Bogue Sound is a shallow body of water located along a section of the coast of North Carolina lying north of the Bogue Banks. The land along these banks is thought to be that which Florentine explorer, Verrazzano, describes in a letter dated July 8, 1524, as "a new land never before seen by any man, either ancient or modern." Verrazzano is the first European to sail the coast of America from Florida to Newfoundland, and this document is the first written reference to America.
Verrazano's letter is apparently quite extensive in his geographical and topographical description of the North Atlantic coast of America. In addition to cartographic depictions of the coastlines, he also included meticulous nautical and astronomical data and further provided detailed descriptions of various Indian tribes.
Despite Verrazzano's accomplishments, he erroneously described and drew the vast Pamlico Sound, west of North Carolina's Outer Banks, as the Pacific Ocean. Cartographers were thus misled for the next fifty years, with the Sea of Verrazano believed to be an easily traversed connection to the west.
Writings from Verrazzano's journey also describe the kidnapping of an eight-year-old Indian child (in some accounts described as a boy, in some as a girl) who Verrazzano brought back to France, and I wonder how this child fared and hope he or she was treated well.
The Bogue Sound is traversed by the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) in an east to west direction. As we traveled its course today, we passed many dredge spoil islands, artificially created islands that cover nearly 400 acres within the Sound. Many of the islands are over 50 years old. These older islands sport mature trees and shrubs while younger ones are bare sand. The dredge spoil islands, marshlands and sand shoals within Bogue Sound provide extensive habitat for many populations of birds and aquatic life.
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| We passed many of these beautiful dune-topped islands on our port side. The starboard side was lined with occasional communities of waterfront homes. |
The Sound is beautiful. Its configuration, however, with multiple inlets allowing ocean currents to move in and out and deposit sand or silt, creates navigation hazards. This is what I was referring to above as a pain in the "butt butt" (as the girls would say).
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| This Google image shows the narrow, dredged ICW route crossing the top left corner. The Bear Inlet provides an opening for sediment to be carried inland. You can see the shoaling that is encroaching into the ICW channel. |
The ICW through the Sound is dredged regularly by the Army Corps of Engineers, last occurring in 2010. If only it could be dredged wider. Motorsailing through the Sound today required a ton of attention to stay in its narrow channel. Fortuitously, there was a sailboat ahead of me that I was able to follow closely.
One of the boats that I refer to in my title was a sailboat that we passed aground on a small shoal just past the hook of the ICW where it passes Swansboro. The ICW route here turns initially slightly northwest and then south for a short distance. This southward heading made the point of sail less of a broad reach than we had been on all day and more of a beam reach (a sideways-to-the-wind direction). With the big gusts of NE wind, we were prone to the wind pushing us towards the leeward side of the channel, and this may have contributed to the other boat going aground.
As I approached the boat that was aground, I called to Jamey, who came up and went into action mode, pulling in the jib and telling me to head up to stop the boat. Having been down below, he thought the boat aground may have been the boat whose path I had been trailing all day. I reassured him that it was not, and we continued on with a shortened jib and heightened caution.
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| The blue arrow points to the boat aground. With sparse channel markers and a wide stretch of water, you can see how it is tricky figuring out exactly where the narrow ICW channel is. The boat's crew was already off the boat when we passed. |
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| It looks like the boat was aground on the shoal located at the tip of the arrow. The shoal probably shows itself at low tide, but was not at all visible when we passed by it. |
Farther along, we had another incident where we again realized that the "environmental awareness" of whoever is at the helm is of great value. We had been anticipating the area along Mile 238 at Browns Inlet which is prone to shoaling. Though dredged in 2010, it was known to have shoaled to depths of six feet at mean low water in spring of 2012. We had been cautioned by the guidebooks to favor the starboard side of the ICW in this area. As we passed Mile 238, Jamey directed me to move farther towards the right side of the channel than I was comfortable with, and at one point we softly scraped the keel with readings of 3.1 on our depth sounder.
We later discussed how the person at the helm has the benefit of time and focus given to reading the water, the canal banks, and other environmental clues that should not be discounted even in light of guidebook advice or the urgings of more experienced crew.
Okay, if I've kept your attention this far, you must be interested in the submerged vessel. Shortly after we left Beaufort, we heard someone via VHF acknowledge the Coast Guard chopper that passed overhead, thanking it for its service and informing us that the chopper had just been involved in a "life-saving effort." We later heard broadcasts throughout the day of a new obstruction south of Atlantic Beach, and in the later portion of the day, the broadcasts referred to this obstruction specifically as a submerged sailing vessel.
By looking at the Coast Guard's newsroom (access here but watch out for getting enticed into reading about all the rescue or search efforts currently taking place), we found that the newly submerged sailboat was probably Dove, a 28-foot vessel that started taking on water around 7:15 am this morning. Thankfully, the rescue effort was successful, and the 51-year-old captain of the boat was rescued by 8:15 am from his life raft around 20 miles south of Atlantic Beach.
Hearing the Coast Guard broadcasts and seeing the boat aground in the ICW today reminded us that we remain always vulnerable to the power of the sea and land. We tightened our watch on ensuring that we and the girls are always tethered and with life jackets on when underway.
We remain in constant admiration of and forever grateful for the heroic work performed by the Coast Guard. We offer our hopes that the boat aground was able to be freed easily, and that Dove will be able to be recovered.
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WHERE WE STARTED: Taylor Creek, Beaufort, N.C., Mile 204.
WHERE WE ARE: Anchored in Mile Hammock Bay, around Mile 245, a basin dredged by the military for use with Camp LeJeune. There is a really wide boat ramp here that looks like it might be used for troop-landing exercises. Civilians are prohibited from going ashore. Good hold. There are around 10 other boats anchored here tonight with ample room for us all.
THERE TO HERE: Around 40 miles, 6 hours. Nancy at the helm.
We had tidal currents to contend with, and luckily they were mostly in our favor. As the tide floods or ebbs in and out of the inlets of Bogue Sound, the water can move through the Sound and ICW with much force. Our speed varied from less than 5 mph to a max of 10.1 mph depending on where we were in relation to the inlets and the tide. It was a NE wind with gusts in the lower 20s, and we motorsailed with the jib almost entirely on a broad reach throughout the day.
From Miles 235 to 241, we passed through Camp LeJeune, a Marine Corps military reservation that can sometimes close the ICW for several hours due to artillery firing and amphibious landing exercises. We only saw a couple of marines with some rods doing some fishing "exercises." We heard lots of artillery firing and bombing throughout the day and night.
The Onslow Beach Swing Bridge at Mile 240.7 is owned and operated by the Marine Corps and opens on the hour and half-hour from 7:00 am to 7:00 pm. As we arrived, we heard a waiting boat ask the bridge tender for an estimated opening time as it seems they had been waiting for over an hour. The bridge swung open as we got closer, and it seems that the tender may have been waiting for us (the last boat in this clump of vessels), perhaps because it is a slow bridge to open. Thank you, Bridge Tender!
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| The channel leading into Mile Hammock Bay. Those markers are not to be ignored! |
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