Cape Lookout

After we left Beaufort we made the 10 mile trip across open ocean to the Cape Lookout Bight. It’s an anchorage inside the Cape Lookout National Seashore park.

We use ActiveCaptain, which is the Yelp for boaters, to find marinas and anchorages. Several reviews on ActiveCaptain described this as the best anchorage in the US. It’s nice here, but I can think of a couple of spots in northern Michigan that have it beat. It’s certainly the nicest I’ve seen on the east coast. But, it’s not the Bahamas.

Due to the virus, the National Park service had all the buildings closed except the lighthouse and the bathrooms. Not sure why it was ok to go into the cramped lighthouse and climb the narrow stairway, while the spacious light keepers house was off limits.

Landing our dingy on shore was tricky. The tide isn’t that large, but the slope of the shore was very gradual. If you pull your dingy on shore at high tide, you may have to drag it across sand for more than 100 yards. I’d leave it off shore, throw out the anchor, and Sue and I would walk to shore. At low tide, I’d pull it to shore and throw the anchor out. It will be floating when we get back.

The other big attraction here are the herds of wild horses living on the islands. As luck would have it, we found a herd grazing on Shackleford Bank.