Monday, October 3, 2016

Swan Point Marina - at a facedock

Rustic Swan Point Marina
We had a little over 50 Nm to go so we pulled ourselves together and left at 7:00 am in the fog this morning. Who said only Maine has deep fog? We followed a tug all the way to Morehead City. The challenge of the day was passing by Brown's Inlet on the ICW. It's the home of the famous "S" curve and today it was my turn. To add to the challenge, one of the buoys, the green 61A, was off station. It had slid over within 20 ft of shore. In preparation for the trip south I had downloaded the Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) waypoints to safely negotiate the passage. So I did not care that the buoy was in the wrong place, I just followed the ACOE waypoints which can be downloaded from this blog under "ICW Tips". Just clink on GPX Routes. One will be BBrown. Now the ACOE did do an update on the waypoints in September which I have not yet entered into the blog site at GPX Routes. I'll do that within the week and give the updated route a "2" suffix. There was very little difference anyway in the waypoint locations. The least I saw today was 7.4 MLW.

Swansboro bridge
We passed through two "65" ft bridges today that were not 65 ft! Just look at the photos! We're okay at 55 ft but boats with higher masts may have to pay attention.

Morehead City Bridge













Spaghetti now closer to land!




We picked up a facedock at Swan Point Marina. It's rather rustic but it's situated just right for us between Cedar Creek and either Carolina Beach or St James Plantation Marina. We chose St James to ride out the coming storm. It's a marina surrounded by three story condos with substantial, floating docks.


Here's what grib says, our wind app








The storm was due to go out to sea but now it looks like it will be a direct hit to right at St James Plantation! We will be there Tuesday and then we'll take another look.  We are at that dot just north of the South Carolina border. Yikes.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bob'n Ann

Hopefully you'll be safely tucked in at St. James Plantation when you read this and able to sit out the weather safely. We'll be making prayers for you. If you feel its necessary to quit the boat, we have old friends in Southport, Robert and Elizabeth Norton, that might be able to come to your aid although Robert is the GM at Bald Head Island and will likely have his hands full getting the island ready for the storm as well. If you feel it necessary, however, leave a note as to how to reach you and we'll do what we can to get you in touch.

Regards,

/s/ Scott'n Kitt
s/v HyLyte

Fred Brillo said...

Bob,
I've lived through every hurricane to hit South Florida since 1955.

If this is forecast to be a cat 3 storm when it hits you, get off the boat and go to a shelter.

They're already forecasting a 7 foot surge which could go higher depend on tides.

Right now its looking like a strong category 1 or category 2.

Be wary of the storm surge.

Bob423 said...

Scott'n Kitt, we can always be reached via email, 423sail@gmail.com. Thanks for the offer. I think we'll be okay.

Fred, NOAA is projecting a 2 to 3 ft surge on their graphic for our area.