Hurry up - Wait

Location: Wrightsville Beach, NC
Position: N34 03.2 W077 53.3

You may think that we spend much of our time relaxing and having fun - and you'd probably be right, at least in part. We also spend a portion of our time every day in an exercise in logistics working our way down the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW).

First - There are lots of bridges that cross the ICW. Some are 65 feet high - no problem - we can travel right under them. Others, probably 2/3 of them so far, are bridges that are less than our mast height of 58' and need to open for us to pass. Of these, Some are on demand - meaning that we can call the bridge tender on our VHF radio and, when it's a good time for them, they open the bridge. Most, however, are on either an hourly or half-hourly schedule and we need to time our arrivals to coincide with their schedule.

Second - there are inlets, tides and currents that need to be taken into consideration. In some areas the currents are very strong so it is important to time our passage with the tides. It's easy enough to miss a bridge opening when there's a knot of current against you on your way there, and just as easy to get there early and have to do the "waiting for the bridge - let's not run into each other" dance when you've got the current with you.

Every evening we sit down and look at what we have ahead of us for tomorrow. We look at the bridge opening times and work back to figure out what time we should leave and what our average speed for each leg of the trip needs to be to make the openings on time. Then we look at the inlets to see if there are any tide considerations (we're still working on that one). Then we have a conflab about the pros and cons of bridges, tides, shoaling, etc. for the day.

Today we left the anchorage at 6am so that we could make the 4 opening bridges at just the right times and pass the inlets with the current in our favour and make our anchorage in the daylight. In one way it is a bit of a pain, but in others, it's a fun challenge and a bit like solving a puzzle. Not so hard in the long run, actually, for a couple of computer geeks.

we had a successful journey today. Made all the bridges, did not run aground, and arrived at our chosen destination well before dark - AND - we are still talking to each other.

"Huh?"

"Nothing. Never mind!"

"Oh. Okay."