Days 2-4 on the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) blended together. Each day, we'd get up as the sun rose (about 6:30 am), put some water on the stove for coffee and tea, haul the anchor and motor on. The other boats traveling south with us tended to spread out as the days progressed and thus the chatter on the VHF radio quieted down and there were fewer power boats passing us. Each night we’d have a beautiful sunset, one morning we had some fog, and one night we had some rain showers. We averaged about 50 miles a day, motoring at about 7 knots. It wasn't until the third and fourth days that we had an opportunity to sail a little, giving us a break from the steady drone of the engine if only for an hour or two. Sadly, we did not see osprey nests in the channel markers like we had on our last trip south- perhaps the Coast Guard had a hand in their demise. We did see a lot of cormorants, seagulls and towards Morehead, pelicans. One day however, in the 20 mile straight Alligator River-Pungo River canal, we spotted two large foxes by the waters edge. They moved too quickly to catch them on camera but they had very red chests and grey backs and seemed about the size of a golden retriever.
Coming into Morehead City around 3 pm on Saturday the 13th, we thought about going ashore but there was a lot of current and a strong SW wind in the anchorage which made anchoring less appealing, and it would mean we’d have to untie the dinghy from the bow of Juno as it had been placed on Juno since we left the Chesapeake. We decided against a shore excursion and instead did a “drive by” of Morehead’s waterfront which included a large industrial shipping warehouse and a few waterfront restaurants and not much else of interest. As the weather forecast called for a northerly wind to arrive around 9 pm and to continue through the night, we decided we’d take advantage of the good winds and use them to sail about 60 t miles southwest on a broad reach (a relatively easy and comfortable angle to sail) towards Wrightsville Beach Inlet and Masonboro, NC where we hoped to meet up with Harry’s former University of Michigan sailing crew. Consequently, we had 6 hours to rest up before departing so we dropped anchor just off of the coast guard station and Fort Macon, had an early dinner, rested for an hour and set off at 9 pm in the dark into the Atlantic.
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