After clearing the Frying Pan Shoals that extend 20-30 NM southward from the Cape Fear inlet, we were rewarded with a nice 20 knot wind, allowing for a near perfect beam reach up to Wrightsville Beach.
Here we anchored in the Banks Channel, nestled between a bridge to the north and vacation homes on either side. This definitely had a different feel from the near complete isolation of prior anchorages.
The currents are fairly strong here. In tidal regions, when the tide switches from ebb to flow and back again, the current turns 180º. This rotation can cause the anchor to dislodge from the seabed and struggle to reset in the opposite direction, causing the boat to drift, a most unpleasant and scary situation, especially when it happens in the middle of the night. Fortunately, Fregata’s anchor seems to be doing the job as we’ve yet to drag. And as an extra test, a fairly violent thunderstorm rolled through a few nights ago.
It’s always encouraging to wake up in the morning to find the boat more or less in the same spot as the night before. We do set an anchor alarm, which monitors the boat’s distance from the anchor and alerts us when that distance exceeds a certain threshhold.
Wrightsville Beach is a resort town just east of Wilmington, North Carolina. It has a 1950s beach movie feel to it and it is a big surfing town.
Residents of Wilmington, North Carolina consider Wrigthsville Beach, “their” beach, as evidenced by the line of traffic coming in the morning and returning in the evening. Other than the beach itself, and a few t-shirt shops and ice cream stands, there’s not a lot else going on. But the atmosphere is fun and (again) people are very friendly so it’s always easy to strike up a conversation and get some local color.
One of our subscribers, Dave from Milwaukee, asked how long we’d be here. It turns out his parents live in Wilmington. He put us in touch and they came to visit us. We had a great time meeting Sandy and Jim who are lovely and very interesting people.
Another highlight of our stay was our first ever surf lesson. Surfing is big in North Carolina. So off we went to the beach, a little apprehensive. The lesson was great and we had a lot of fun, even managing to stand up a few times. That said, we’re not going to win any competitions for grace and style in doing so. At least we can add surfing to the growing list of watersports (i.e. wakeboarding and kitesurfing) we’ve tried in recent years.
Some of our solar panels stopped charging so Dan spent a good part of the day troubleshooting. As usual, diagnosing the problem took most of the time, and the fix was pushing a button to reset a fuse that had tripped. Diagnosis: too much sun!
We’re holding a few days here, waiting for our next stop, Beaufort, NC, to get back to normal after the world famous Big Rock fishing tournament. We heard somebody won $1.7 million for landing a 540 pound marlin!
3 Responses
So glad you could meet up Mom and Pop! They absolutely loved you guys. Wishing you fair winds and following seas on your next leg! May your journey be smooth and your adventures be memorable. Safe travels!
Thanks for the intro, Dave. We had a nice meeting with them. They were great!
That reminded me of the good ol’time when we were windsurfing on Lac Léman. Are you still practicing?