Personally, I’ve never had the nerve to “cross the bar” on the ocean side of Cape Hatteras, but Captain Chis obviously knows a lot more about this passage than yours truly. As you will see below, he found a shallower spot. With the ever changing sands of Cape Hatteras’ Great Diamond Shoals, that’s scarey.
Incidentally, Captain Chris’s company, Captain Chris Yacht Services, LLC is our newest SALTY SOUTHEAST CRUISERS’ NET SPONSOR!! Please check out his web site (click the attached sponsorship banner) to learn about his many services, and please join with me in welcoming Captain Chris aboard!

We are underway on a delivery aboard a Kadey Krogen 58 Trawler, moving from GA to the Chesapeake. To save time we take the ocean route. The weather is great, the seas calm and we are enjoying the ride. When approaching Cape Hatteras and Diamond Shoals from the south we cut across the bar. Looking at the charts we see 43 foot areas and then a big area showing 27 feet. To straighten our course we head across the 27 foot area. Keeping in mind how shallow the ICW is, 27 feet feels great!
The calm ocean swells start to change shape so we set a more easterly course to find deeper water – the 43 foot section. In three spots we cross 9 foot depths. You may think, `Oh, that’s a school of fish’ but we believe otherwise. The sea swells change form each time the sounder shows 9 feet’¦and each time we can see the water bottom sharply change on the depth sounder screen. Scary to go from 27 feet to 9 feet, wondering if it will get even shallower. We eventually find the deeper water again and steer to Cape Henry & Cape Charles with no other concerns.
NOTE. We saw large Sport fisherman running across the bar so, as they say, `local knowledge is best’. We plan to stay in the 43 foot section of the bar next time’¦no matter how calm the ocean.
Chris & Alyse Caldwell
Captain Chris Yacht Services, LLC