ROUGH START, LONG DAY

The winds on Bald Head picked up to about 25 knots over night with even higher gusts. Bald Head is situated right at the mouth of an inlet. We planned on an early departure, as we wanted to do over 80 miles today. We got up , the wind was blowing, and we had a tough jetty to power through to get out of the marina. We were nervous about this, but assessed the situation and decided to "just do it". All went well (sigh of relief). Throughout the day, we hit several very shoaled spots and bridges to wait for....we missed one bridge opening by 5 minutes and had to wait an hour for the next opening . Not fun when you have shallow water on the side and current pushing you forward.
We arrived at Swansboro, NC about 5PM, walked onto the historic, quaint town and had a great dinner. The Captain is very tired tonight!

This poor barge ran aground. Notice the itty bitty Sea Tow trying to pull him off the shoal.