DAY 16

The best laid plans, I should have known, or, at least we're done.....

We only had 25 miles to go and we were going to ride the tide North so we 
almost waited a few hours. Instead, the people in the marina told us that 
the last bridge would open on request rather than twice a day....so we left 
at a little after 8. We turned the corner to go up the river and wouldn't 
you know, the winds quickly rose to 25 to 30 plus. With the forecast 
suggesting rain late and while there were gale warnings on the coast, I 
thought they meant the Atlantic coast, not the Cape Fear River coast! Oh 
well. The rain started immediately AND it had SLEET with it! Another nice 
day! At least we had the tide with us, or did we...The visibility wasn't 
good so we didn't have a real visual aid to judge our speed but when I 
looked at the GPS and saw 2.6 kts., I knew we were in trouble. We were 
supposed to be 1 hour into the rising tide but the river didn't know that 
OR, somebody forgot to remind me that it not only rained hard for the 
previous day but it WAS a river....they flow to the sea, against an incoming 
tide! At this rate we would get to the marina well after dark on a busy 
commercial river.

We waited a while and saw our speed increase a bit the further we got from 
the inlet. It took a while but the wind dropped a bit....the rain even 
almost stopped but it was still a cold nasty day. I finally increased RPMs 
to get us over 4 kts. By the time we neared our destination we were moving 
at over 5 kts. We arrived 500 yards from the marina and had only one draw 
bridge to negotiate. They only had one scheduled opening in the afternoon 
and we only had to wait an hour. If we had left as planned we would not have 
made the 2:00 opening.

We are now secure in the Cape Fear Marina. I have a lot of work to do to get 
Boundless ready for sale. Then it will be back to NY.