Thursday, April 20th (Day 19)
Clear and sunny. Light south winds. Air temp 68. Water temp 66.
41nm today (757 total trip miles)
I want to start by apologizing for my very long blog today. We are currently in Carolina Beach sitting out thunderstorms so I'm downstairs with plenty of time for writing up a storm. Here ya go....
It was a pretty day as we pulled the anchor at 8am. There was a trimaran anchored in front of us that had come in yesterday. We've seen this boat the past few days and actually went through the Wappoo Creek Bridge with them. We had motored into Charleston Harbor together then they took the ICW and we went off-shore that day to Winyah Bay. It cracks me up to see the same boaters over several days.
We motored down the creek and out onto the Waccamaw River. There were a few power boats that passed us but everybody was nice and kept their wakes low. It was calm and pretty. We relaxed and enjoyed the quiet morning not realizing what was coming.....
Laura and I were sitting in the cockpit a halt-hour later - enjoying the beautiful springtime shoreline - when we heard "beep... beep... beep". I looked at my instruments and didn't see any alarms. It was coming from downstairs. "It's the smoke alarm!" I said.
Laura rushed downstairs and said there was smoke in the boat. I told her to take the helm while I checked it out. As I opened the engine room door the whole boat filled up with smoke and I could see sparks flying off the front of the engine near one of the pulleys. "This isn't good" I remember thinking as our other two smoke-alarms also started going off. No flames but I needed to get the engine shut down now.
I ran up to the cockpit and quickly turned off the engine. Laura went out onto the bow to drop our anchor in the river. I used the boat's momentum to get closer to shore and we anchored as the river current slowly pulled the chain tight.
After the boat was safely anchored, I was wondering if I should put a call out on the marine radio telling other boats we were disabled but safely anchored. I looked around and we were out of the main channel so I didn't want to get into a 20 minute conversation with the Coast Guard (that we've heard plenty of times in the past with other disabled boats). "What is your location? How many people on-board? What's the description of your boat? Does everyone have a life-jacket on? ...... " I decided against it for now.
I opened all the engine room doors and the smoke gradually cleared. I knew where the problem was - I had seen the sparks flying from a specific area - so I open the tool box and pulled out the sockets and wrenches I would need to pull the pulley off the engine. I also put on some arm-protectors Laura had bought for me off Amazon to help my arms from bruising and cutting (Yep. I'm old and have weak skin now...). Here I am tucked into the small engine room taking things apart. You can see the small pulley I'm working on.
My biggest worry was that the failed bearing had overheated so much that it fused to the pulley or the bolt holding it to the engine. I had spare bearings but didn't have a spare pulley. Also not sure if I had a spare bolt.
I only slightly burned the tip of one finger taking the pulley off the engine. I could see the bearing was toast. Really! It's supposed to be a sealed bearing and the seals were gone (burnt off?) plus the ball-bearings inside were now flattened. It was metal against metal which wasn't a good thing.
At the top is the pulley with the bearing installed. The new bearing is underneath. You can see the ball-bearings exposed in the bad one and, if you look closely, they are flattened on both edges.
After digging around to find the right size socket to pound out the old bearing, I cleaned out the pulley and pressed in the new bearing (with a different socket and hammer). It all looked pretty good when I got done.
I installed the pulley and new bearing back on the engine. The nut was hard to put on as the bolt threads were a little out of shape. But, the bolt went on without too much torque so I continued with the install. 1 hour and 15 minutes after the first smoke alarm sounded I had the engine running. It looked and sounded good.
Looking back.... Yesterday when we were motoring up the river to last night's anchorage, Laura and I could hear a small squealing noise. We looked around in and out of the boat without finding the cause. I remember saying it sounded like a machinery noise but never looked in the engine room because it stopped a short time later. Plus, if I had looked in the engine room, I would have probably just heard a running diesel engine. I think this was the bearing starting to fail.
After talking to a few friends afterwards they responded with a couple questions. Why did I have a spare bearing? Over 10 years ago we had problems with this bearing and I replaced it several times until I talked with a knowledgeable person at a company that sold different types of bearings. I explained what it was being used for and he told me which bearing I should use so I bought 4 or 5 of them. (They were only about $10 each as I remember.) This particular bearing had been on the engine for 9 years and 5,000 engine hours (Yes. I'm anal and keep track of that kind of stuff). I'm not complaining about it's longevity but the way it failed was almost a disaster for us.
The second question was more worrisome for me. A couple friends said it was lucky we had a smoke detector in the boat. Really? Folks, please, please, please don't run your boat without at least 1 smoke detector. We have one in every room. They are not going to break your wallet and could save your life.
Ok. Enough about our excitement for the day (week, year...).
I have to mention what happened next which again proves that everything in life changes. Nothing ever stays the same. One of my favorite sayings....
We have always stopped at Osprey Marina in Myrtle Beach for fuel both heading north and south. It has always been the cheapest fuel in this area. Waterway Guide has been a big help to us finding the cheapest fuel stops but I don't even bother to look in this area because Osprey is always the lowest price. You can click HERE for their excellent website. It will open in a new window.
Anyway, for some reason Laura decides to check fuel prices for around here on Waterway Guide. She notices that diesel at the Wacca Wache Marina (I love that name. Say it three times fast.) is listed at $3.59 / gallon while Osprey Marina is $4.45 / gallon and Myrtle Beach Yacht Club is $3.99. Holy cow! That's a huge difference. What happened to Osprey? When she told me this I thought we had already passed that marina and didn't want to go back against the current.
About 15 minutes after we got the boat running again from the bearing replacement, we come up on a marina where everybody is stopping for fuel. It's the Wacca Wache. Yea! There are two powerboats in front of us heading in and one behind us. We had never stopped here before so I don't know what to expect but we're down to about 1/3 of a tank and should take about 90 gallons. I talk to them on the radio, receive instructions about docking and we head in.
The place was awesome. They had 3 or 4 diesel pumps that were all constantly busy. We pulled right up to the face dock. The gent helps us tie up, passes us the diesel hose then went on to help other boats that were coming and going. I think we were only there about 20 minutes and took 92 gallons. That saved us almost $100 if I had gone to Osprey 15 miles ahead. Plus, this place was super-easy to get in and out. We'll be back!
We had a very nice remainder of the day motoring to the Myrtle Beach Yacht Club and arrived just after 4pm. The waterway through Myrtle Beach was busy with lots of small powerboats and a few cruisers that passed us. Of the three bridges that had to open for us, only the Socastee Bridge made us wait for 10-15 minutes. We never even had to slow down for the Barefoot Landing Bridge - he opened in time for us to just zoom right through.
Before turning into the marina, I check and we are at low-low tide. The water level is actually 1/2 foot below the normal low tide. I called the marina on our marine radio and ask if I need to know anything about coming in at low tide. The (young) gal on the radio tells me no problem.
As soon as we take the turn off the ICW into the marina channel we run aground. Laura is up on the deck getting lines ready and almost falls over from the boat going from 3 knots to zero in 2 seconds. Luckily it's a "soft" grounding in mud - not a hard crash against rock or coral that could really cause some damage to the boat.
I was able to back off the mud with full throttle in reverse and had plenty of water depth closer to the red channel markers. Once in the basin I have a terse conversation with the gal who told me "no problem" with low tide. I don't think she really understood but "might" now tell boaters to stay near the red channel markers at low tide. However, I understand it's the Captain's ultimate responsibility so I mark our chartplotter with the shallow area and move on.
We've been traveling the Atlantic coast and the ICW on Second Wind for 17 years. Plus, we've had a few paid deliveries (I am a professional Captain) so this is our 34th (or 35th) trip up or down the ICW. I always try to see how far I can make it between Norfolk and Miami without "touching bottom." I failed this time after just over 800 miles. I've only made it twice.... As our musician friend Eric Stone sings, "If you ain't been aground, you ain't been around...."
After tying up at our slip, I went up to check-in. Geez. This is one of our favorite stops but it gets more expensive every year. Several years ago it was $1 / foot / night (about $50 for us) a night. Now it's up to $2.25 / foot ($110). Quite a difference.
Our friend Sandi lives nearby so she drove over to the boat for cocktails and dinner together. She arrived as I'm washing the boat down with fresh water to remove all the salt from our several off-shore runs. She and Laura hang out below while I finish up the boat wash plus fill up our water tank then put away our hose. A short time later I join them for wine and munchies. We talked for over an hour then headed up to the marina restaurant "The Officer's Club" for dinner. Don't we look happy and the end of our cocktail hour?
The restaurant was pretty busy but we ended up with a beautiful table outside on the balcony overlooking the basin and 3 marinas.
Dinner was excellent as usual. We had lots of fun with our waiter - Illy. When he first came to our table, he starts with, "Fair warning. I'm new and you are only my 4th table." Well... we just cracked up (it couldn't have been the 2+ bottles of wine we had on the boat). We had a great time with him. Every question we asked he had to go back and ask someone. "What's the catch-of-the-day? What comes with the shrimp basket? What salad dressings to you have?" The poor guy was clue-less but trying hard. It was a riot.
After dinner we said sad good-byes to Sandi and headed back to the boat for a little TV before bed. I was so glad I had completed all my "marina" chores before our happy-hour.
Friday, April 21st (Day 20)
Sunny and warm. Light southeast winds. Outside temp 63. Water temp 64.
46nm today (803 total trip miles - 1/2 way!)
Neither of us slept well last night - probably the red wine - but we relaxed in a bit and backed out of the slip at 8:45am. It was a quiet, pretty morning as we motored out of the basin back to the ICW and turned north (well... actually east in this section).
I think the past 5 or 6 years we've done this next section between North Myrtle Beach and Southport, NC off-shore. It's only a 25 mile run from the Little River Inlet to the Cape Fear River entrance. Plus, there are Shallot and Lockwoods Folly inlets along the ICW that are typically tricky to navigate near low tide. But today, it didn't seem like the right choice.
First, the tidal current was flooding so we'd have a slow ride out. Then, the current would probably be against us coming back in Cape Fear which would really slow us down. Plus low-tide in this area was 4pm so we'd have plenty of water for the tricky spots - the last one would be around 2pm. I decided to take the ICW instead.
No problems as we motored across the North Carolina line toward Southport. The day was uneventful and I even tried to slow down because our ETA to Southport (and the Cape Fear River) was going to be around the maximum current against us. But, it was not to be. We arrived at Southport just after 2:30pm. Current predictions on our chartplotter showed 4 knots of current against us. Yuck.
As we turned north up the Cape Fear River, I tried to stay out of the main channel near shore to cut down on the current against us. But, we had to move out because of shallow water and we were only making a little over 2 knots. We had the jib out with light winds to help as much as possible. Our speed is the second instrument from left. We were doing 2.6 knots with 8 miles to go up the river before we turned off for Carolina Beach. Oh man. This was gonna take a while.
Laura took this video of a channel marker that looked like it was zooming through the water. Watch how slowly it goes by.
I could see a current line in the water across the river to the east and decided to head for it. The eastern shore had a larger shallow area between the main channel and shore that might be less current.
Oh boy. I was so happy that this worked great. Once out of the main channel, our speed picked up to between 4 and 6 knots. We made the 8 miles in only 2 hours against max current by using a little smarts. Cool.
At 4:30pm we entered Snows Cut and even had a little current with us here. I had made reservations at the Carolina Beach Mooring field on the DockWa app and by 5pm we had tied up to our mooring and were putting the boat to bed.
I played my flute for a while in the cockpit and one of our neighbors even stopped their dinghy to listen for a while. We spent a quiet evening on the boat. Watched a little TV off Starlink, prepared the cockpit for possible rain tonight and thunderstorms tomorrow, then hit the sack early.
Saturday, April 22nd (Day 21)
Cloudy with thunderstorms. Outside temp 66. Water temp 70
Didn't move the boat today. Sitting out storms in a nice, protected mooring field.
No rain last night but storms came in 9am. There was lightning, loud thunder and high winds in the area for about an hour. Rain continued on and off most of the morning.
I took advantage of the downtime to write this (looooooong) blog then try and plan for the next week or so. As we relaxed this morning, I got to thinking that we hadn't had a day off moving the boat since St. Augustine - 8 days ago. We did have a couple short days (<> 20 miles) and spent a VERY busy day in the marina at Thunderbolt. It was nice this morning to just sit back, work a few minor boat jobs and use the computer (instead of my iPhone) for a change.
We were hoping for a couple non-rain hours today for us to get into town by dinghy. We need a few groceries (nothing critical) and a little walk would be nice. Plus the Celtic Creamery is one of our favorite spots for their homemade ice cream. It doesn't look like it's gonna happen. Oh well. We'll just stay on our boat and enjoy the calm basin.
Plans.... The weather doesn't look very nice later in the week for traveling north. Rain and high north winds will keep us stopped somewhere. We might have spent some time in Swansboro with my cousin Tim and his wife Karen (another of our favorite stops along the way) but they have just flown to Ireland for a little vacation. Have fun!!
Instead, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday are supposed to be nice so we'll take advantage and try and make Oriental on Monday. We have friends loaning us a free dock at the marina and will be able to spend time with our long-time friends D and Don (s/v Southern Cross). We might be there for several days sitting out rain and north winds. I'll keep you posted.
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