The ICW is basically a watery interstate route filled with natural breathtaking beauty and engineered paths connecting the waterways. In North Carolina the ICW runs for almost 300 miles and has large tidal flow, inlets currents, creeks and rivers, shallow water and active dredging barges. Three Sons cruised the 271 miles of the ICW through North Carolina and meandered around the obstacles in 5 days.
We continued to make strategic stops with the priority being to get to Virginia to have the boat hauled and stabilizers fixed. Our stops included: Southport, Hampstead, Adams Creek-anchorage, Belhaven and Coinjock.
Southport, NC
Hampstead, NC
Adams Creek, Anchorage
A gorgeous day: high 80’s, low wind and currents in our favor, most of the time. Our intention was to travel to Beaufort, NC and anchor. While cruising, we checked the weather outlook for the next few days, including the conditions to cross the Albemarle Sound. The weather had changed. Our intended day to cross the sound was predicting to be windier than we like. So, we adjusted plans and decided to try and make the crossing a day earlier when the winds looks calmer. This meant, we skipped Beaufort and continued north to an anchorage just south of the Neuse River.
Our next stop will be Belhaven, NC, the next day we will go the distance. An 11 hour cruise across Pungo River, up the Alligator River-Pungo River Canal, across the Albemarle Sound and then up to Coinjock.
Belhaven, NC
A stark comparison to yesterday’s beautiful weather. Today was cold, windy and the chop in the Neuse did not give a fun ride. We have stopped at Belhaven many times and had an extended stay here in the fall. Still one of our favorite little towns. We decided to try the well regarded and highly reviewed Belhaven Marina. An adorable marina with lots of unique touches, unfortunately we felt the dock master was a tad rude when we were docking. We had a nice relaxing day walking the little streets in Belhaven, checking out the library, visiting our favorite ice cream shop and finally trying Spoon River for dinner.
Coinjock, NC
Coinjock is a marina with a restaurant on the side of the ICW with absolutely nothing else around. It is an extremely convenient place to dock for the night and grab a good meal. They know they as the only gig in town and charge for it, but considering not a lot of good anchorages around, we pay.
The route to Coinjock is to cross the Albemarle Sound. It can be an ugly crossing with the wrong wind and the next few days were going to have the wrong wind. So, we decided to do a very long run (77NM/10hours 2minutes) from Belhaven to Coinjock to avoid a sloppy bumpy crossing. Our average speed was higher than usually thinking it was a good use of expensive diesel to chop some time off this long run.
