Monday, November 9th (Day 42)
This was our sunset last night. We were sitting up in the cockpit and the colors just kept getting brighter and brighter. I ended up with about 20 picture on my phone. This is the best one and is not edited or altered in any way.
We were up and underway at the "crack of dawn" from Cedar Creek. For
some reason, neither Laura nor I slept very well last night - only about
4 hours - and we were both tired. I sometimes don't sleep well when I have set an alarm. I wake up in the night thinking, "Only 6 hours left until the alarm.... Only 3 hours left..." But, the weather was beautiful and
we had about 40 miles to make Swansboro for a visit with my cousins Tim
and Karen.
A few showers came by a little later in the morning as we turned west at Morehead City. Laura got this great picture of a full rainbow in front of us. The pot-of-gold was just ahead!
As we motor-sailed down Bogue Sound, I decided to call for a reservation at the Swansboro Church Street town dock. We've stayed there several times over the past few years. They have a 100' floating dock which is a little open to the public but very stable. I called and talked to a lady on the phone and told her I wanted to reserve part of the large face-dock for a 43' sailboat. She told me that dock could only be rented to boats 47' or longer (something that was always a rule but not enforced). After a few seconds, I told her I would pay for 47 feet. She asked me to hold on. A few minutes later she came back and said she would rent the dock to us but we would have to move if a larger boat came in. That's nuts. The dock is 100' long and we take less than 1/2 when we stick our bow way off the end. I didn't want to think about moving our boat after we had tied up so told her "no thanks".
Instead I called Casper's Marina next door. It was a little more expensive ($86 versus $76) and was a fixed dock. We'd stayed here before and it wasn't bad. The docks were new because they had been destroyed in the last big hurricane. The lady on the phone took my reservation without problems.
On the way to Swansboro, I checked the weather forecast which I normally do every couple hours. Oh oh. The forecast for Wednesday had changed for the worse and would not be a good travel day on the water. We had planned on staying overnight at Tim and Karen's so we could spend some quality time with them. Then we would have motored only about 20 miles to Mile Hammock Bay anchorage on Tuesday afternoon and 40 miles to Carolina Beach on Wednesday. Now that Wednesday called for showers and thunderstorms, we talked about it and decided to change our plans. We would not stay overnight because we'd run the 60 miles to Carolina Beach on Tuesday and stay there for several days to wait out the storms. The town of Carolina Beach runs about 15 moorings in the small harbor with 360 degree protection. They are always in good shape and we wouldn't have to worry about high winds from thunderstorms.
We tied up around 1:30pm with no problems and Tim came to "fetch us" a short time later. We spent the afternoon with them at the house and it was great to see our good friends. Wine and munchies during the afternoon were on the menu then grilled steak with Karen's awesome twice-baked potatoes for dinner. Tim's friends Mike and Jen also came over from Morehead City to join us for dinner. We had a really good time before Karen drove us back to the boat around 9pm. Once again I was derelict and didn't take any pictures of the group.
But, later in the afternoon, Karen, Laura and I walked to the ocean beach only about 7 minutes away. The surf was up and I took this picture of the ocean with a few shrimp boats working the shore. Laura took a video but we seem to be having problems with YouTube today. You can check all our videos on our channel HERE
Back at the boat I became a little worried about leaving early tomorrow when I saw what was behind us. The marina had parked a 30 foot wide trimaran behind us (we had docked behind a smaller sailboat and left about 15 feet in front). My normal procedure for leaving this type of dock is to spring the stern away from the dock then back off. Now I wasn't sure it would work - especially if the winds were blowing toward the dock which was the forecast.
Tuesday, November 10th (Day 43 - Start of week 7)
I had the alarm set for 5:45am and we were off the dock at 6:20am. The tidal current was coming on our stern which would help the boat move away from the dock with just a little rudder / engine work. Also, the winds were calm and wouldn't blow us back on the dock.
Laura held a forward spring line while I slowly motored forward with full starboard rudder. The spring line keeps the boat from moving forward and the rudder pushed the stern out. I watched behind us as the current kept moving the stern away from the dock and, eventually, far enough out to clear the huge trimaran. Yea!
Lots of clouds but a little clearing on the horizon which made for a colorful sunrise.
We had about 60 miles to cover today plus 3 bridges that only opened on specific schedules. The first two bridges opened on the hour and 1/2 hour but the last bridge was only on the hour. I put our GPS to the test timing our arrival and we were at the first bridge - Onslow Beach - right at 8am. Pretty good speed for us to cover 10 miles in 1 1/2 hours and the tidal currents helped us a lot. Here we are approaching the Onslow Beach Bridge on a pretty day to travel the ICW.
Winds helped is a little all day as we ran the jib out on a broad-reach (winds coming from behind the side of the boat). It was almost like we had an extra engine that didn't cost anything. Unfortunately the apparent winds were only 7-8 knots most of the day so not strong enough to turn off the diesel and make decent miles.
2 miles before the Onslow Beach Bridge the ICW crosses Browns Inlet which is usually a problem area. This section and the run across New River Inlet (another usual problem area) would be at dead low tide for us this trip. Yuck. But, no problems at the Browns Inlet crossing had been dredged last year and I didn't see less then 7.5 feet crossing New River. Cool! The rest of the day the tide would be rising and we should have no shallow-water problems.
After the Onslow Beach Bridge we had almost 30 miles to the Figure 8 Island Bridge. Even though this bridge opened on the hour and 1/2 hour, it was only 5 miles between the Figure 8 and the Wrightsville Beach Bridge. We couldn't make that in a half-hour so if we went through the Figure 8 bridge on the 1/2 hour, we'd have to go REALLY SLOW because we'd have 90 minutes to cover 5 miles to Wrightsville Beach.
Well, it turns out that we could have easily made the Figure 8 bridge at 1:30pm which I didn't want to do. When we were about 10 miles away, I slowed the engine down to almost idle. We ran about 4 knots the rest of the way and passed through the Figure 8 bridge at 2pm. Now it was a normal speed run to Wrightsville Beach which we passed through at 3pm. The Carolina Beach mooring field was now 11 miles away and we should definitely make it before dark. The rest of our trip was easy and we tied up to the mooring just before sunset. Nice! We had a cocktail, nice dinner on the boat and watched the first half of "Storm of the Century" - one of our DVD movies stored on the computer. Geez. Those 1980 movies were really drawn-out ...
I had made reservations here (on DockWa) for 4 nights because of the storms coming across the U.S. and Tropical Storm Eta moving up from Florida. Laura and I were both pretty tired from the long day. We had run 10 1/2 hours and covered 58 nautical miles plus navigated 3 timed bridges. But, now we would sit and relax for a few days and not worry too much about the weather in this protected harbor while we were attached to a good mooring. By the way, these moorings are only $20 / night so the 4 nights costs us less than the one marina night in Swansboro.
Wednesday, November 11th (Day 44)
We hoped to sleep in today after getting up before 6am the past two morning. But, guess what? We were both awake at 6am and tried to go back to sleep but it didn't work very well.
It was warm, cloudy and muggy today. Temps in the boat never got below 74 last night but it wasn't too bad with the window fan blowing on us. Today was again in the mid-70s with showers predicted for the morning and late afternoon. Laura and I hoped to drop the dinghy and head in for lunch between storms.
This schedule worked pretty well as we had lots of rain that ended around noon. The weather radar showed a couple hours with no rain so we headed in for a walk around town and lunch. We decided on the El Cazador Mexican restaurant and it turned out to be a good choice. Of course we had to order Margaritas...
We both ate too much and skipped our normal after lunch stop at the Celtic Creamery for their awesome home-made ice cream. Maybe we can go back in for ice cream between storms tomorrow or Friday.
Back at the boat I hauled up the dinghy on the davits so I wouldn't fill with water from the storms coming. We had just opened all the windows in the boat then it started raining. Wow. We just made it! Close the windows and listen to the rain.
It really poured this morning so we checked all of our recent work for leaks. None of the new ports leaked and it even looks like we fixed the leaks in our cabin by re-caulking the aft railing mounts. The next few days of storms will tell for sure.
I haven't posted stats recently but today's water temp was 71 and we've covered 770 nautical miles from Catskill. We are now more than 1/2 way to Marathon and the Florida Keys!
No comments:
Post a Comment