Wednesday, April 25th (Day 24) to Friday, April 27th (day 26)
We continued our stay in Oriental Harbor Marina at our friends Bryce and Helen's dock doing some walking around town and enjoying some shore life. The weather was not nice for traveling on the water with high winds and storms coming through on several days so we stayed at the (mostly) protected marina. This marina is open to the SW onto the Neuse River so the ride at our slip was bumpier than some anchorages we have stayed at this trip. But, we had easy access to shore and power for running the heater on cold mornings.
A few days ago, Laura found a new recipe and decided to make a Banana Pudding Cake for dinner on Southern Cross. Everybody thought it was awesome with the chocolate and banana flavors.
We enjoyed several meals with long-time friends D and Don (we met 17 years ago while both cruising Grenada) including a nice dinner at the marina restaurant Barcos Thursday evening. D ordered the "Big Ass Nachos" for an appetizer. The tray almost filled up our whole table. (Not sure why Don was so serious when I took this picture.)
That evening we saw what we thought were flashing lights outside the boat which turned out to be a large thunderstorm passing north of us. Here is a short video I took of the lightning. I'm so glad we were not under this.
Saturday, April 29th (Day 28)
Sunny, warm and calm.
21nm today (920 total trip miles)
Another front with thunderstorms and high SW winds was forecast for Sunday so we decided to bail-out of Oriental Harbor Marina and head to a more protected spot. Laura and I discussed our options and decided to spend a couple nights at the R.E. Mayo seafood docks. We've actually sat out multi-day storms here in the past and were quite comfortable. There are no stores or restaurants within walking distance other than the seafood and small grocery at the marina. But, it's inexpensive (less than $20 / night), protected (no open water to build waves) and the price includes shore power (only 20 amp service at our dock).
During my morning engine room checks I noticed water under the sea-strainer I had just fixed a few days ago but couldn't find any drips on the strainer. That was weird.... While checking the engine I noticed the bilge had a little water in it so turned on the bilge pump. Water went squirting everywhere from a broken bilge pump hose. Time to put on my plumbers hat.
The hose was in pretty bad shape but I thought maybe duct-tape would seal it up enough to maybe get us back to Catskill. After about 1/2 hour of taping, I still had water going everywhere when I turned on the pump. I needed to replace that section of hose.
Laura checked under the salon floor where we keep our spare hoses. She came up with the right size hose and it was long enough to bypass the broken section. It only took me about another 1/2 hour to replace the hose and now it worked great. Nice. I thought we might have had to stay here until I could find a replacement hose in town.
D came down and helped us off the dock which was pretty easy with the light winds. By 9:45am we were backing out of our slip and turned toward the Neuse River.
The river was very calm and we enjoyed the sunshine and couple hour ride to RE Mayo. I had tried to get to the dock with the current behind us but, even after several hundred dockings in 35 years, I couldn't get the boat to the dock safely this time. It was a perfect storm against me - the current tried to push us away from the dock and our propeller pulled the stern away each time I put the engine in reverse. I wanted to get the bow pointed into the storms tomorrow and I knew it was going to be a challenge but thought I could make it work. Nope. Not this time.
I turned the boat around and we tied up in 2 minutes on the other side of the boat. I couldn't figure out a way to break the helmsman's rule of "always dock into the current or into the wind."
By 1:15pm we were tied up at their docks. I even put on extra bow and stern lines because the predicted winds tomorrow would be blowing us away from the dock. The forecast called for 20-30 knot winds with 40 knot gusts. Yikes! Only issue we had was the dock here only had 20amp service - same type of plug as your wall outlets. It took me a while to find the 20 - 30 amp adapter I had hidden away a few years ago.
I walked up to the office and paid for 2 nights ($34.40). While looking around the fairly large ships store, I found more of the bilge hose I had replaced this morning. Score! I gladly paid $19 for 15 feet of new hose. This made me feel much better about having to replace more of it in the near future.
We relaxed and streamed a few shows in the evening off the Starlink. It was nice to be on a calm boat again after all the rock 'n rolling we did in the marina.
Sunday, April 30th (Day 29)
Cloudy and windy with rain and thunderstorms.
Thunderstorms and rain came through in the early morning then cleared up around noontime. We took advantage of the nice weather and took a walk about a mile around and up onto the high-rise bridge just north of the marina. I took this panorama from the top of the bridge.
What are the odds..... Several cars / trucks had stopped at the top of the bridge just before we got there. I thought maybe someone was enjoying the scenery. Nope. This group of family and friends were having a memorial service for a family member and spreading the ashes from the bridge. It was a great place to do it but we didn't want to hang around and interrupt the memorial. These are the cars and people in the panorama.
A short while later the storms were heading our way again. We are at the blue dot in the weather radar picture.
We sat in the cockpit and watched the storms going north and south of us. It did rain a lot and we had some winds in the 20s but all the really bad stuff missed us. We were pretty happy.
By 6:30pm the Sun had come back out and the winds calmed down. I took this picture of the calm water behind us while grilling burgers. The temps had dropped into the mid-60s after the storm and it felt chilly.
Once again we had a quiet night on the boat streaming shows and relaxing after the big storms were finished with us.
Monday, May 1st (Day 30) to .....
Partly cloudy and cooler.
After spending quite a while checking weather forecasts, we decided to stay here at least one more night. D had driven Laura for groceries and we were fully stocked for at least a couple weeks so no worries there.
The weather here is quite nice with winds in the 15 knot range for the next couple days. Our problem is farther north the winds are honkin' and won't calm down until Thursday or Friday. One of the more open areas we need to cross is Albemarle Sound - about 50 miles from here. This is a huge sound and the area we need to cross is 13 miles wide. It is fairly shallow (15-20 feet) so winds kick up short, steep waves that can be very uncomfortable to dangerous. We always try to plan our crossing there for settled winds which won't happen for several days.
So.... we paid our dockage for another night ($17.20) and spent a quiet day on / around the boat. I did get a walk around the marina to check out all the heavy equipment stored (buried?) around the grounds. Here is Second Wind at the docks.
Laura took this picture off the bow showing the huge seafood factory and off-shore fishing boats tied up a little north of us.
Plans are to maybe work our way north tomorrow or Wednesday to be ready to cross the Albemarle Sound at the earliest possible time. We might also get some nice weather for heading up Chesapeake Bay the coming weekend. Stay tuned.....
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