Swansboro at anchor

Another causality of Irene

The day dawned clear and warm, a perfect day for heading south on the ICW. The dinghy motor behaved this morning and we had no trouble getting Hoolie into shore and back. We got a late start but then found the current behind us so we were tooling along at a little over 9 kts!

I found a good place for the iPad2, right up on the binnacle hand rail. I don't use it for navigation but it makes a great reference for shallow spots with its database from Active Captain. I have a bluetooth GPS for it so it shows my progress along the route and when I seen a yellow icon (caution, a hazard) I can touch it and get a detailed explanation of the problem encountered by other boaters, invaluable! Ah, the wonders of electronics.

They say you shouldn't travel down the ICW on the weekend, too many boaters but we were determined to move anyway and did encounter lots of traffic, at least a hundred boats along the way - almost exclusively small fishing boats (do they do anything else around here on weekends?) But we had no problems and dropped the anchor around 1:30 or so.

The dinghy dock is just to the left of this building

The last time we came here we didn't know about the city public dinghy dock and used the bulkhead under the bridge. This time we read Active Captain more carefully and found the free dinghy dock, it's so much easier! We also seem to be out of the range of the mosquitoes and flies, at least for the moment and that makes the evenings more enjoyable too. On Monday it's off to Surf City if we can get a reservation, otherwise we'll go further south. I've promised Ann a good dinner out and Surf City has Daddy-O's, a nice restaurant.