The Anchor's Up (1 hour 20 minutes before schedule)!

Weather: Mostly sunny; low in the mid 60’s high in the mid 70’s; light wind until about 1200 hours; motor sailed for most of the day with the engines throttled way back (almost to idle speed).

Comment: As usual, we jumped the gun for departure! Instead of the planned 0745 departure, we started hauling the anchor at 0620. Fran and Larry did a Chinese fire drill to pull their anchor. Sorry guys! We saw that you were up and on the bow. We thought it was time to pull up the anchor. It seems we can never actually haul the anchor at the appointed time.

We were underway at 0630 and headed for the Onslow Beach Swing Bridge. Because two trawlers from the anchorage were waiting, we had enough time to “catch up.” It was a different story for “Kallista.” They appeared to us to be only a minute away from the bridge, but the bridge tender closed the bridge telling “Kallista” and two following sailboats that they would have to wait for the 0730 opening.

After clearing Camp Lejune, we unrolled the jib and motor-sailed all the way to Morehead City. We throttled back on the engines and enjoyed a very quiet ride.

“Kallista” arrived just as we were clearing the Morehead Yacht Basin fuel dock. We passed them on the way to our “T” head and tied up. “Kallista” tied up right behind us after fueling up.

After some R&R, the four of us took off on a walk around Morehead City and eventually had dinner at the “Sanitary” Seafood restaurant. The meals could best be described as average and the bill came to just under $50.00 for two; not too bad we guess.

During the walk back to the boats, we vowed to leave together, without the Chinese fire drill, at 0700. We are headed for Oriental where we expect to wait out approaching weather that may keep us at the dock until Wednesday.