Our cruise from Oriental to Swansboro was uneventful, and the rain let up as we started, so our weather was sunny and warm with temps in the 70’s. We’ve anchored in the river adjacent to Swansboro on previous occasions, and enjoy walking the streets of this sleepy historic town. Swansboro dates from 1783. It has a history as a port, a hub of transport in early Carolina, a boat-building center, was the site of Swansboro Land & Lumber that operated from about 1870 to about 1917. Swansboro today is dotted with delightful shops and lots of interesting historic architecture. It’s always a pleasant overnight stop with a convenient anchorage with good holding and a great spot to stretch our legs.
We left Swansboro Friday morning bound for Wrightsville Beach. There are several bridges on the route to deal with, two of which are restricted openings that require a nearly wide-open throttle run to make the distance to the next bridge opening, or wait an hour for the next opening. We lucked out on both bridges, one operator held the bridge for longer than he should, uncommon for many of the operators who can be downright cranky sometimes! We arrived in Wrightsville Beach in the afternoon to great weather. Saturday we found a spot along the channel where Molly could enjoy some beach time. Her first real swim of the cruise, she was a pooped pup that evening! We decided to stay a day or two, then extended it to four as a front settled in Saturday night with lots of rain chilly weather. The approach of the front was accompanied by winds of about 30-35 kts. We dragged anchor and ended up re-anchoring at 4 in the morning. Just a part of livin’ the dream! After three days of hanging around in the rain, we decided it was time to move on, rain or not. We hauled anchor on Tuesday morning and headed south!
