November 7

With only thirty nine miles to go today, we didn't leave Morehead City until 0800 this morning. The winds were considerably down from yesterday and from the north. Because of our direction of travel along the coast, the land sheltered us from the worst of the winds. Things were going very well all day with speeds with the tidal current sometimes over nine miles per hour. It was a beautiful sunny day with a chill that our enclosure kept out nicely. We were within an hour of our anchorage at Mile Hammock when Walt ran aground. We came upon two sailboats that were aground. A trawler had worked its way through and had called back to warn others. We were able to work our way through though we did not go the way the channel was marked. Instead we followed what we believed to be the advice of the trawler and the wake of another sailboat following that advice. That sailboat was on the radio with us when it went aground. It quickly got off however and made it through. We had no problem never seeing less that 7.5 feet. Eagle's Wings was not as lucky and ran aground and couldn't find a way out. TowboatUS was called and the guy began sorting out the boats and helping others who showed up to find the channel. Walt was the last guy helped. The towboat guy was told by Walt that he wasn't aground at that point. The guy said that he was because he had to feed his family and he would "tow" Walt off. That was the one laugh in the incident. We had waited up the line a bit for Walt. We radioed him that we might be able to make the bridge opening on the hour if we hustled. We made it but Walt was too far away and had to wait another half hour for the next opening. We went half speed waiting for him to catch up and went into the anchorage just ahead of him. The night promises to be a cold one with frost and freeze warnings posted and little wind.