Carolina Beach, NC, December 3 - 8, 2021

      Our next trip south was a very easy hop down the North Carolina coast to a beach town called Carolina Beach.  It had a pretty protected harbor, the only real downside was that it was a bit of a long haul from the ocean to the spot where we stopped.  It was one of the easiest trips I've ever made.  We could do the entire journey in a single day and the seas were as calm as could be.

Barely even a wrinkle of the surface of the Atlantic today

We did have one technical problem where the wind gauge refused to indicate anything.  Because there are so many redundant systems, we could see the correct wind speed and direction on several other displays throughout the boat, just not on the main one you use at the helm.  This wasn't really a problem because the win was like 2 knots, so we were motoring anyhow.  But it was one more thing to add to my to-do list.  Fortunately I "fixed" it by rebooting because the next time I turned everything on it was working just fine.  It has continued to work fine ever since.  I'm sure it will break again at the most inopportune time.

There are absolutely supposed be numbers here.

     This was also our first mooring ball on Dragonfly.  Some towns install floats to anchors set in the sea floor for boats to tie up to.  This prevents problems with boats at anchor drifting free and bouncing off one another.  It also allows them to charge a fee, which discourages derelict vessels from just hanging out in the harbor forever.  Additionally, they can pack the boats in pretty tightly, because when you anchor you need to lay down a length of chain to ensure that you don't come loose.  Moorings rely (usually) on concrete set down into the sea floor and allow each boat to tie up pretty snugly.

In addition to seeing Dragonfly tied to our mooring, you can see a pelican has claimed the next one up.

     Carolina Beach is definitely not a town built around the sailing business.  It has a vibe more like Virginia Beach or Ocean City with loads of rental houses and tourist trap restaurants.  I'm quite sure that if you spent long enough there or did enough research, you could find all the good spots.  We had some quality recommendations, but because it was out of season, most of them were closed.  We still managed to find some excellent meals, because that is the one thing I'm good at.  

    Our first night there, Lisa was ready to pack up and move because there was an absolute bedlam of sirens and fire truck noises and it sounded like we were in some kind of really bad neighborhood.  It turned out to be the town Christmas parade which didn't last very long at all.  Even better, they had an extensive boat parade the next night.  It was some kind of competition with garish lights, music blasted over loud speakers and numbers displayed for you to vote for your favorite.  Like most things involving boaters, it was very disorganized and there were a number of angry words exchanged on the VHF radios as the boats staged for the start of the parade.  Listening in to the harangues and the pleas by the Coast Guard to please chill out was probably the actual highlight.  I've attached a video of the boat that got my vote, but there were a number of close contenders.  One guy had go-go dancers which was made more impressive by the fact that it was 49 degrees.

A Dragon, dancing kids and fancy boat driving.  He earned my vote

     At the end of the day, I'm not sure this would be a place I'd pick to stop again.  Its in an awkward spot because you have nearly a two hour detour to get here because we can't go under the bridge to use the ICW to make the direct route south.  Instead we had to go back out to the ocean and then there is a massive sandbar called "Frying Pan Shoals" which is huge and shallow and a bad idea to drive across unless the conditions are perfectly settled and its probably unwise even then.  So we had to go far to the east to circle it and it took probably 4 hours to cover what we could have done in 30 minutes if we could use the ICW to get out of Dodge.

     It was a pretty good sized town, so we were able to find groceries to stock up on fresh fruit and veg and the like.  The scenery from the boardwalk was pretty and the restaurants that were open were good.  The price of $10 a night couldn't be beat (unless you anchored for free, which many folks opted to do).  The mooring field was in massive demand for the boat parade.  So much so that when one guy showed up with his reservation, there weren't any available spots.  The guy who runs the field soon showed up and went boat to boat checking against his list and soon evicted the person who tried to sneak in to watch the parade without paying his $10.


Location: Carolina Beach, NC 28428, USA

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