A bit unsure of our destination for the day, but we were eyeing up Carolina Beach as the likely destination. We all had showers, feeling refreshed and clean, and we set off the docks around 9am. The entrance at Harbour Village is narrow, but we saw great depths the whole way in, with instructions to favour the red buoys on our way in and out. It was low tide when we were leaving so I was super careful to follow our track back out, with instructions not to cut the outer buoys into the ICW as well, as we had done coming in. However... It was all going fine on our way out, and I was all lined up perfectly following the track out, favouring the red buoys, and then slug we run aground.
I was pretty confused, I was following our track, I was already nearly out to the ICW channel where it was deeper, and I was favouring the red buoys. But when I looked behind me, I was way over at the green, and checking my track I had deviated way off. I had forgotten to account for the current. My heading was all fine, but of course, when you come out and get side swiped by 1.5 knots of current you do go in a bit of a different direction. You'd think I'd have realized this by now, we've been navigating currents for three months now!
Anyways, after I realized how I ended up aground it was a bit easier to figure out how to get off. At first I was thinking I should reverse off, but seeing as I got pushing around by the current, it actually made more sense to just power off it in forward while turning up to the current. Thankfully this worked and we were floating again and on our way. It was a pretty soft grounding thankfully, and I'll probably do a better job remembering to take into account currents again!
After that we were back in the ditch and heading south. We also did a rubbish job planning the passage for today, and didn't even think about bridge times (or the fact that there are bridges). So the first one we ended up just making it through by powering along hard and squeaking through, and then we realized the next one about 20 minutes away opened on the hour, which we realized about 5 minutes too. Meaning we'd have to idle around for 45 minutes waiting for it to open. Ugh. To avoid the idling part, we just killed the engine and slow sailed there on a reefed genoa, floating down the channel at 4 knots, then realizing that was too quick and slowed ourselves to 2 knots. That plan worked out and we got to the bridge just before it opened. It was a funny epically slow sail (slow on purpose).
We had tried to book a mooring ball in Carolina Beach, but they were all booked, and so we decided to try our luck anchoring in Wrightsville. It was looking super busy in Wrightsville (boat show this weekend), but we found lots of room in the anchorage here, and easily dropped the hook and were done early for the day.
Wrightsville had a dinghy dock nearby so we went into town and over to the beach just across the way. Beautiful ocean beach here, and nice to actually enjoy some time there. Hopefully much more of this in our future! :)
We stopped and got some food and wine, and then headed back to the boat for the evening. At night you can hear the ocean waves crashing on the beach from this protected anchorage, which is always neat to hear.
Next days will be figuring out how/when we get to the boat yard in Holden Beach. They'll be open tomorrow and hopefully we can get that scheduled early this week. Until then I think we'll just say here.
