Laura and I slept in a little today as this was a "rest" day for our trip south. Rain was predicted for the afternoon so we walked through the woods in the morning on a very nice trail from the Visitor's Center. The walk was along groomed trails east following the waterway. Laura took this picture of me walking along the trails.
We worked on a few boat projects but mostly relaxed. The next step on our cockpit combing was to epoxy a few holes so they wouldn't rot and would fill correctly with the gloss finish. This only took about 15 minutes then we were on to other projects.
Dinner was scheduled with Dean and Sue at the local Mexican restaurant - El Toro Loco. Those of you who have been following our blog for many years may recognize this place as the "big margarita" restaurant.
Dean and Sue knocked on the boat around 4:30pm and asked if we wanted to walk with them to a local Antique Store. I declined (to work on the blog I think) but Laura accepted. About 1/2 hour later, Laura texted me from a local pub just down the road and asked if I wanted to join them. I laughed and said, "How long could you have spent at the antique place?" I was practicing my guitar and had just fixed myself a tequila so declined this time.
A short while later we walked to the Mexican restaurant for dinner. Food and drinks were excellent as usual. This is an updated picture of the restaurant with Dean, Sue, Laura and I at dinner -
As we were checking out and paying our tab, I mentioned that we came here twice a year as we traveling north or south by sailboat. The manager (owner?) gave me his business card after he wrote his cell phone number on it. He said they were moving this summer to another place about a mile away. He would gladly come and pick us up at the free dock for dinner at the new restaurant. I love that!
After dinner, we walked back to our boats and prepared for leaving tomorrow morning.
Monday, October 28th (Day 32)
Our plans were to be off the dock by 8am so we could make the next two bridges when they opened every hour and 1/2 hour. I didn't sleep well and was up for several hours in the night. I finally fell back to sleep around 6am. I woke up and looked at the clock. It was 7:45! Holy cow! I quickly performed my morning engine checks, we brought in the boat bumpers (fenders), started the engine, turned on all the electronics and were off the dock 10 minutes later. I didn't really feel like I was awake yet as we motored south from Great Bridge on the ICW.
No worries with the two bridges and the 10 miles or so of twisty waterway before it opened up at Currituck Sound. Winds were much higher than predicted yesterday (prediction 5-10, actual10-15, gusts near 20) and proved helpful for the rest of the day with a reefed jib pushing us along. We anchored on the eastern shore of the North River around 4:30pm and configured the boat for our overnight stay.
During the day, we completed the next step on our cockpit combing refinishing with sanding the whole piece we were refinishing including the epoxy we applied yesterday. After we anchored, Laura used a paint brush to apply the AwlWood primer while I followed with a lint-free rag and smoothed everything out. Here are the before and after pictures of the primer -
It's not shiny yet. Just sealed and primed for the AwlWood gloss we will apply over the next couple days if it doesn't rain.
Tuesday, October 29th (Day 33)
Yesterday I made an appointment for Wednesday evening at Sailcraft Boatyard in Oriental for some work on our standing rigging (the wires holding up our two masts). I don't know why I didn't give us an extra day but I always seem to make us hurry. Getting there by Wednesday would mean about 140 ICW miles in two days. We better get moving!
Dean and I had agreed we'd have an early start so I had the alarm set for 6:30am and we had our anchor up just before 7am. NE winds were very helpful all day and it was one of the quickest and nicest Albemarle Sound crossings we ever had. Sometimes we don't make it through the Alligator River Canal on the second day from Norfolk and today we made it through the can plus another 10 miles.
We averaged 7 knots for the first 4 hours and zoomed down the ICW with full main and jib plus engine at cruise RPM. Autumn Borne was 1-3 miles behind us most of the day. We entered the Alligator - Pungo Canal around 1:30pm with plenty of time to make the 22 miles through the canal to a nice anchorage before dark.
I guess I'm getting a little complacent with my driving the ICW. Through the 22 miles canal, I had the boat on autopilot and only had to look up every 20 seconds or so to make adjustments so the boat wouldn't drifting too close to one side or the other. After over 2 hours through this boring section I picked up the iPad, turned on Kindle and started reading - looking up very often to prevent problems. Well.... I guess the book got very interesting and I didn't look up for awhile. Laura was down below whipping up something in the oven when the boat hit a submerged tree stump on the side of the canal and took a pretty good jump. We stopped almost immediately. I was able to turn the boat a little back toward the middle of the canal with full throttle and full starboard helm but we were not moving. I dropped the dinghy to lighten the load on the boat and help push us off. I was able to turn the boat more toward the center by pushing on the bow with the dinghy while Laura applied full throttle in forward. But, we were stuck.
Autumn Borne came by a few minutes later and offered help. Dean motored the bow of his boat slowly up to our bow while Sue handed off a line. The line was attached to both bows and Dean slowly backed up to tighten it. I then applied full throttle while Autumn Borne pulled in reverse. It took about 20 seconds, but eventually we were pulled off the stump and back in the deeper water. Thanks Dean and Sue! You saved me 1-2 hours calling for a tow-boat!
We stopped the boat and I hauled up the dinghy on the davits. 5 minutes later we were underway again. This is my 29th trip on the ICW and I've only been able to make it all the way without going aground twice. Not this trip... There is a song by Eric Stone that says, "If you ain't been aground, you ain't been around..." I've been around a lot.
Laura had purchased a nice pumpkin at the grocery in Great Bridge and decided to carve it today. Here she is hard at work digging out the guts.
We exited the canal at 4:30pm and decided to keep going for a bit to take some miles off of tomorrow and hopefully arrive at the marina before everyone left for the day. The slip where we needed to tie up for rigging work is very tricky and we need help from shore to get in there.
After anchoring near Belhaven, NC about an hour later near the north shore. After dinner, Laura lit up the pumpkin and displayed it on the back deck. He's a happy pumpkin.
Tomorrow we have about 40 nautical miles to Sailcraft in Oriental where we will be spend at least one night for some boatwork.
Sounds adventurous!
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