Storms to the Left of Us; Storms to the Right -- South Port to Camp Lejune

Deep Water Marina

    At our staff meeting last evening we debated our departure time so I guess we finally decided on 8:30.  It really made no difference as to the current as we had the ebb tide for the first 10 miles up the river.  We could only do 4 knots. Our goal was to make it to a safe anchorage before the storms came in later tonight according to this morning’s weather reports.

     Once underway, we could see the clouds to the west begin to build as well as the winds building out of the east. Thankfully, Andiamo has the Sirus Weather, Martha checks the IPad and Pete checks his phone for the radar. By 10 AM, the pop-up storms were doing their thing all around us, but we somehow remained in the sun and clouds. To make best time, engine was aided by sails whenever possible. Some of the ICW could not be sailed. 

 It is too narrow and skinny waters are close.  Due to bridge schedules, we even ran our engine floored in order to make the opening, once this morning and once this afternoon. If we hadn’t made the openings we would have delayed anchoring by 1 ½ hours. Considering that we anchored at Mile Hammock Bay, Camp Lejune, NC at 6:15 and it looked as if it was going to storm any moment. We could hear the thunder in the distance.

This was the view to the east as we turned to anchor
 in Miles Hammock Bay

    Even with our eyes to the skies, Pete was able to do his conference call and I was able to post 6 days worth of blogs during the trip.  Once anchored, we used our walkies to have our traditional toast to another great day. Oh yea, as of 8:30 we are doing pretty good, but there is still one more major thunderstorm we are keeping our eyes on which will probably hit during the night.  Have I mentioned I really don’t like thunderstorms, but everything is secured and ready. Maybe we’ll continue to be lucky???

     ~  ~ (\_~ ~ ~     Kathy and Pete