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Nov 18th ICW Mile 285: Masonboro Inlet

Crews Work In Predawn Hours on a Grounded Ship

Big, big day today. Accomplished a few firsts. We had our longest transit to date, about 70 miles across Onslow Bay between Cape Hatteras and Cape Fear, NC. We had our first open ocean sailing experience on Good Karma, and for the first time (for me anyway), I was far enough out to sea on my own boat as to not have any visible land anywhere. The caveats here are that we barely had a “sailing” experience today because the wind was so mild, and we were only 15 miles from land at any time, so it wasn’t like real open ocean sailing.

So here was the deal: Here you can go out to the Atlantic and bypass about 80 miles of some of the worst parts of the ICW channel but it’s a long day. To do this you exit to the sea at the Beaufort Inlet south of Cape Hatteras. The nearest return is the Masonboro Inlet just north of Cape Fear. It takes about 12 hours to get across this section under moderate conditions, from leaving dock in the morning to anchoring at night. Being the third week of November, there are only about 11 hours of daylight, counting the predawn and post-sunset useable twilight. So you have to do something in the dark and we chose to leave at zero dark thirty.

We winded down and out the Beaufort Inlet channel relying heavily on navigation instruments as we did a few days back when our anchor drug. This time we were avoiding other boats doing the same thing, as well as UNLIT anchored boats (what are these people thinking?!?) on the exit route. It was a bit harrowing, but we made it ok. As we got out to the ocean we passed a big cargo ship that had gone aground the day before. Crews were working frantically to get it unstuck, we could hear them shouting as we passed (above pic).

After we got out to sea we had enough wind to motorsail. The wind direction and speed was not enough to give us the velocity we needed to get to our destination in a reasonable time so we had to motor the entire way. Our engine droned on for twelve straight hours. The sails did give us an extra knot of speed, though, which over the long run shaved more than an hour off our motor-only time. And we needed it. The sun set just as we got an anchor set. Anchoring in the dark would not be anyone’s idea of fondly remembered good times, especially when there are many other UNLIT boats anchored in the area, as there are here.

The Path of Good Karma is Not a Straight One

Our AIS seems to be tracking well on the website. The above track shows an overview of today’s route. Note that it is not a straight line as you might expect, but bows toward the ocean. This is what you must do to avoid the Camp Lejeune live firing range, which extends 15 miles offshore. The military uses this range every day. We heard lots of rumbling booms of the live firing but didn’t receive any direct hits, which is a good thing…

The coolest thing we saw today was again, the dolphins. Two times we were escorted by a group who seem to think Good Karma is a giant dolphin. They always gather around and swim right next to us for five or ten minutes sometimes. The first group came in and were jumping occasionally but not a lot, so Shelly walked up to the bow and looked down. They were swimming right in front of the boat and along side as if to guide us. Three of them were leading, two adults and a young one. I got a great video of two of them, the little one is visible only in the first couple of seconds unfortunately. I had to name the little one “Bob” at the request of our niece Hannah who would probably want us to ship it home for her.

Great progress south today, it even feels warmer!

Sunrise Over The Atlantic

Posted in Sailing by Mark with 2 comments.