Baldhead Island

4-5 June

Charleston -> Baldhead Island - 126NM

We left Charleston at high tide and headed off to Baldhead island.. The wind was generally from the south, so we managed to sail, but we had to slow down as  we didn't want to arrive before sunrise... At 80NM from Baldhead Island, I managed to call the Marina (on my VHF, previous record was 50 NM) to get our dock numbers, just in case we couldn't slow down and would arrive in the dark... The sea was pretty calm, but was forecast to get a bit rambunctious later on Sunday..

I decided to drop my sail at midnight as the thing was flapping... The rest of the night was pretty calm, and as we approached the Cape fear river, the sea was living up to the forecast, the wind was constantly over 20 with whitecaps all around.  Nordic Belle went in first and from a distance I saw her spin around a couple of times, as I was approaching, I got a call on the wireless, Nordic Belle was warning me of the entrance....  I was on my approach and I called the marina for help docking - I was advised to stand off so I broke off my approach..  I then decided to try again, and true to the advice given, I had to ferry glide into the entrance, with the engine at 2300 rpm (doing 6.5kts) - some plonker on hearing I was coming in (and the Marina warning of a small boat potentially leaving), decided to try and leave - wasn't going to happen, I was pretty much blocking the entrance to the marina, up till about 1/2 way in...

We docked, snugged the boats and checked the forecast... It wasn't looking good and it looked as though we would be here till Friday..  Fortunately the weather has been more benign than forecast (which is NICE), so I spent the greater part of yesterday preparing the updates to the blog, keeping an eye on the weather and later in the afternoon, I went for a 40min jog around the Island..

View from Fuel Dock

We are close to a spring tide, with a bit of the storm surge and it's quite nice to the dock almost higher than the land..

High tide

Low tide

From 2am today, the forecast was TS Colin to give us some wind... Fortunately, it seems as though it has passed us - we went for a trip to the north end of the island to look at the seas and other than at cape fear itself, it looked ok...

The plan for tomorrow, is to leave at 0700, on the slack tide and head up to Ceesecake Bay..