Carolina Beach, NC to North Myrtle Beach, SC

Thursday, November 9th (Day 43) - Carolina Beach to Myrtle Beach Yacht Club

Temp 56.  Water temp 62.  Winds SW @ 10-15.  Sunny and warming in the afternoon.

45 nautical miles today (776 total trip miles)

We really enjoyed our 4 days downtime in Carolina Beach.  I don't mind spending $30 / night for a mooring so I don't have to worry about boats anchoring too close around us and fronts with changing winds.  Plus I love getting underway when we leave.  After engine checks and setting up the cockpit for cruising, it took me about 30 seconds to untie the mooring lines and get underway at 6:50am

It was an early start because of the tides on the Cape Fear River.  It is only a couple miles from Carolina Beach to the Cape Fear River through Snows Cut.  The river currents can run 3-4 knots which means if they are against us, we don't go very far.

Today the ebb current started just before 7am at the Snows Cut entrance to the river and we timed it nicely.  As usual, we had a couple knots of current against us in Snows Cut but that was only for 1.5 miles.  After entering the Cape Fear River, we quickly picked up speed into the 7's.

We turned into the ICW at Southport just a few hours after leaving Carolina Beach.  This part of the ICW from Southport to Myrtle Beach has been bad to cross in the past because of shoaling around the two inlets - Shallots and Lockwood Follys Inlets.  But, they were all dredged in the last couple years and we have good charts to show the way through the deeper channels.  

Winds were not good for us running the off-shore 25 miles from Cape Fear to Little River Inlet so we decided to stay on the ICW.  I wasn't too worried about "touching" even though we'd cross the first inlet at dead-low tide.

It was a pretty day on the water as we motored passed Sunset Beach.

No problems through the shallow sections and we crossed into South Carolina a few hours later.

At 2:30pm we entered Coquina Harbor and found our dock for the next month after conversations with the Myrtle Beach Yacht Club on the VHF radio.  By 3pm we were tied up and putting the boat to bed.

Laura and I walked up to the office where we waited with several other boaters for the dockmaster to tie up a couple other boats before coming back to the office.  We eventually checked in and paid for the next month - $644 (plus metered electric).  This was our new home for several weeks.

Friday afternoon our Catskill Marina dockmates Russ and Pam motored their Mainship into the marina and tied up right next to us.  Only kidding.  That would have been pretty lucky, right?  They ended up at the other side of the marina so we would get some exercise walking between boats.

They came over for cocktail hour on Second Wind and we had lots of fun catching up.  This is their first year cruising so they are having fun learning all the ropes.  Well.....  Russ is still working until December 1st so they have been using vacation time to work the boat south.  In the last 10 days, they have cruised from Baltimore to North Myrtle Beach in excellent weather.  When they come back in early December, they will continue south to the Florida Keys on hopefully a slower timetable so they can "stop and smell the roses."

That evening we enjoyed dinner at the Officer's Club Restaurant (at the marina).  

The waitress took this picture and I'm not sure why I have that look on my face.  I swear it was only my first glass of wine.

Saturday we worked a few boat projects and tried to stay warm - it was cold (50s) and rained almost all day.  We decided to check out happy-hour at the restaurant and had several of their nice appetizers for our dinner that night.

Laura had their Irish Coffee that everyone thought looked awesome.

Sunday, Pam, Laura and I took a walk around the harbor while Russ researched changing their boat name on their AIS transmitter.  They had purchased this boat last year and renamed it but the AIS was still advertising the old name. 

I thought you had to send the AIS module back to the manufacturer to change the name but, after a little searching on the Internet I found you could do it by hooking up a computer to the Vesper XB8000 AIS. The gals decided to do a little shopping and I walked back to our boat to see if I could round up the cable required to change the AIS name.  I found 3 of them (yep...  I am a hoarder for computer cables) and walked over to help Russ.  About 1/2 hour later we had the name changed and they were both very happy.  It's a little confusing running down the ICW when other boats see one name on their AIS and other name on your boat.

We spent our last dinner with Russ and Pam on Apre's Ski Sunday evening.  They were flying back to the Albany area tomorrow morning to finish up work and a bunch of other house / family projects.  

Pam made homemade spaghetti sauce with sausage for dinner.  It was a very nice evening together with good food, good wine and good company.  We left early (after sad good-byes) so they could finish packing and closing up the boat. 

Next week we are renting a car and will take a road trip north for some personal business.  We also plan to visit our friends Tony and Linda in Arlington, VA, then spend Thanksgiving with my cousins Tim and Karen in Emerald Isle, NC.  That should be lots of fun!

Oriental to Carolina Beach, NC

Friday, November 3rd (Day 27) - Zimmerman's Marina, Oriental

44 degrees (should be warming tomorrow), winds from the North @ 15

D took Laura grocery shopping and went to the Seafood Market and Piggly Wiggly.  She came back with lots of grocery bags which took us (really her) a couple hours to pack and clean up.

I worked a few boat projects and got us ready to leave tomorrow.  I washed down the whole boat then filled the water tank.  I like washing the boat first because it cleans out all the water lines at the marina.  Then, the water going into our water tank is fresh.

After filling the tank, I drained then stowed the hose on the boat.

I also walked up to the marina office to pay for our 5 nights here.  Total bill was $161 which was pretty nice.  If the place was easier to get in and out, we'd stay here all the trips north and south.

As I talked to the office gal Laurie to pay our bill, she mentioned we we're welcome "anytime".  When she said that, all the other workers in the office chimed in with a "YEA!"  Laura's sharing of her baking strikes again.  

She brought a bunch of these Gingerbread Cinnamon rolls to the marina office yesterday.  Guess they didn't last long.  (this pic was before the icing...)

We had dinner at the Toucan Grill with D, Don and two other couples.  It was an interesting evening with lots of boat talk.  Food was pretty good too.  Sorry....  I forget to get a group picture.

Back to the boat early so we can prepare for leaving in the morning.  It was a nice stay here with good friends and a very protected dock.  I'm not looking forward to backing out of the narrow slip into the narrow channel in the morning.  There are boats tied to docks in every direction but I'm good, right?

Saturday, November 4th (Day 28) - Oriental to Mile Hammock Bay

53 degrees, water temp 67.  Winds from the East @ 10

57 nautical miles today.  (734.9 total trip miles)

We untied our docklines at 8:15am with D helping to get us off smoothly after Laura and I discussed our strategy for a clean getaway.  It worked out pretty good and a few minutes later we were in the channel and I only had to straighten out.  D took this picture of us as we were leaving the slip.  Yep.  We do have a nice "waterway smile" on the boat from the last 700 miles.

Another D picture of us heading down Whittaker Creek toward the Neuse River.

No problems with the narrow channel heading back to the Neuse River.  About 30 minutes later we approached the Adam's Creek entrance on the other side.  The Neuse was pretty calm with only a slight swell on the port quarter to give us the "back on the water" feeling.

Just after entering Adam's Creek, we passed our friends on s/v Dalliance who were anchored along the eastern shore.  Steve and Erica will be heading out of Beaufort Inlet and crossing to Bermuda in a couple days.  Fair Winds Dalliance!

The tide Gods were smiling on us today as we caught some helping current down Adam's Creek and also when we turned west in Morehead City.  As predicted for a nice Saturday on the water, small fishing boats were everywhere including the middle of the deep channel we needed to stay in.  Watch out!

We had helping winds going down Bogue Sound but you have to be very diligent at the helm with sails up.  This is a narrow channel and tricky to navigate through some of the shallow spots.

A few hours later we motor-sailed through Swansboro.  Once again, small fishing boats were everywhere.  But, this time, none of them were in the middle of the deep channel.  On the way out of Swansboro, I got this picture of a private dock.  It's funny that the dock has "caps" on all the posts so the birds won't sit on them and poop on the dock.  But, the pelicans and cormorants just stood on the dock anyway.

We timed the Onslow Beach perfectly for their 4:30pm opening and entered Mile Hammock anchorage shortly after 5pm.

Geez.  Where the heck did everybody come from?  We had only seen 5-10 cruisers on the water today but there were already 15 boats anchored when we pulled in.

I turned on my radar and set it to 1/8 mile range.  This showed all the boats in the anchorage and where the holes were between them.  I found a nice spot and slowly motored between all the anchored boats.  No wind changes tonight so everyone should stay just like they are now.  I didn't mind all the boat around us.  

If the wind was going to change in the night, I would have been more worried about the other boats and how they were anchored.  Many cruisers don't put out the "right" amount of anchor chain / rode.  Some don't put out enough and some put out too much.  This makes their boat behave differently than the other boats when the wind changes direction.  No worries tonight.

After we anchored and I was setting my anchor alarm on AquaMaps, I noticed that we had anchored in the shallow area of the chart.  Hmmm.  The chart showed less than 5 feet here but our depth sounder showed 11 feet.  I'm gonna believe our depth sounder.  We stayed and all was well on Second Wind in the calm anchorage.

Our engine seems well.  No tapping today.  YEA!

Sunday, November 5th (Day 29) - Mile Hammock to Carolina Beach, NC

Start of week 4

56 degrees.  Water temp 69.  Winds from the south at 5-10

45 nautical miles today (735 total trip miles)

The clocks changed last night from daylight savings which gave us an extra hour of sleep.  Well....  not really.  Instead, we were up an hour early so it evened out.

It was anchor up at 6:45am for the run through 2 bridges and hopefully Carolina Beach this afternoon.  It was a pretty morning with the Sun just peaking over the fog bank.

Tides were mostly helping again today as we tried to time the Figure 8 Island Bridge and Wrightsville Beach Bridge.  The Figure 8 bridge opens on the hour and 1/2 hour but the Wrightsville bridge (only 4.5 miles later) opens only on the hour.  If you're boat could make 10 knots, you could go through the Figure 8 bridge on the 1/2 hour then make Wrightsville on the hour.  We can't do more than about 6.5 knots so that wouldn't work for us.  We needed to time the Figure 8 bridge on the hour then run 5 knots to make the Wrightsville bridge on the hour.  

I had a GPS waypoint set for the Figure 8 bridge that started over 20 miles from us.  Our arrival time stayed around 11:30am through most of the morning.  The light winds were helping a little so we used the Jib to keep us moving with lower engine RPM.  When we were 10 miles away, I lowered engine RPM to let our ETA move closer to 12pm.  It turned out the wind could keep us moving 3-4 knots which was all we needed so I shut down the engine and we had a nice jib-sail down the ICW for over an hour.  I really enjoyed the quiet sail.

Want to hear something cool?  Yesterday, I had tried to get a reservation (through DockWa) for a couple nights for a mooring in Carolina Beach starting tonight.  They replied that nothing was available.  I messaged them (again through DockWa) and asked to be put on a waiting list.  Carolina Beach has a nice anchorage but the holding is poor (soft mud) and it's not very big.  My current plan was to anchor for a night or two if we couldn't get a mooring.

Around 10am, they messaged back that they had a cancellation and we could have a mooring for tonight.  I said "thanks" and asked them to keep me on the wait list for tomorrow.

Over the next couple hours, we ended up scoring a mooring for the next 4 nights.  Wow!  We went from 0 nights to 4 in about two hours.  We are not in any hurry and we both love Carolina Beach so like spending time here.  It's one of the few places you can dinghy to a couple blocks from a beautiful beach plus they have a city dinghy dock right near the middle of town.  Also, the bay is 360 degree protected from bad storms.  Last year we sat out winds over 40 knots on a mooring there.

At 3:30pm we motored into Carolina Beach and tied to a mooring.  We hung out on the boat for the evening with plans to visit the beach and town tomorrow.

Today we passed the 1/2 way point to Marathon.  Wrightsville Beach is about 750 nautical miles from Catskill and Marathon.

Subdued but pretty Carolina Beach sunset.

Monday, November 6th through Wednesday, November 8th (Days 30-32)

Low 70s in the afternoons with high 50s at night.  Sunny with clear skies.  Perfect!  Winds less then 10 most of the time.

We setup our solar panels and I turned on the wind generator for the first time in a few weeks.  Monday and Monday night the winds were 10-15 so the wind generator helped a little but then the winds died for Tuesday and Wednesday.  

If we keep the inverter running for computer, Starllink, etc., the solar will add maybe 100 amp-hours to the batteries during the day.  It would be more like 150 if we turned the inverter off.  We run the Honda generator after dinner to charge batteries a bit while we watch TV.  I can set the Xantrex Inverter / Charger for a lower charge current so the generator isn't so loud for other boats around the mooring field - I typically set it at 8 amps AC.  Also, we use the generator to run our hot water heater for showers and dishes.

Monday morning we lowered the dinghy and hauled on the outboard from the rail mount.  This was our first dinghy launch since we left Catskill 4 weeks ago.  Are we getting lazy?

I found the town dinghy dock and took Laura to her first beach visit of the trip.  It was a pretty day with a light surf coming in.

After the beach, we found the "North End Cafe to Go" on the way back to the dinghy.  We decided to stop for lunch / dinner.  We split a steak sub and fries.  Sub was "ok" and the fries were good but way too salty.  Maybe we should have waited for a restaurant in town...

We then motored the dinghy to the town dock and walked to the Celtic Creamery - one of our favorite stops.  They have awesome home-made ice cream and we enjoyed their Chocolate with Dog Bones cones.

After a short walk, we headed back to the boat and skipped dinner.

Tuesday we dinghy'd into town again for a late lunch at the El Cazador Mexican restaurant.  We love their Margs..

We took another walk around town after lunch both enjoying the warm sunny day.  You can't tell from the picture but I'm in shorts again.

I'm writing this Wednesday afternoon.  We'll be heading to the beach again soon and maybe another walk around town.  Our friends Jon and Margarete on s/v Quicksilver (our dockmates all summer in Catskill) just pulled in and anchored a short way from us.  Gonna be a party tonight I think...

Future plans -

We were lucky to get reservations for a month at Myrtle Beach Yacht Club starting tomorrow (Thursday).  We'll leave hear early for the 40 mile run.  Plans are to hang there for a while to take care of some personal business.  Our friend Sandy (who lives in Myrtle Beach) is currently out of town visiting family but she'll be back in another week or so.  We're both looking forward to spending some time with her.

I probably won't be updating the blog again for a while unless something interesting happens.  Thanks for listening!

 

Belhaven to Oriental, NC

Monday, October 30th (Day 23) - Dowry Creek Marina to Oriental

Temp 62.  Water temp 68.  Winds from the SW at 10-15.  Sunny

44 nautical miles today (674.5 total trip miles)

As promised, here is Laura's jack-o-lantern she carved yesterday.  She named it "Punkie".

No alarm today as we only had about 45 miles to Oriental.  By 8am we were ready to go so I took in our power cord, started the engine and pulled our docklines.  As I pulled the last line and jumped back on the helm, I could hear the engine tapping. Crap!

After backing out of the slip, we sat there a few minutes trying to figure out if we should just go to Oriental (where we have friends with a car and a marina dock reserved) or tie back up here.  Since the tapping was not as loud as Saturday, I decided to keep going and hope that the engine wouldn't "go to bits" along the way.

As we turned west toward Belhaven and back on the ICW, there was a whole train of boats coming down the channel.  We slowly motored in front of two catamarans and gradually pulled away from them.  Wow.  This never happens.  We don't pass other boats.  They must have been going slow to conserve fuel or something.

An hour or so later we turned south down the Pungo River, rolled out the jib and reduced engine RPM (made the tapping almost go away...).  This was my view from the helm.

 
It was a pretty day on the water with LOTS of power and sailboats heading south.  I said on Saturday we saw 2-3 boats, today it was 25-30.

As we turned SW to cross the Pamlico River, we pulled in the jib because the winds were right on the nose.  I was a little worried that this was going to be our same fate motoring up the Neuse in a couple hours only that body of water is much more open so usually higher seas.  I started looking for possible anchorages around the Bay River (just before the Neuse) if the seas there were not nice.

It was a calm ride for most of the day as we used the jib on and off for help when the winds were not on the nose.  The engine tapping was not getting worse so I was hopeful we would make Oriental without any additional problems.

As we turn up the Neuse from the Bay River, the winds were only 12-14 (true winds) and seas less then 1 foot.  Wow!  From past experience, this river can be bad because it's very open and fairly shallow.  Not today.  No sailing because the winds were right on the nose but the boat motored along nicely at 5.5 knots instead of our normal 6 because of the wind on our bow.

Just at 3:30pm we motored between the outer channel markers leading into Whittaker Creek.  This is a notoriously shallow channel but I had good tracks on my chartplotter from previous passages.  At one point we had less than 1 foot of water under our keel but never "touched".  We turned down the creek between the two marinas and saw our friends D and Don waiting for us at the open slip.  This is a very narrow channel so I SLOWLY turned into the slip between the 6 pilings.  Laura did her normal great job of getting us tied up then we had a nice reunion with long-time friends.

There are essentially no tides here because we are inside the Outer Banks.  Water levels are driven by wind and air pressure.  South or West winds blow the water out of Oriental while North or East winds blow it in.  Just 10-15 knots of wind can change the water lever over a foot.  Today it was about mid level.  Any big south winds and we probably wouldn't be able to make it out the channel without hitting bottom.  

If you come this way and want to know the water level, you can check the Oriental Town Dock website.

We had a nice cocktail hour then dinner with D and Don on Second Wind. 

The engine tapping stopped as we pulled into the slip.

My arm continues to improve but not good enough for flute yet.

Tuesday, October 31st to Thursday, November 2nd (Days 24, 25 and 26)

Temps cooling with highs in 60s and lows in 40s

At Zimmerman's Marina in Oriental for the next week or so.

Tuesday morning we slept in then had our normal coffee and breakfast.  Later in the morning, I started the engine and it wasn't tapping.  But it seemed to be running rough and not smooth like normal.  A few knowledgeable folks I've talked to said the tapping could be a bad fuel injector.  This seems possible since it comes and goes.  If it was something in the valve-train, the sound would more likely stay.  A bent push-rod isn't going to straighten out....

Since I had spare fuel injectors on the boat, I decided to change them after the engine cooled down.  I've done this 3 times before (in the past 17 years with this engine) and this time there were no problems removing the old injectors and installing the new ones.  But, while trying to install the fuel return line I started having issues.  The fittings wouldn't line up with the return line and tops of the injectors.  I could get 3 of the 4 barrel-bolts installed but the 4th wouldn't line up.  After a couple hours working on my knees, I decided to take a break.

I eventually had to try several scenarios of which order to install the bolts before finding the correct method to get them all installed.  After that, it was just tightening up the fuel return line, loosening up the fuel fittings into the new injectors and bleeding the lines by turning over the engine.  10 minutes later the engine was running again and seemed much smoother.  I'm "cautiously optimistic" that I've fixed the problem.  

The winds filled in from the north (as predicted) and the water level at our dock went up over a foot.

We had D and Don over for grilled burgers and several bottles of wine / alcohol.  Full disclosure that most of these bottles were not full when we started.  This was several hours later.  Not sure why the picture looks a little weird.  Maybe it was because of Halloween!  (more likely a wacky angle with the selfie-stick.)

Wednesday morning I ran the engine again and it smoothed out after just a few seconds.  It does seem better.

Laura and D drove to New Bern for shopping and I worked a few boat jobs including filling the water tank which was below "E" then worked on the blog.

D and Don took us out to dinner with their car at Gary's Down East Seafood in Arapahoe.  We had gone there for my birthday dinner 3 years ago and I still remembered their awesome fried oysters.  We had a very nice evening and everyone enjoyed the dinner and company.  The fried oysters were just as good as I remembered. 

Thursday morning is was only 61 in our cabin - even with the heat on.  It had gone down to high 30s here last night and our boat is not well insulated for that.  

New engine?

For several years I've thought about replacing our now 42 year old Perkins engine.  The tapping from the last week brought it up again in my mind.  One of the possible replacement engines from my previous research was a Beta Marine diesel.  I like these diesels because they are not electronically controlled (read easier to fix) and Don told me the manufacturer was just outside Oriental. Plus, they are a Kubota engine that is marinized by Beta Marine.  Lot's of Kubota's out there.

Yesterday I started an email conversation with Beta Marine and they had experience with replacing my Perkins 4.154 with a Beta 62T (62 = horsepower, T=turbo charged).  After a few back-and-forths, I found that the marina where we were staying was a dealer for them.  What a coincidence!  

Later in the morning I walked up to the office and had a conversation with the yard manager Eric.  He told me they had lots of experience with the Beta engines and were currently in the middle of (3) engine replacement projects.  That was the good news.  Bad news is they are very busy and couldn't even give me an estimate on the timeline except for "months".  I mentioned maybe scheduling something for our trip north next April and he liked that idea.  Eric said he would try to get down to our boat over the next couple days to look at our engine room and take a few pictures.  That would help with a timeline / cost estimate.

Oh....  more bad news....  I (stupidly) thought the engine replacement would be about $20K including installation.  The engine alone was in the $20K range and installation would be $20K or more depending on how many systems needed to be replaced along with the engine like exhaust, water intake, shaft - propeller, etc. etc...  It's gonna take me a while to get my head around that. 

The last two days I've started the engine to let it run a bit.  No tapping and it seems to be running very smooth.  But the problems of the past week have once again reminded me that we are running a very old engine and need to be thinking about replacement or rebuild. I'll let you know how it goes.

On the arm front, it continues to improve a little each day.  I'm able to do all my exercises and stretches including putting my arm to the side and over my head.  It bums me out that I still can't hold up the flute for a whole song.  But I'll try not to push it and let things heal so I don't make it worse.  Soon!

We've paid for a week here and plans are to leave on Saturday or Sunday to continue our trip south.  The weather looks much nicer for travel (warm and sunny) so I'm looking forward to getting back on the water.