After an unsuccessful wait to get fuel this morning, the fuel dock was supposed to open at 8am, we gave up waiting and left. We have two full fuel cans and a fair amount in the tank so we’re not worried about running out.
The ICW for first bit was quite industrial bit soon changed to a lot of beautiful big houses along the west side of the channel. We saw a few shrimp boats, a barge or two, before we got to Camp LeJeune which is a marine base. We saw what we assumed were target tanks and landing craft on the east side of the channel. The ICW is now hugging the Atlantic Ocean. There is usually a fairly narrow strip of land to the east of the ICW and then the Atlantic.
We anchored in Mile Hammock Bay, which is a basin kept dredged by the military, they use it on their exercises. I counted 14 boats in the anchorage before we closed our hatch. I was sitting in the cockpit reading when I saw a woman in a dinghy going around to all the boats in the anchorage. She was delivering “Happy Hallowe’en” goodie bags, what a nice surprise. She was from a beautiful Grand Banks motor yacht called Waterlily. I know the type of boat because she included her boat card with the goodies. We don’t think it’s at all common in Canada but here most boaters have boat cards, which is like a business card, to exchange. Bob had some made for us last year, partly in preparation for this trip. We’ve already given out a few.
There was a beautiful sunset and we expect it to be a very calm night. We did read in one of our guide books that there may be some noise from the base, I heard at least two helicopters before we went to bed, they sounded like they were going to land very close to us. Bob had downloaded Lady in a Van (with Maggie Smith) when we were in Oriental with a good wifi connection, we watched it tonight. A very good movie and based mostly on a true story.