Wrightsville Beach

This is a destination. The guidebook speaks glowingly and vociferously about towns which are not worth dropping an anchor at. I'm starting to believe that the niceness of a town is inversely proportional to the amount of page space the guidebook devotes to the town. If it just says that there is an anchorage, and you can get gas and groceries, that's the place to stop.

Wrightsville Beach has a very large anchorage. It also has a small public dock that you can tie up to. You're not supposed to spend the night there, but it doesn't appear to be enforced. How do I know? The guy I was anchored next to disappeared last night, and when I tied up to the dock early this morning, he was there. Using my incredible powers of deduction, I concluded that he spent the night at the dock.

The laundry next to the public dock has been replaced by a restaurant. Too bad. All my cold weather clothes stink. But that's ok, the weather is warm, and I've switched back to shorts and tevas. There are a few stores and restaurants next to the dock, including a small grocery. The beach is a block away.

There is a West Marine, and hardware and grocery stores about two miles away. About five miles away are all the box stores you need. If you don't have a bike, you can rent one at a shop at the dock.

My only complaint about this area is that the people are not very friendly or nice. It's an affluent area and there are tons of pickup trucks with trailered fishing boats using the public boat ramp. This is a class of watermen whom I'm only fleeting aware of, but they seem to own this area. As a group, they are not very considerate, and some take particular pleasure in making as large a wake as possible with their small boat.

Of course, all this has been amplified by the beautiful weather on a December weekend.