Barefoot Landing to Wrightsville Beach

--Blogpost Written by Bob

Barefoot Landing SC to Ocean Isle NC

Originally, we planned to travel from Barefoot Landing to Southport NC, transiting two ICW problem areas (Shallotte Inlet and Lockwood's Folly Inlet) late in the day as the tide was rising.  However, last night we changed our plan to travel just 18 miles today to Ocean Isle NC and get a slip 2 miles before the first obstacle.  

It rained last night for less than an hour.  It was cool this morning after the rain. I called Ocean Isle Marina at 8 AM and snagged a transient slip for tonight.  This puts us in a perfect position to tackle both Shallotte Inlet and Lockwood’s Folly Inlet at the early morning’s high tide.  At the marina, we may be aground in the slip at low tide—so, we are timing our departure from Barefoot Landing Marina at 11 AM so that we arrive st Ocean Isle Marina at 2 PM (on a rising tide).  In making these types of plans it is difficult to judge our boat speed because we are subject to different tidal currents even through today’s short 3-hour trip—so for planning, I use an average boat speed of 5.5 knots or 6.325 mph.

S/V Rainy Days tied up to Barefoot
Landing Marina on April 27.

At 10:45 AM (Friday, April 27) we left our slip at Barefoot Landing Marina and motored directly across the ICW to Barefoot Marina for fuel, fresh water, and ice cubes.

This is a close-up view of ICW boat scum that
accumulates at the waterline.  It also causes
our white hull to be colored brownish.

The Barefoot Landing Swing Bridge
opened for us this morning.

This morning after passing through the Barefoot Landing Swing Bridge we entered what is known as the “Rock Pile” where the ICW was literally blasted through rock deposits. Rock ledges on the channel have caused some serious problems, mostly to power boats. (A sailboat’s keel seems to protect a sailboat from serious damage but you can’t be too careful.)  The “Rock Pile” extends from Barefoot Landing (MM 353) to MM 347, a distance of about 6 miles.

Danger - Rocks
(No kidding!)

We got through the “Rock Pile” unscathed but shortly thereafter our autopilot showed an error message “current limit exceeded.”  We manually steered through the Little River area and the remainder of the day.  I looked up the error message online and found other references to it but no solutions that we can implement immediately. 

 

We got a transient slip on the face
dock at Ocean Isle Marina.

We arrived at Ocean Isle Marina at 12:30 PM and it was dead low tide—I think we plowed through a few inches of mud getting to the face dock.  Fortunately, we won’t be leaving until high tide tomorrow morning.  Ocean Isle Marina is primarily a small power boat marina but they are very accommodating and the facility is beautiful.  (They have GREAT showers too!)

Ocean Isle NC to Wrightsville Beach

Even though we turned the autopilot off to reset the error message last night, we decided to manually steer past the two ocean inlets: Shallotte Inlet and Lockwood's Folly Inlet.  We departed from Ocean Isle Marina at 7:15 AM.  High tide was at 7:43 AM, 1/2-hour later.

We departed from Ocean Isle Marina at 7:15 AM. It was cool and there was virtually no wind nor tidal current.

We got through both ICW problems areas by 9:30 AM!  I am so glad we passed through them at high tide.  Rather than follow my waypoints from last fall, I tried to just follow the markers and our notes—I should have simply followed my waypoints (they were very good). Lockwood’s Folly turned out to be the worst of the two, coming from the south.  It was probably good that I had to hand steer instead of using the autopilot (it still doesn’t work). (We were too busy navigating to take photographs.) As we got past the two ocean inlets, the tidal current was against us.

As we entered the Cape Fear River we faced 4.5 knots of opposing tidal current at the beginning—we could only get our boat speed up to 3 knots! As we got further up the river, the tidal flow lessened to about 2.5 knots. By the time we got into Snows Cut, the direction of the tidal current had shifted giving us a boost in speed.

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I did some online research about the error message (Current Limit Exceeded) we are getting on our autopilot and the problem appears to be in the linear drive unit (it’s 10 years old).  So, we plan to stop at Hartge’s Yacht Yard on our way back and have the linear drive unit removed.  I’ll send it off to the manufacturer (RayMarine) for repairs and have it reinstalled during our summer haulout.  We will manually steer the remainder of our trip—this will be like having one less crew member.  We really miss Otto!

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It is Saturday and lots of people are out fishing in the ICW—some are fishing from piers and others from small fishing boats. As we got close to Wrightsville Beach the power boating scene was like a madhouse. At 4 PM we pulled into our reserved slip at Seapath Yacht Club, a T-head on “C” Pier. We celebrated our arrival with frozen margaritas (using a margarita mix that doesn’t contain sugar and is low-carb). We expect to stay here for 3 nights before moving on.  Stay tuned for more of our adventure in Wrightsville Beach NC...

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