Video Transcript

30 days on the Loop, hundreds of miles, and definitely not enough burgers. In this video, we battle low bridges and a military training range. That’s right, we have to make it through Camp Lejeune. Stay tuned for this awesome video.

Welcome to day 30 on the Great Loop. Man, it has gone by so fast.

Today is cruising day number 18. We left Wrightsville, AKA Wakesville, this morning, and we’re heading to Swansboro. So we’re planning to do a 50-mile day.

One interesting thing about today’s cruise is we’ll be going through Camp Lejeune. It’s a military base, and they close the ICW for live fire. So there are certain times when they’re doing training, and they have boats that will stop you, and you can’t go through. Sometimes it’s all day, sometimes they only let boats pass through every four or five hours. It’s a thing you have to watch out for.

I called them yesterday afternoon. You should call after 3 p.m., and there’s a phone number right on Aqua Map – take a look there. I called and the gentleman was super nice. He told me he just got the schedule, put me on hold for a few minutes, and came back and said there was nothing for today. So we’re good to go. Now, there’s also a website you can check that has to do with the noise ordinance, and it did show that they’re going to be doing artillery training and rocket training, and it’ll be noisy through that area.

But there was nothing on the website that specifically stated if the ICW was open or not, which I feel like that’d be a smart place to put it. But yeah, just made the call, and that was it.

We anchored at Masonboro Inlet last night. It was absolutely beautiful to wake up to listening to the waves this morning. We could see the ocean, and it was quiet and peaceful. Now, we did get waked quite a bit yesterday once we got in and dropped our anchor, because we arrived around 2 p.m., and everybody was going to the beaches.

That’s just how it was. There’s quite a few boats anchored near us, and people were just not caring about the anchored boats and flying by, but that’s how it goes.

I do want to mention if you’re going to that anchorage, we have a three and a half foot draft, and we kissed the bottom leaving with one foot of tide. We left not long after low tide at one foot advantage, and just barely kissed the bottom. In fact, I actually looked at the area at low tide visually yesterday afternoon, and then I flew the drone this morning and looked to see where the showing kind of was, because it was not accurate to Aqua Map in the last Corps of Engineers survey. I actually had to move over, but it worked out just fine. We got out of there. Just keep that in mind. You have to pay attention to the tides.

Also when you’re going through Wrightsville, there’s a bridge that only opens I think on the hour or half hour if I remember correctly.

Wow, it only opened on the hour. We would have had to wait another 45 minutes.

Now with us, we were able to get by it. I think it was like 16 foot of clearance. So we were able to get through, but you’re going to have to plan accordingly because it only opens certain times of the day.

I was texting with Kevin from Mathers on the Map. They just got back to their boat and I was telling him where we’re at. He’s like, hey, watch out for the Onslow Bridge. I appreciate that. I called Camp Lejeune, but didn’t think about the bridges today for whatever reason. Luckily, we might be able to fit.

When I called, they said that their clearance is about 15 feet depending on the tide. And we’re essentially 15 feet up to the top of the bimini. And if we drop the bimini down, we’re 11.5 feet. Basically 13 feet we can get underneath. But anything higher than 13 feet, it’s not really doable. And if you look at AquaMap, the Onslow Bridge says they have a 12 foot clearance at high water.

Luckily, when I put it into Aqua Map, we should actually arrive there right about 1 p.m. on the top of the hour. When I called the bridge tender this morning, she said that the bridge opens on the hour, the top of the hour and the bottom of the hour, which I hadn’t heard that expression before. So I was said, “OK, top of the hour.” She said, “no, top of the hour and bottom of the hour.” I did a little internet search and that just means every half hour. Between certain times, it opens every half hour, and then outside of that, it’s on demand.

You know how the bridges are. They always have crazy different time periods. But this one’s pretty simple.

This is Mile Hammock Bay. This is a common anchorage you can stop at whenever the area through Camp Lejeune is closed, which we’ll be going into soon. The Onslow Bridge is probably about three miles north of here, so you could stop here if you’re waiting for a bridge opening or you can’t make the schedule. I feel like recently there was some construction. So they had some really weird times. Another spot to be able to hang out. It’s a nice little spot.

What’s going on?

Filling the dinghy for the first time.

First time ever on the whole Loop?

We filled it in Titusville. Which was…

Gosh, that was so early! Day two or something?

Yeah. But at that time I filled the dinghy up and I also filled this two gallon tank. I don’t know how much is left in there, but it’s low.

I love this fuel tank. I love that it goes underneath the seat. And it’s in the front, which is handy. Kind of balances away a little bit better. And then also it has a handle, which is really handy.

Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.

Riding some wake. Did that scare you a little?

It did, haha. Sorry.

We’ve run aground to quote Elyse earlier in the Loop.

Oh no, did I curse us?

We’ve definitely run aground. Just waiting for the wind to blow us off of the shoal and then put the engine back down and we’ll keep on keeping on.

I saw you trolling earlier.

Yeah, the engine decided to turn off for some reason. It took me a while to get it going again. Maybe it got flooded somehow because we had it tilted up in the shallows.

Well how did you like the town?

Some of the things that made it fun – I think the nautical theme is cool, all the cool old buildings, like the older houses, and the cute little shops. And the people were super super nice, which it’s known as a friendly city, and it definitely was. The food was delicious, too!

Friendly city by the sea, perhaps?

Swansboro is an excellent town for boaters – the people are super friendly there’s a free dinghy dock. In fact, the Church Street Dock that we took the dinghy to you can actually overnight there as well. There’s hookups and everything, if you want to pay for that.

We anchored nearby but the town was really nice, the people were really friendly, and it had this kind of cool nautical theme to it. It wasn’t a very far walk to the Piggly Wiggly to get some groceries, so all in all an excellent stop for us.

We ended up staying for two nights because it rained on us the entire next day, which is never really fun from a flybridge. Plus we needed to get some work done editing these videos. These YouTube videos take us anywhere between 12 to 20 hours to create.

I want to mention that the videos are not in real time because it takes us so long to edit them, and we’re filming every single cruise day and making a video out of every single cruise day. We’re gonna be putting out videos for the probably at least over the next year, if not longer. If you like the Great Loop content please join us. Thank you so much for watching and we’ll catch you next week!