Crew Log for November 21st, 2022
Trip Summary:
Carolina Beach, NC – Little River Inlet
Trip Distance of 45.3 NM, Total Distance To-Date of 1,873.4 NM
Departed at 06h30, arrived at 14h40
Today was our last day in North Carolina. We were headed to Little River Inlet (Bird Island) which was an inlet that divided the States of North and South Carolina. The excitement of making it to a new State was short lived however, when we realized that the inlet wound briefly into South Carolina before turning back into North Carolina. We were indeed anchored in North Carolina for one more night.
We got away from Carolina Beach early and made our way back out onto the ICW, where after about a mile, the current “spit” us out into the Cape Fear River. The current in the Cape Fear River portion of the ICW is considerable, but fortunately was in our favor for the first section. Cape Fear is also a busy shipping channel, so in addition to lots of boat traffic, there was the convoluted array of navigation marks that you had to keep sorted out.
As we made the turn from Cape Fear back towards the ICW at Southport, a sailboat hailed us and signaled their intention to pass. Before they reached us however, they came back on the radio and informed us that they were aborting the pass since they had just lost their engine. They managed to limp the boat off the main traffic lane, anchor and call TowBoat US. We heard several exchanges throughout the day with TowBoat and the Coast Guard, but we never did find out what happened.
We were having a good day. It had started to warm up and we were enjoying making good time aided by the current and tide push. We also managed to get a sail out for a portion of the trip. We made it to the anchorage by mid afternoon, which allowed us time to drop the dinghy in the water and go for a bit of an explore. Anchoring proved to be a real challenge, with the wind pushing us one way and the current opposing it. However, we managed to get a good set on the first try. We were joined by a couple of trawlers and 3 other sailboats. There were several others anchored further up, just off the ICW.
We made our way over to the “island” which was reportedly a popular nesting spot for sea turtles. Unfortunately, we were there “out of season”. The beach was bordered by the ocean on one side and beautiful sand dunes that stretched for miles, on the other. As we made our way around the southern end of the island, we were surprised to see a number of people, and bikers, on the beach. We later learned that it was a popular walking route from Sunset Beach, which was about 1.5 miles away. We didn’t know a lot about Bird Island, other than it doesn’t appear to be an island, but according to promotional material…
“Bird Island is an undeveloped barrier island located at the southwestern edge of the North Carolina coast, situated between the Town of Sunset Beach and the Little River Inlet in South Carolina. The Reserve site encompasses 1,481 acres consisting of approximately 135 upland acres and over 1,300 acres of marsh, intertidal flats, and subtidal area.”
We walked a way down the beach in line with the other walkers, before breaking ranks and circling back to our dinghy. That’s when we met David. Originally from South Africa, David lived in North Carolina and was visiting a relative in Sunset Beach. As we chatted, we found out that David worked for Syngenta, a high tech agricultural firm. Judy was very familiar with Syngenta, given the company had been a big supporter of Agriculture in the Classroom activities during her time managing the program for Nova Scotia.
David was interested in the sailboat and our story, which we were only to happy to share with him. He also knew some folks who lived and worked in Nova Scotia and had felt it was always some place he would like to visit. He certainly knew all about the Yarmouth Ferry, Halifax and Cape Breton. We also chatted about retirement and, reflecting on the recent loss of two friends, how short life is. We directed David to our blog site and told him that if he ever did come to Nova Scotia, to look us up. We hope he does.
We really enjoyed this anchorage. While it obviously was walkable from Sunset Beach, it was natural and undeveloped and very quite. We were very happy we stopped here. Given South Carolina was directly on the other side of the inlet, we were pretty confident that we would be entering a new State the next day.
But more about that, next time.
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