ANCHORING OUT - 2ND ROUND

April 24-25, 2026

Realizing that stress is what you make it, meaning it can work for you or against you. Today was a day when it worked against us. We had decided to anchor out after leaving Wilmington. There was construction being completed on the Wrightsville Beach bridge and boats that are wide can’t go through when they are working on it. So, we were planning on waiting until Saturday morning (April 25) to go through when they weren’t working on it. Well, every other boat was thinking the same thing and when we got to the anchor area there were already 9 boats in the lagoon. We tried setting an anchor, but a boat came in right behind us and quickly dropped anchor in our swing area (boats move back and forth due to wind while anchored). We pulled up the anchor and started back down the ICW thinking we could find another spot. Well, we went a couple of miles and there was nothing. I called the Wrightsville Beach bridge and by this time (around 4 p.m. on a Friday), the construction crew was gone.

We turned around and headed up to the bridge, waited for it to open on the hour and went to Swansboro to anchor. It was windy, but it worked. The main stressor with anchoring is Bella’s unwillingness to potty on the artificial turf we bought for her. By the time we went to bed, it had been 12 hours since she had peed. We got up around 6 a.m. and put her in the tender, motored over to the town dock and she peed immediately (hence the picture of her peeing to the right). It turned out to be a lovely Saturday morning. We found coffee, walked the streets of Swansboro, chatted with a few folks out and then had a very nice breakfast at Yana’s.