Fog In The Morning And A Surprise At The Next Anchorage

We did have a very peaceful night and the rain finally went away by sunset. A sailboat came in late and shared the anchorage with us. The next morning was clear at sunrise, but we noticed heavy fog in the canal that we needed to transit to head south. It looked as if a large cloud had settled into the canal and was spilling out the entrance. We decided to wait a bit for the fog bank to lift because we had transited narrow canals in dense fog before and it is not a fun experience. We were catching up on some weather information on the Weather Channel when we noticed the fog was getting closer to us. Before we knew it, our entire anchorage was completely socked in. Did I mention that there was not a word about fog from the National Weather Service on the VHF reports? At this point, we had no choice but to wait until the sun was a little higher and burned the fog off. This can happen quickly or take hours.

By 7:30 AM, the fog disappeared as quickly as it appeared and we hauled up the anchor. It was now an hour and a half later that we wanted to get started. But then that is cruising, you have to always expect the unexpected. We have a friend that is always fond of saying, “It’s just part of the adventure.” Our northeast guesscast for winds turned out to be westerlies all day. We headed down the Alligator River-Pungo River Canal and into the Pungo River. This would be our fallback stop should things get ugly crossing the Pamlico and heading down the Neuse River. Both of these bodies of water can be just as daunting as the Albermarle and should be respected in foul conditions. We would have to pass up the town of Belhaven this time, which is another of our favorite stops along the Waterway. At a little past 12:30 PM, we entered the Pamlico River.

The rest of the day was uneventful, but as we neared the turn off on the Neuse River to Adams Creek, the wind had pick up a bit from the south and we were getting some chop that slowed our progress. Did I mention the the forecast was for northeasterly winds? We considered stopping in Oriental since we had never been there in all of our trips up or down the ICW. But after some discussion, we decided to press on another 7 or 8 miles to our familiar anchorage off Adams Creek behind the upper range marker. This would put us off the Neuse River and we would not have to be concerned about what the conditions were in the morning. Other than Bogue Sound, we would be in protected waters for the next day.


As we turned into Adams Creek, we noticed right away that the entire Creek outside the marked channel, and even in the channel, was covered with floats for fish traps. We can not ever remember there being so many here in the past. It wasn’t until we had reached the turn off to our anchorage at Cedar Creek that we noticed that the floats also carpeted the entire anchorage area and there was practically no space to anchor that the boat would not swing over a float. This is a total shame since this was, until now, a very popular anchorage stop and would often be filled with boats heading north or south. We can only assume they have overfished the Neuse River and now are concentrating all their efforts in the smaller creeks. It was getting late and the question was, now what?

On our last visit here we had found that the charted depths to a small creek in the northeast corner were not correct and it was in fact plenty deep enough for us to negotiate the creek and anchor for the evening. But would that too be covered with floats? The entrance to Jonaquin Creek is difficult to find unless you know where it is and it is not visible until you are right on top of it. The entrance is only about 60 feet wide, but opens up once inside the creek. As we approached the entrance, we saw floats inside the creek but also noted an open spot just inside. The depths up to the entrance run 7 to 7 1/2 feet and 6 1/2 feet once inside. It can get to 8 feet, but because of the floats, we had to settle for just inside the entrance in a 6 1/2-foot spot. We had set out a blow on the Neuse River on our trip north for a couple of days here and we knew the holding was good. The anchored grabbed right away and at 6:00 PM we were home for the evening. We always say home is wherever the boat is. Our GPS coordinates for the anchorage are N 34 56.235’ and W 076 38.437’. We settled in for dinner, a movie and a good nights’ rest. Tomorrow is another day.