Day 19: December 4, 2008

Port: Mile Hammock Bay (34.68N 77.33W)

Weather: Winds were 10-15 from the West today. Seas 1-2 feet. It was 56 degrees F with clear and sunny skies! Yippee!

Good news, and bad news. Last night, as Dad and I were having a conversation (over our new bikes) about the safety and use of knives; I commented that I was careful and had never cut myself with my knife before. Getting a little big-headed, I guess, I worked on removing a zip-tie holding packaging on the bike and sliced through my pinkie finger on my left hand. I am now wrapped up with a throbbing hand. My hand is out of duty for now, but I am ok. It was sheer stupidity, as most accidents often are, but hey! I got off dishwashing duty. It’s too ugly to post pictures, so here’s a tame one.

Today, we left Oriental, and I took the helm for the first time leaving a slip. Dad talked me through how to steer a boat out of a slip. We took off for Adam’s Creek. We had great weather today and were happy for the sunny skies! Our new heater took it’s first run and was amazing! If we got cold, we would hop below (not for an hour) but for only a minute or two and be completely warmed up again. We passed some shrimpers, tongues out and drooling wishing we had some fresh shrimp ourselves. Being with an interior designer and a contractor, we checked out each and every house we passed. Most of the houses received an “ewwww” or “geez, that’s ugly!” Haha, we took several pictures of houses and I plan to compile them as “The Ugliest Houses on the ICW.” Some houses seemed in competition with decorations or paint color choices. One had an enormous plaque of a sea horse on the front. The sea horse was red and the house was painted coral (you tell me that’s pretty). Another one had a dolphin and another had an anchor. We passed several typical beach homes and other larger homes. Just outside of Morehead City and Beaufort (Bo-fort in North Carolina), we ran into our first dolphins. We got some videos of them playing around. They didn’t seem interested in our boat or following us, so once we passed them, they were out of sight. It was pretty amazing though. You could tell, not only from the presence of dolphins, that we were closer to the beach, because the water changed from a brown, tea color to a light green. The dolphins were easier to spot. I wouldn’t say that Morehead City is a beautiful town, but it was quite large, and had a lot, a lot of fishing boats out. Later in the day, we came up to Camp LeJeune, a Marines training base. Often they close part of the ICW because of live firing exercises. We attempted to find out if it would be closed today and learned that no, it wouldn’t close. We could go through. That was, until we came up to the edge and a Naval Patrol boat radioed we would have to anchor and wait for an hour. We anchored in sand, so it didn’t catch at first, then sat and waited. Though we couldn’t see anything, we were able to hear various guns. The typical dit-dit-dit echoed. An hour later, they let us go. As we passed through the area they were exercising in, we noticed a smoky haze, the classic smell of burnt ammunition, and even saw some specific areas smoking. It was all really neat. Various planes and helicopters flew over the area. As the sun was setting, we followed three other boats through towards our anchorage. At the Camp LeJeune bridge, the bridge master laughed when he asked if we were anchoring at Mile Hammock Bay. When all 3 boats said yes, he told us we were in for a night; the marines would be playing games until 2200. Oh geez. By sundown, we were turning into the bay to find several other boats already anchored. After turning down an offer to raft up, we laid anchor and settled in. Sure enough, we heard various boats whiz by, planes, and helicopters. They must have closed the ICW again, because in the distance you could hear live fire again. Dad, in the middle of it all, heard the dolphins near us again. They would break the surface and blow air up, making a humpfing sound.