Cape Lookout, NC

Boy, am I annoyed. I am annoyed for two reasons; one reason being that today is the first day that we have been underway since daylight savings time started. DST is the stupidest concept I can think of. I can understand that it made sense back in the days before electricity, and supposedly it cuts down energy costs and has many benefits that I'm sure make it worthwhile for millions of people to have to remember to simultaneously reset their clocks. But for cruisers like us it means that on Saturday we had until 6:30pm to get to our anchorage safely, but on Sunday we now have to be done by 5:30 (or earlier as the days get shorter). And what's worse is that in order to make the most of the daylight, we now have to get up an hour earlier. Damn you, Benjamin Franklin!

The second cause of my annoyance is the railroad bridge in New Bern. Yes, the same one we were stuck waiting for on our way in! This morning we wake up and have the anchor up well before sunrise (remember, we are Saving Daylight!) We know that the US 70 highway bridge (the one after the RR bridge) is restricted due to rush hour and only opens once between 6:30am and 8:30am. So we want to get to the US 70 bridge at 6am and get on our way. We motor up to the railroad bridge and, sure enough, it's closed. No VHF response, no response to horn signals. We can see the lights on in the little bridgetender house but can't tell if there's anyone inside. So we wait in front of the bridge for half an hour, maneuvering the engines to keep ourselves in place. Finally at 6:30 we turn to the side and re-anchor, since no train has come and the guy is clearly ignoring us. Kevin put it this way: "he has the easiest job in the world -- keep the bridge open unless a train is coming. But obviously he figured out that his job is even easier if he just leaves the bridge closed ALL THE TIME." I am royally ticked off, so I actually plug in the PC, get on the internet, and look up the phone number for the Norfolk and Southern railroad to register a complaint. By 7am, just as I am speaking to the right person on the telephone, we finally hear the telltale whistle of a train and the bridgetender walks down the train tracks to the bridgetender's house. So all this time he wasn't even there! Where was he? Who knows? Maybe in his car with the heater turned on, or getting a latte at Starbucks. But he sure knew the train schedule well enough to know exactly when to walk out across the bridge on the tracks. You'd think if he knew the schedule so well he could've left the bridge open and just came out ten minutes earlier to close it for the train. Details, details.

So it's the longest train ever, and we are on the VHF to the next bridge asking if they'll hold the 7:30 opening for us because otherwise we will have to wait an hour til 8:30 when rush hour traffic clears. Luckily the train passes and the railroad bridge slowly opens and we race through it just in time to catch the next bridge and we are on our way. Phew! That's the last time we anchor in New Bern!

So it's been a long day but now we are at Cape Lookout. It is a fairly protected spot with pretty sand dunes and a lighthouse. The anchorage is actually outside the Beaufort Inlet. Since we are planning to "go outside" tomorrow to Wrightsville Beach, this means we can get up before dawn and within a few short minutes be out on the open ocean and on our way. The best part of going outside? No bridges!

Where we are:
Location=Cape Lookout, NC
Lat=34 37.298 N
Lon=76 33.048 W