We beat this guy out, leaving at 0800 hours

Some storm must have blown this sailboat

hard aground up the peninsula

More money than we got

Pretty picture going down the ICW

Cornering around the canal

These people don't like to cut grass

Sweet!  See Horse?

Only $75,000 for some poles and grass/trees

Yahoo

Chinese junk

Trumpy

Old wooden boat

Pelicans awaiting scraps from the crabber

The railroad bridge is always up until the RR comes by

Bird island - wind coming from the south

This sailboat ran aground sometime in front of us

Idiot !

Okay.  Another idiot.  Me.

So, after 30 years of boating I finally got the boat aground.

Hard.  Really hard.

The boat lurched forward like a gale blow before the hurricane.

I was looking at the chartplotter to see how far we

were from the bridge ahead and missed the moved

green marker.

POOF

We slammed onto the bottom.

Did I say hard?

At 7 knots?

I've always said that if you haven't run your boat

aground, you haven't boated enough

Boat/US had just pulled another boat off the bottom so

I called them and they came right over.  This was nice.

But.

Never allow a tow boat to tie up to you.  I knew this.

Once they do this they cannot let go until they get

you out of "danger"

So, keeping them at bay, we asked them how much it

would cost to pull us off the shoal.

Oh.

Only $983 ??

Oh, I don't have that much money for stupidity.

So Lynn and I worked the anchor/winch and engines and

pulled us off successfully. 

We only lost 45 minutes and now,

are wiser.

 

 

4 marine boats checked us out

They couldn't "help" us because we were civilians

but they rode around our boat,

creating wakes which lifted the boat up and we

could then steer towards safer water

So now we're on our way thanks to Zippy the

always faithful dingy using her to drop the anchor

so Lynn could pull the boat forward with the winch

Now - we're back on track ....

The plant Lynn's Dad gave us before we left....

it's having fun in the sun and thriving!

Large tug pushing 3 barges !!

The swing bridge closing behind us

A little anchoring gem at Camp Lejeune !!

 

Well, quite the day.

We are now at another beautiful anchorage at

Camp Lejeune.  The marines in their boats are jetting

around at 40 mph doing their jobs (we'd like to have

that job).  They were on a couple of hovercrafts cooking

over the marshes and saving America the Beautiful !!

 

Another gem we had today was a pair of dolphins following

us from Morehead City, NC to our anchorage spot tonight.  We

last saw them as we were turning into Camp Lejeune.  Hopefully

they'll be waiting for us in the morning!

 

We're shooting for Wilmington, NC tomorrow where

we bought the boat 18 months ago.  It's been a great ride

so far - my beautiful wife by my side taking the wheel

to relieve me so I can take a wee wee from time to time.