{"id":3435,"date":"2014-10-02T16:12:04","date_gmt":"2014-10-02T16:12:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/?p=3435"},"modified":"2014-10-02T16:13:56","modified_gmt":"2014-10-02T16:13:56","slug":"moving-down-the-icw-and-planning-our-offshore-run-to-st-marys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/?p=3435","title":{"rendered":"Moving down the ICW toward our planned offshore run to St Mary\u2019s"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s Thursday morning and we are motoring down the ICW near Oriental, NC.\u00a0 The winds are very calm with just enough on the beam to allow us to motorsail, sort of.\u00a0 It\u2019s a beautiful area in a bleak sort of way.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last night we anchored in Belhaven NC, a town that some might say has \u201cseen it\u2019s best days\u201d many years ago.\u00a0 The main street has a number of empty storefronts, which is a bit depressing.\u00a0\u00a0 The land is VERY low with the streets near the water not more than a few feet above sea level.\u00a0 \u00a0I can\u2019t imagine what a storm surge from a hurricane would do to the area.\u00a0 Can you say \u201cmom, there\u2019s 8\u2019 of water in the garage, no wait, in the living room\u201d.\u00a0 Yikes\u2026<\/p>\n

Jim and I went ashore for pizza and beer and were very pleased with how good the pizza was.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t expecting much and was pleasantly surprised.\u00a0 There is a new restaurant in town that was about to open up when Brenda and I were there last October and I was impressed with how nice it was. Given the look of mainstreet, the place looked a bit out of place.\u00a0 However, even on a Wednesday night they seemed to be doing a pretty good business.\u00a0\u00a0 The place is called The Tavern at Jack\u2019s Neck<\/em>.\u00a0 It\u2019s worth visiting.<\/p>\n

So, here we are motoring toward Beaufort and our plan to make an offshore run, perhaps beginning on Saturday. However, the dilemma is that the window for a good offshore breeze is pretty short and I am not sure if there is enough time to make the 360 mile run from Beaufort to St Mary\u2019s GA before the wind clocks to the south and stops our progress.<\/p>\n

In the fall, winds from the north are common but they seem to only last for a few days prior to clocking back to the prevailing southerly direction. \u00a0The problem is that this doesn\u2019t allow enough time to make a long run offshore.\u00a0 Anyway, today I was thinking about this and it occurred to me that perhaps the best option would be to bypass Beaufort NC, which is just south of Cape Hatteras and head another 80-100 mile south from there and jump out at either Masonboro Inlet, just north of Cape Fear or to continue a bit further to Cape Fear River Inlet and jump out from there.\u00a0 By heading out from Cape Fear, we can avoid the 40 mile SE run to get around the Cape Fear shoals that would be required if we headed out from Masonboro Inlet.<\/p>\n

I suspect that we will be able to make the additional distance down the ICW to Southport NC in time to catch the favorable winds in the Cape Fear area that should arrive late on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Anyway, that\u2019s the plan, for today anyway, which should put us into St Mary\u2019s in time to make our Wednesday evening flights home.<\/p>\n

Yesterday and today will be long days but the motoring is easy with very light winds and glass calm conditions.\u00a0 Yesterday we were underway for over 11 hours and made nearly 80 miles.\u00a0 That was a long but very pleasant day.\u00a0 Today is likely to be about the same.\u00a0 The shore scenery as we headed down narrow canals was a bit bleak but pretty at the same time.\u00a0 I guess you\u2019ll have to be the judge.\u00a0\"\"<\/a>Very peaceful.\"\"<\/a><\/span>A few minutes ago two mean looking bunch of GI Joe guys in RIBS blasted by.\u00a0 They were hauling.\u00a0 Your tax dollars hard at work. \u00a0\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/span>And, what\u2019s a post without a nice sunrise over downtown Belhaven in a light haze.\"\"<\/a><\/span>The beginning of yet another beautiful day on the ICW. \u00a0\"\"<\/a>We\u2019ll see how the plans go.\u00a0 For now, continuing to mosey on down the ICW. \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And, that\u2019 s my report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s Thursday morning and we are motoring down the ICW near Oriental, NC.\u00a0 The winds are very calm with just enough on the beam to allow us to motorsail, sort of.\u00a0 It\u2019s a beautiful area in a bleak sort of way. Last night we anchored in Belhaven NC, a town that some might say has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","_s2mail":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3435"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3442,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3435\/revisions\/3442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}