Swansboro - At Casper Marina

Birds of the area

The weather was not predicted to  be good for Sunday, a front is coming through with a 100% chance of rain in the 1 to 2 inch range with high winds. With that forecast, we decided to take a dock for the next two days at Swansboro and ride out the storm in comfort, complete with cable TV offered by the marina as part of the dockage fee. As of tonight, the storm hasn't arrived yet but we can see it gathering on the national radar. It's supposed to hit us around 2:00 am and last throughout the day on Sunday, moderating at that night. Monday is predicted to be sunny but very much cooler with a high of only 61! Once again we seem to coming north too soon!

Lots of warnings about skinny water today but we saw nothing under 6.6 ft at low tide so we were fine. Today we came through Camp Lejeume which is on the ICW. They periodically hold live fire practice which entails closing the ICW for the duration, usually for 1 to 2 hours at a time. Luckily, we did not encounter any such practice on a Saturday so we sped forth.

Fixed docks typical of the area - there's a knack to tying up.

However, coming into Swansboro we saw a Coast Guard speed boat pass by on our port side and then do a 180 and fall in behind us, uh-ho. Pretty soon we got a call, "When was the last time you were boarded by the Coast Guard?" Ann replied, "At 10:30 yesterday morning!"  With that they passed us by and we proceeded on to Swansboro. The Coast Guard must have a mission this month to inspect boaters.

Well, the wind is raging outside and we expect worse tonight when the storm reaches us in full. We'll sit it out until it subsides and heads north (enjoy!) Monday we'll continue our trek north.