Anchored at Cape Lookout, NC

Saturday 4 Dec, Cape Lookout anchorage, cruising day 7: Salt washing, drone flights and re-anchoring.

We wake to the 9am alarm. What an amazing sleep! Always the best after a passage, assuming where you stop is sheltered, of course. When we arrived last evening, we could have gone directly into Beaufort town, but we chose to anchor in the sheltered bight behind Cape Lookout lighthouse. Beaufort town anchorage is in a channel with tidal currents. It is usually pretty busy with other anchored boats, all of which swing randomly when the tide changes. Mooring up in the Town Dock marina is possible, but we won’t pay $160 a night when we have no need to. Secondly, we only need to go to town for our appointment with the CBP (Customs and Border Protection agency) and they don’t work on the weekends. Anchored here in the bight is quiet and peaceful. Only 3 boats here this morning, in an anchorage that could easily accommodate 50+. So we will be hermits, and stay here till Monday.

Our first realization today is the warmth. It is already 20 degC outside and even warmer in the cockpit enclosure. For the first time in months, we didn’t need the cabin heater on. And for the first time for ages, we have breakfast in the cockpit. Wonderful.
Outside, despite the warmth of the morning sun, the deck (in fact pretty much everything) is soaking wet due to the salt attracting the humidity. Making it impossible to touch anything without getting salty. It’s time for Cloudy’s first bath while cruising! In just shorts, tee shirt and rubber boots, I set to it with the deck wash hose. First with sea water (to loosen up any hardening salt) then a rinse off with fresh water from our water tanks. We use quite a bit of our water this way, but it’s not an issue. We will just make more. Our water maker puts out over 150 litre per hour.

Then it’s a flight with the drone over the bight. For some reason we didn’t fly it last time we were here. In fact, I fly it twice. Once in the bright sun light, and once as the sun is setting. From the air, the bight is quite interesting geography. With a bit more blue to the water and white to the sand, it could almost look like a scene from the Bahamas. From the boat, the surrounding sand dunes look deserted. But from the drone we can see there are people camping on the beach on the seaward side, plus lots of small boats out there, fishing we presume. It’s also interesting to see so many cars on the windward beaches, given this is an island with no roads. I wonder how they get there.

We also spend quite some time capturing photos from the videos we took during the passage, for adding to the recent blog posts. And writing the script for the last few days blogs takes some time. We are now behind by 3 days.

As the sun sets, we decide to move anchorage position. From the drone footage, it is clear we are rather close to a shallow spot. The wind is due to swing 180 degrees tonight, SW to NE, and it might put us up on the mud! We move just 200m and end up more in the middle of the anchorage. A bit of a faff, but when the wind swings mid evening and rapidly builds to 20kts, we are very glad we had moved. I really don’t know what came over me to anchor so close to the beach on arrival. Need to brush-up my anchoring skills.

It seems we have quite definitely moved into cruising mode now. Our list of jobs-to-do is already getting longer, but the desire to do them is no longer there! It’s just too pleasant to be lazy for once!