Georgetown to Wrightsville Beach

We slept in this morning until about 6:15, and I rushed Ann because I wanted to be on our way as early as possible. We managed to get the anchor up and on our way before sunrise. I grabbed my phone and got a nice picture when the sun came up. 

The forecast was great. As you can see from PredictWind, my go-to app, the waves were 1.1 feet with an 8 second period.

That's a great prediction from the app. But in real life, we had 3-4 foot waves on our nose. The first two hours were pretty miserable as we dealt with a bouncy ride. We put my office chair down after it almost flew across the room.

In a few hours, the seas calmed down, and we had a pleasant ride the rest of the way. After the 65 nm ocean crossing, we entered the intercoastal waterway, with its own set of challenges. We no longer had to deal with waves or rough water, but there are shallow areas all over, and we entered Cape Fear River at the lowest tide.

We entered the ICW at low tide at 3:30 pm

The ICW is beautiful in many places. If it weren't for all the hazards, it would be a wonderful ride. I prefer the ocean because there is no risk of running aground, you don't have tight squeezes when passing, and there are no "no wake" zones. The ICW requires much more concentration.

The ICW can be very pretty

We were lucky to be able to have dinner with old family friends, the Cohens in Wrightsville Beach. I have known them longer than anyone in the world except my parents.

I was also fortunate to find a handyman who was able to climb on the roof of Empty Nest and repair the windshield wiper. Hopefully, we won't have to use it anymore. I haven't tested it yet, but at least it's out of the way now.

Here we are tied up at the dock in Wrightsville Beach. This is our first time off the boat in three days, as our last three stops were at anchor.

Tomorrow morning looks like great weather and calm seas, but we are not falling for that trick again. I used two different apps and got the same forecast, so hoping it is accurate this time. We'll do our last ocean leg for this trip for about 6 hours, and then a few hours in the ICW and plan on anchoring at Oriental. I think the hardest parts of this trip are behind us, but so is the best weather. It's a lot colder up here than in Florida, and it's supposed to rain later in the week, so we'll see how far we can get before that.