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!
No comments:
Post a Comment