Swansboro, NC is a small, charming community nestled along the banks of the White Oak River and the Atlantic Intercoastal Waterway near Jacksonville, NC.

At first glance, it looks like there isn’t much to do there. Main Street is just a couple of blocks long and all appears pretty calm and quiet. As with most things, looks can be deceiving and you might just be surprised by what you might discover.

We left Beaufort in cloudy morning, passing Morehead City where high volume of commercial fishing traffic were in motion, all of them in the hurry to get out of Beaufort inlet into the Atlantic Ocean – you do not want to mess with them. We carefully dodged these ships and made our way into the quieter ICW. We’re aiming for Swansboro NC today, 30 miles away. This section of the ICW is full of shallows and narrows where many people have gone aground.

I navigate carefully at the helm, making sure I stay inside the ICW channel. This task is both physically and mentally demanding; my eyes switches from the bow of the boat (watching buoys & Landmarks), to the chartplotter (chart #1) then to my computer tablet (chart #2), and back to the bow.This cycle repeats every 45 seconds, for 6 hours on a 30 mile trip. But this seemingly demanding task, produces good endorphin and not bad cortisol, allowing me to keep going as long as I need to. BTW, we saw a 45′ motor yacht ran aground as we pulled into Swansboro.

First place we stopped in Swansboro is the “Candy Edventure”, an old fashion candy shop with soda fountain, located along the waterfront, filled with a spectacular collection of the world’s favorite candies; chocolates, gummies, throwback favorites, novelty candies, salt water taffy, and lollipops galore… all here in one magical shop! Plus, homemade fudge and ice cream! Claudia had the best ice cream ever – Butterscotch with Peanut Butter Chunks.

We browsed more shops along the charming Front street, all decorated for Halloween and we saw many adorable ducks and geese just hanging out. Since we’re in Swansboro, Claudia and I decided to call them swans, any fowl-like animals are hereby officially elevated to swans. After a quick bite for dinner and back to the boat, we both agreed that Swansboro is by far, the cutest town we’ve been since the start of our journey.