a solid hour. UGH!!!! It is painful to sit and wait for a bridge opening jockeying with the low tide and the six or more boats all waiting for the same thing, Folks have to remain patient and control their vessels in a strong current and somehow not go aground though ground is all you see as the tide is extremely low. We enjoy the sights of the crew working on the docks.
As we hear the alarm sound that the bridge is opening, we got caught in the current rush and Paradigm Shift was headed through the bridge sideways. The captain used every ounce of power he could get and came back out of the bridge and fell to the back of the line to try one more time. Once through we made the decision to stop in Wrightsville for the night as it had been a stressful day and we needed to unwind.
Wrightsville is not our favorite anchorage as we have drug anchor in there as well as others. But it is a new day and we will set our anchor and pray for a good nights sleep. The radio chatter is all abuzz with folks worrying about not having enough room and how much anchor chain to use. I cannot say we were not stressed but we did decide to anchor on the opposite side of the channel from the typical anchoring spot to allow for more swing room. We were holding just fine while doing pirouettes for most of the night. Cooper was anxious to keep watch on all the lights passing down the main road ashore.
