Ahh.  Home, sweet home for a night.  Very quiet and calm. 

A few days later found us motoring through the Cape Fear Sound - a broad expanse of water though most is unnavigable due to shallow depths.  My computer went haywire, so we did not have our chart plotter.  The advantage of this electronic device is that by using a plug-in GPS, a little red boat, (us!), shows up on the chart so that we know exactly where we are which especially comes in handy in narrow channels.  We have paper charts and a GPS, but plotting our position on the chart is not as instantaneous, and by the time we've plotted ourselves on the paper chart, we've moved to a new position.  We made it through without grounding or getting off course.  Then it was up the Cape Fear River.  The first possible anchorages were in creeks too shallow for us.  The next was in a city harbor too small for us.  The next was in the middle of an expanse of water, which, without the chart plotter, we'd surely have gone aground.  It was getting late in the afternoon, so we found a wide spot "in the road" and pulled over just off the shipping channel.  We anchored, and though it was windy, we were set.  During dinner, a giant barge came by pushing up a huge mound of water on its bow.  Moments after it passed we experienced what felt like a 6.0 earthquake.  Not bad.  We can handle this.  That evening, exhausted, we fell into bed. 

Sometime in the middle of the night, we awoke to major rockin' and rollin', another "6.0 earthquake" and Dave was up announcing the freighter that had just passed by.  I went right back to sleep.  Awhile later, another big shaker, this time with the sliding door to the head slamming open and shut, BAM! BAM!  I latched the door and looked out the porthole at the well-lit outline of the passing ship.    Again I went right back to sleep.  That night, it turns out, it was Dave's turn to worry.  He was up several times making sure that we did not drag anchor and drift into the shipping lane.  You can see how close we were to the passing ships.

We motored just a short distance to Carolina Beach where we rested.  The next day we motored to Wrightsville Beach and anchored in the wide anchorage for three nights.  We had the computer repaired in nearby Wilmington.  This morning we walked through the old town area located right on the river.  Before the Civil War, this was a warehouse area.  One night 21 slaves stole three ships and sailed past a Confederate fort out to Union ships where they were picked up. All joined the Union Army.  One, Benjamin Gould, later became a senator.  Also the wharf was an area where part of the Underground Railroad was located.  This was a system for helping slaves escape the South to journey overland to the North to gain their freedom.