Mile Hammock

June 4, 2013
34 33 117 N
77 19 512 W

Back in October 2012 when we were making our way south thru the North Carolina ICW I vowed that from that point on I would never travel this section of the ICW again. But here we are again. It was just too rough to "go outside" this morning so we set off up the ICW and i got pissed off all over again.

"Look at me" house on the ICW

There has been a lot of progress over the last 10 years replacing opening bridges with high bridges, but not so much in NC. Between Wrightsville Beach and Beaufort there are still 4 opening bridges. To make matters worse, the powers to be in North Carolina have decided that car traffic has priority over water traffic (at least the ones that need the bridges to be opened) and so the bridge openings are restricted to essentially once per hour. Plus the bridge in the camp LeJeune is closed when the marines are playing with live ammo. We never made it thru the LeJeune bridge because the marines are on exercise and the bridge was "closed".

Osprey landing "just over there"

So we "gave up" and have anchored in dredged basin near the marine base - it was dredged in WW2 to be used to practice amphibious operations.We are told that one can typically hear the noise of the war games - in fact an "Osprey" just flew over the boat and landed in the bush 1/4 mile away. Interesting. Maybe we won't have to watch TV tonight!

I just called the Marine HQ about bridge opening tomorrow and they did not seem to be quite sure. And here I thought that after "sequestration" they could not afford any bullets.

Here is a video for those who can open it.