Today we had a mini-flotilla of 5 sailboats and one Nordic Tug that stayed together upon exiting Mile Hammock Bay anchorage. Twelve boats stayed in the anchorage last night-the weather was calm and clear. Sun-up revealed wispy patches of fog in the marshes that did not affect visibility in the channel.

Our group stayed together through 3 bridges. The first was North Topsail Beach bridge, just past an enormous Pink House. This bridge was a fixed 64′. This morning it actually had 65 feet of clearance due to the ebbing tide.

There was only a small wait at the Surf City Swing Bridge which was next. The lead boat, a red-hulled Gulfstar, let the bridge tender know how many boats were in our grouping, facilitating us all getting through. Due to wind and current, our pace then slowed, and we only made the restricted Figure Eight Island Swing Bridge because the opening was delayed to accommodate a fire truck returning from an emergency on the Island.

The longest wait, with the most traffic milling about, was at the Wrightsville Beach Bridge. Tommy kept us back out of the fray, and managed C Ghost well in strong current (2 knots) and a somewhat narrow channel.

The boats spoke by VHF as needed and desired, and each looked out after the others. Shortly before Wrightsville Beach Bridge, Paula, piloting midway between a green buoy and an area of docks attached to homes, suddenly found herself in much shallower water than expected (6 feet) in an area that the chart indicated should have had plenty of depth (12 feet expected). The radio crackled to life: “C Ghost, you need to favor the dock,” and Paula gratefully swung the bow starboard into a welcome 10 feet of water, despite the chart showing shallows there. It was the sailboat ahead of us to the rescue, who knew that there had been recent shoaling that shifted the normal contour of the shallows, not yet reflected by the charts or buoys. We radioed our thanks.

Just after Wrightsville Beach Bridge, we made the hard left into Mott’s Channel heading to SeaPath Yacht club. This time we closely favored the green 25 buoy there, as the Yacht Club had advised us to do when we made our reservation. Again wind and current made our approach tricky, as Tom had to make a U-turn and approach the face-dock for a starboard tie-up into the current. We had lines ready and the dock hand was nimble. We quickly had a bow and stern line secured, then added forward and aft springs and two bumpers.

In the Yacht Club office we met the couple from the lead boat of our “flotilla”, who greeted us cordially, and offered us advice about boating conditions post-Matthew in South Carolina, their home state.

We cleaned up a bit, eagerly anticipating our planned visit from Olivia and Jared ( our niece and her husband). They arrived promptly and seemed very interested in touring C Ghost for the first time, asking lots of questions. They are renovating a sturdy home with a good amount of property in Carolina Beach, doing almost all of the work themselves. So it was fun to see the parallels between the improvements we’ve made and wish to make to our floating home and the ones Olivia and Jared are making to their land-based home.

They drove us to the Bluewater Grill, just a short hop away, and we enjoyed seafood dinners on the outside deck facing the water and the Wrightsville Beach Bridge we had just passed under hours before. Then in was back to C Ghost, for more conversation, observation of shooting stars and dolphins, and experimentation with the night vision monocular. A great visit. We hope Olivia and Jared will visit again, and can’t wait to see how their home projects develop.