Holy City, Batman, here we come.

We are again underway southbound in the Atlantic Ocean, this time off the South Carolina coast. We are making the day run to Charleston Harbor from Winyah Bay. Our reservation there starts tomorrow, but we need to make a slack-water entry at 11 AM, so we will anchor someplace tonight and make our way to the marina in the morning. It was supposed to be a nice day for a passage, but we have been bouncing over three foot rollers under medium chop since making the turn south.

Sunset over the Bird Island anchorage off the Little River.

Saturday we arrived to the Little River inlet against the last of the ebb, but we were glad to get inside the jetties and out of the slop. I was also happy to have a little against us as I worked my way into Bonaparte Creek behind Bird Island. The anchorage was chock full, between several cruising boats and a couple of  locals on day hooks, and we had to work our way back past a 6' shoal, at dead low tide, to find a decent spot (map). One of the locals looked to have wrapped his prop and was diving on it as we passed. I'm happy to now have a track, because that might be the best spot in the anchorage. We had a nice dinner on board and a very comfortable night.

Myrtle Beach and the Grand Strand can be something of a gantlet on pleasant weekends, and so Sunday morning we made an early start to beat the traffic. We had a quiet couple of hours through Calabash Crossroads, Little River, and Myrtle Beach, and did not see traffic picking up until we were past the Rock Pile and approaching Barefoot Landing. It was a gorgeous day, and even in the more remote stretch through Socastee we saw a lot of small boats out enjoying it.

Wait, where are we? Not Easter Island, but Grand Dunes.

The early start had us at Wacca Wache before 2, and we pulled up to the fuel dock to squeeze another couple hundred gallons in at a great price of just $2.96 per gallon. We dropped the hook in our usual spot across the river at the mouth of Cow House Creek (map), where on this visit we had to squeeze in among three other boats. Several more boats from the day's conga line passed us to anchor further down the creek. We dropped the tender and headed back to the marina for dinner at Outriggers Bar & Grill.

We were well set on a short scope, but kept a watchful eye out through the evening's 20-knot gusts. We had a comfortable night, but found ourselves in just 7' of water Monday morning with king tides. We caught just the last hour of the ebb and then slow-rolled against the flood the rest of the day, all the way to Georgetown.

We always see turtles on the Waccamaw. This was the closest shot I could get.

We normally anchor in Georgetown, but with two nights of forecast subfreezing temperatures, and not a lot warmer during the day, we decided to take a dock with power and hunker down until the cold snap passed. We were a bit late on the draw, and all the marinas in the Georgetown Basin were full up when I called on Sunday, and we settled for the Georgetown Landing Marina out on the Pee Dee River.

This was our first time here, and after making the nearly 180° turn off the Waccamaw it was just about a mile to the docks. We tied up on the inside face dock at the north end (map), which turned out to be a comfortable spot. They still had room when we arrived but had filled up before the day was out and were turning boats away.

The building shoal at Cow House Creek is visible at low tide.

While it was still warm enough to be comfortable I put the e-bike on the ground and made a pilgrimage to Walmart for provisions, stopping at the UPS drop in the hardware store en route. From this dock the quaint downtown with a half dozen restaurants is too far to walk, and so at dinner time we walked the mile to El Cerro Grande, a decent Mexican place that was really one of only two options. The food was good and they had Dos Equis Ambar by the pitcher, but the walk along US 17 is not the pleasant stroll found elsewhere in town.

The temperature dropped rapidly overnight and the winds picked up, gusting up into the 40s. We had doubled lines when we tied up, and we buttoned up every opening on the boat. We ended up running the heat all night, uncharacteristic for us even at a dock. By the time we awoke in the morning the temperature had climbed back up to just 32°.

The high winds and low temps persisted all day, and we mostly stuck to indoor activities. In the mid-afternoon it warmed up enough for me to add water while tracking down a leak in the engine room that only occurs when we top up the fresh water tank. I also remediated a persistent rust streak under one of the portlights. It looks like the outer trim will need to be removed and re-bedded. I also bundled up and took a short walk around the marina neighborhood.

The steel stand for this scarecrow outside the pizza joint literally snapped in the high winds.

At dinner time we braved the cold to walk to the closest place, Southern Pizza Company, ironically right next door to Pizza Hut. Draft beer and surprisingly good pizza; we had the thick crust. We had two slices left over and neither of us wanted to carry a box home with the temps in the 30s; we persuaded them to give us some food service foil instead and I was able to stuff the wrapped slices into my parka pocket.

After Louise turned in for the night I started seeing posts in my feed about Northern Lights being visible in the Carolinas and as far south as northern Florida. I did go outside to look, but there are far too many artificial lights here to be able to see anything that faint. Ironically, boats that could not get marina reservations and stopped in some of the more remote anchorages probably had a great view.

Yesterday things started to warm back up and it would have been a fine day to make the first of a two-day run to Charleston down the inside. But this is one of the most shoal-ridden sections of the entire ICW, requiring judicious timing of tides in several spots and focused attention to the helm, so when Louise deemed today acceptable for an outside run, we opted to just stay put in Georgetown and leave this morning.

Last night's sunset from our anchorage in the Western Channel of Winyah Bay.

With the cold snap over we had no need to stay at the dock, and I wanted to be able to enjoy downtown for one evening, and so we made plans to leave the dock and drive around the corner into the basin for the night. We knew the anchorage would empty out by mid-morning and we watched the exodus on AIS. We planned to linger at the dock until close to lunch time to take advantage of power while things were still warming back up.

Before that time came, I learned the space weather event was still ongoing and there was a possibility again last night of an aurora visible on the horizon from our location. We both decided the chance of seeing the Northern Lights trumped dinner in Georgetown, and we shifted gears to anchoring in the Western Channel, where we might get a view over the distant light pollution of the Grand Strand. The marina gave us a late checkout and we stayed at the dock until after 3 PM.

We pushed downriver against the flood and dropped the hook in a familiar spot south of the ICW junction (map). We found four sailboats already in the anchorage, and we unplugged our string of lights as a courtesy. We had a nice dinner on board and settled in. Sadly, by early evening the NOAA aurora forecast was saying the view line would be quite far north of us, somewhere in Pennsylvania. I still got up and looked several times throughout the evening, but saw only the glow of the Strand.

Sunrise underway this morning as we made our way out Winyah Bay.

If nothing else the move to the Western Channel cut nearly an hour off today's cruise. We still left before dawn, but the plotter has us arriving ahead of 4 PM and not just before sunset. That's early enough that we might be able to tender ashore for dinner, depending on where we end up dropping the hook.

We'll be in Charleston a full week, and my next post will be underway somewhere south of there. My next project is to figure out where we might be around Thanksgiving and make some dinner reservations, before everyone is sold out.

A week through North Carolina

We are underway southbound in the Atlantic Ocean, with Oak Island and Cape Fear receding behind us. It's been a week since I last posted, and in that time our always-fuzzy plan for the immediate future has coalesced a bit. More on that after I catch up the week.

Saturday's cruise across the Albermarle and through Croatan Sound was quite pleasant, but the wind picked up and things got a little lumpy at the very end of the day in Pamlico sound. We tucked further into the Long Shoal River than on previous stops and dropped the hook (map). We had a comfortable night, with two other boats joining us at a respectful distance over the course of the evening.

That stop made it a long day Sunday to the first decent anchorages in Adams Creek, but we knew we needed to be off the Neuse before Monday. It's a nice open-water cruise, and only two days out from my last blog post I used the time to organize a few things and research our next few legs and some travel plans.

Sunset from our anchorage on Long Shoal River.

Somewhere during the cruise I realized I was starting to come down with something. In hindsight, it's probably the same thing that made Louise miserable for several days and that we both hoped was just a bad allergy attack. I was mostly OK the rest of the day and we dropped the hook a little before dinner time in Adams Creek, at a new spot for us owing to forecast northerlies (map).

As I expected, by Monday morning I had a full-blown cold, but it was not yet bad enough to be popping pills, and we weighed anchor to make it to Beaufort before it got any worse. The anchorage was packed full when we arrived, with a couple of boats still circling like vultures. We proceeded directly to our secret-squirrel spot wedged in between a green daymark and the rear range light for the offshore channel (map). This is a tight spot and I have to maneuver to land the anchor in about a ten-foot diameter circle, but the holding is good, and no one will get too close to us here.

I took some cold meds and had a big nap, which had me feeling good enough to tender ashore and go to Finz, a casual burger joint with drafts, for dinner. We both really needed to get off the boat and stretch our legs after three days on board. I dropped an eBay sale in the mailbox before we headed home. By bedtime I knew we would not be going anywhere in the morning, even though it would be a good outside window to Wrightsville Beach.

Our defensive channel marker, close aboard.

Tuesday is sort of a blur; I was in and out of bed and tried half-heartedly to get some things done around the house. We managed to get back ashore for dinner, which was a very disappointing return to Mescalito. Louise had a disappointing "burrito" at Finz that was not Mexican at all and so was craving it, even though we knew from experience Mescalito can be hit or miss. North Carolina is not known for its Mexican food. Anyway, the steak fajitas were tough and hardly seasoned.

By Wednesday morning I felt OK enough to drive the boat, no longer needing any meds, although we got up later than the pre-dawn start we would have needed for the last of the window offshore. Wanting to be moving on, we set off down the ICW to the lone anchorage in range, the basin known as Mile Hammock on the Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune. We ended up at the north end of the already crowded anchorage and dropped the hook in 20 knots out of the south (map).

This anchorage has a soft mud bottom that is not exactly the Bruce's forte, and even on 7:1 we dragged slowly for a couple of hours before re-setting a little further south. I kept an eye on things until the wind let up a bit before I turned in, and the rest of the night was uneventful. We have not had this sort of problem in other parts of the anchorage, so I think the holding is a little better further south. In hindsight we could have squeezed in among the boats already there, and this paragraph will serve to remind us next time.

A quick glimpse at the wind as we passed through Camp Lejeune on the ICW.

With the supermoon come king tides, and Thursday we did a lot of dodging and weaving around well-known shoals as the water level dropped below zero. We heard lots of boats running aground, and I radioed back to one guy following us, no doubt wondering why I was going Crazy Ivan, that he had best follow my line through one particularly bad spot. We made it to Wrightsville Beach without incident, but it was dead low when we arrived and we went the long way around rather than take Motts Channel, which has a shallow bar right next to the ICW.

The anchorage was busy but we found a decent spot to drop the hook (map). After our disappointment in Beaufort the third time is the charm, and we tendered ashore to Tower 7 Baja Grill for dinner, where the fajitas were as good as always. Since our last visit they have brightened the interior, changing the ceiling from black to white and adding brighter lights. I preferred it a bit darker and less harsh, but the food is still good and you can still get Ambar by the pitcher.

We needed a few grocery items and wandered over to Robert's after dinner. They had most of what we needed, and we judged it good enough to avoid me having to hike into town in the morning to go to Harris Teeter. I was still not feeling 100%, and I was happy to pay the boutique prices at Robert's to avoid another trip. On the ride how we remarked that an anchor light across the harbor looked pretty close to the docks.

These bombed-out (literally) personnel carriers on the barrier island are practice targets for the Marines.

We soon learned why. I had barely taken my coat off and sat down when a call came in to the Coast Guard from a boat in the harbor that was dragging anchor and had fouled its propeller. He sounded panicked that he might be dragged into the bridge. The CG put him in touch with TowBoat, but they were a half hour out.

We jumped in the tender and headed over to him. We were able to take one of his lines over to a piling at one of the docks, which evidently he had already hit, which would at least keep him from hitting the bridge if his anchor let go. He seemed very relieved to have that safety valve. With TowBoat already on the way we wished him well and headed home. Eventually we saw them tow him to a more distant part of the anchorage to await a diver in the morning.

I have been working through how I can get back to NJ for a visit with my parents ever since we had to blow right past them offshore on account of weather. We hoped-for plans to just take the train up from Hampton Roads fell through on account of lack of dock availability, my attention next shifted to right here at Wrightsville Beach, where it's very easy to get to Wilmington airport and a short flight to Newark.

This Nordhavn in Wrightsville Beach was also with us in Mile Hammock. I think that may be one of the international lifeboat colors.

The current situation with Air Traffic Control has given us pause about doing any flying, and literally while I was working through the possibilities the announcement came out that the FAA would be mandating reduced flights. That sealed the deal, and we decided instead that I should just tough it out on Amtrak from the next available station, which will be in Charleston. (Amtrak serves Wilmington via a four-hour bus ride; no thanks.)

With nothing thus keeping us in Wrightsville Beach (or turning us upriver to Wilmington), we set our sights on the next stop south, which is Southport. This is a challenging stop for us because there are no anchorages, leaving us to either anchor well out of town in the Cape Fear, or take a dock. We needed water and a pump-out anyway, which made the decision for us, and I booked a slip at St. James Plantation, which had everything we needed including an on-site restaurant.

That's where we were headed when we left the Wrightsville Beach anchorage yesterday morning, but about halfway down the Cape Fear we realized we would be arriving at a tide of -0.3'. We went back to our notes from the last visit which said the channel was shallow, and we had arrived then at a much higher tide. A call to the marina confirmed we might see just 5½' on the entrance.

Vector at night as seen from the Baldhead ferry terminal. Dwarfed by the 55 Nordhavn next to us.

We could stop someplace for a couple of hours for better tide, but that would cut into the time available to do the laundry with a marina water supply. I made some hurried last-minute calls and we settled for a spot at Deep Point Marina, which we remembered from a decade ago. I got off the phone literally moments before making the turn into the basin, where we had just a foot under keel in the channel and plowed mud at the turn into the slip (map). We docked bow-in with the anchor overhanging the dock so I could work on the anchor roller, which made for a tricky tie-up at the stern involving lassoing a piling from the boat deck.

We had noticed the anchor roller on the verge of losing a bolt when we weighed in Wrightsville, and when I could not budge the bolts with hand tools I knew we'd have to attack it from a dock or else I would be hanging off the bow in a bosun's chair. The dock made it easy and with some PB blaster, a mini torch, and an impact driver I was able to get the bent bolt out and remove the roller. I had to clean the axle threads up with a tap, and I replaced both rollers and two bolts as a precaution. It took me an hour and change working from the dock.

The reason we've never been back to this marina is that it is next to absolutely nothing, and so at dinner time we called a cab. Uber tried its best but had no drivers available, and the local "guy" who runs the service in town turned out to be "on a private drive all night in Wilmington." Oak Island Cab sent a taxi in 15 minutes and he dropped us in town for $22. That's pretty steep just to go to dinner, but Uber was available for our return ride for just half that. We had a nice meal at the Moore Street Oyster Bar, which has an impressive row of draft handles.

Tap list at MSOB. Many servers were wearing the "shuck me" shirts.

Had we made it to St. James Plantation last night, there is no question that we would have continued down the ICW today, weaving through some of the most notorious shoals on the waterway. And I can see on my scope more than a dozen boats doing just that. But stopping as we did a bit further upriver, we thought to check the outside conditions for the relatively short 30-mile hop to Little River. It's a little lumpy out here, but within our tolerance, and it's a much easier watch. That also let us drive right past the pump-out dock that we had planned to use. We left the river via the Western Bar Channel with five feet of tide. We found the least depth to be 8' MLLW, which would be nerve-wracking at low tide.

We should be at the anchorage off the Little River a good hour or so before sunset, and tomorrow we will get an early start to beat the weekend traffic in Myrtle Beach and continue down the inside. Louise has a big batch of pasta e fagioli on the stove for tonight. We have at least four days to Charleston, including a fuel stop and at least one night in Georgetown. We might take a dock there while the temperatures dive into the low 30s.

I was able to get a reservation at our preferred marina in Charleston starting on the 14th for a week, and I already have my train tickets. I'll be going in to Philly and renting a car there. Louise will be holding down the fort for the couple of nights I am gone, and the rest of the week we expect to enjoy Charleston. It's been a couple of years since our last extended visit there.

Virginia, the bumper-boat state

We are underway southbound in the Pamlico Sound, finally back in motion after nearly a week pinned down by weather. We're not alone; with the first good weather in that long, everyone, it would seem, is on the move.

This serving tray was on the wall at Back Bay Ale House. I grew up in a Ballantine household.

When last I posted here, we were underway offshore to Atlantic City. We made good time and thus arrived a bit ahead of the flood, pushing our way in Absecon Inlet on the last of the ebb. We had the hook down in our usual spot (map) just before 5:30 and we immediately splashed the tender and headed to dinner at the Back Bay Ale House in Gardner Basin. We decked the tender as soon as we returned home, for an early morning start.

Saturday morning we weighed anchor at 5 AM to catch the tail end of the ebb. Conditions looked good for a straight run to Hampton Roads, but as cheap insurance we ran closer to shore on the route toward Cape May instead, giving us both a calmer ride and also an easier bail-out. The slight diversion added just a mile to the Hampton Roads route.

Leaving Absecon Inlet at zero-dark-thirty. Taken through a messy window.

With the forecast holding and actual conditions 3nm offshore excellent, we made the call about halfway to Cape May and came left onto the direct route. With westerlies for the whole ride, I plotted the course very close to shore off Assateague Island. The longest fetch was the open jaw from Cape May to Lewes, and even that was decent.

Traffic offshore was very light. We were passed by a couple of power cruisers, and we passed a couple of sailboats. I had one tug towing a barge, the Bart L, going the other way that I had to dodge; he was doing exactly what I was doing and "running the beach" as my tow-skipper friend calls it. By contrast, all the pleasure traffic was another ¾ mile or more offshore.

Our view underway when maneuvering I have towels over the plotters to see out the window.

We had a fair current the whole way, and before the start of solo watchkeeping I dropped the rpm so we would not arrive too early. As expected, though, we reached the mouth of the Chesapeake while I was still in the berth. This was the first open fetch since Delaware Bay, and here toward the end of the good window we found ourselves in 2-3 footers on the beam. Louise increased rpm accordingly, and I ended up waking up a good hour early and took over the watch at 8 AM, before we even reached the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel.

Our intended destination was the anchorage at Phoebus, as we always prefer anchoring over docking at the end of an overnight passage. I will spare you all the gory details, but while we were offshore I spent hours Saturday working out travel arrangements to go back to NJ for a visit with my folks from the Hampton area, since the weather had us whizzing by them without being able to stop as I had planned. I had the perfect trip arranged by train out of Newport News.

Sunrise over the North Atlantic.

What we learned before Louise even turned in was that there was not a dock to be had anywhere near Hampton on Monday for love or money. Evidently the enormous "Salty Dawg" offshore rally was staging in Hampton Roads and waiting on good offshore weather (they all left this morning). I call every marina from Newport News to Portsmouth and nary a space was to be had. I had cancelled all the travel reservations by Sunday morning.

What that also told us was that it would be a very, very tight squeeze into Phoebus, if we could fit at all. All of the rally boats who could not get a dock, or those who simply did not want to pay for one, were packed into every anchorage in the Hampton Roads area. And so it was that we decided to wave off Phoebus even as we were crossing over the Bridge Tunnel.

Sunset and a blurry crescent moon over Assateague Island.

Fortunately, we had the flood behind us coming into the roadstead, and that flood would take us as far down the Elizabeth as we cared to travel. We decided we could muster the energy to get tied up at High Street in Portsmouth, or maybe even Great Bridge if necessary, since it was the middle of the day in fair conditions. We knew wherever we stopped, that's where we'd be pinned down for the impending winds.

Normally I cross the ship channel and run down the northern part of the Elizabeth just outside of the green side. But an hour out we heard an announcement that they were moving dredge pipe and the whole channel would be closed until after noon, and so instead I swung wide and took the red side, where we could get around it. A cruising sailboat under power whom we had seen offshore, who does not understand the special channel rules at Thimble Shoals, nearly ran us into one of the reds in the Auxiliary Channel, even after clear communication on the radio. Clueless skippers in the very busy Hampton Roads area was a key reason we slowed down enough for me to be on watch as we arrived.

Lots of offshore wind farm activity now in Norfolk.

The diversion proved wholly unnecessary, as they had reopened the channel by 9:45, well ahead of the noon estimate, but I was already on the red side and had to stay there. Just as well, because by this hour the ship pilots were already fed up with the pleasure craft operating erratically. One pilot on an ultra-large (a special category with special rules) had the patience of Job explaining how, yes, he was indeed going to need the entire channel.

We arrived to High Street right around noon, and, unsurprisingly, the basin was entirely full. Our secret-squirrel spot on the outside bulkhead was open, but we had to think long and hard about spending three days pinned down there in a windstorm. In the end, we opted to pass it by and press ahead to Great Bridge, taking a chance on there still being room at the bulkhead.

Lots of activity on the water, at least for now while the last of the funds holds out.

Our planned fuel stop at Top Rack is between these two docks, and even though it meant arriving an hour later to Great Bridge, we decided to make the stop and fuel up. We took on 750 gallons and left the dock in plenty of time for the 2:30 lockage at the Great Bridge Lock. The bridge past the lock, normally hourly, is opening only on the even hours now due to mechanical issues, and we had the lock to ourselves.

We were relieved to find two spots left on the bulkhead just before the bridge. Had there been none, we would have had to lock back through the other way and go back to Top Rack. We were tied up before 3 PM (map) and got secured for the coming winds. Louise, who had been fighting a severe allergy attack all day and did yeoman's work to dock, lock, and dock again through all the sneezing, crashed.

Vector at the Great Bridge bulkhead. We never saw anyone on the sailboat behind us, which seems to be just stored there.

She was in no shape to go out to dinner, and I ended up walking to Jersey Mike's, in the plaza that replaced our beloved Mexican joint here, for an Italian sub and some chips for dinner aboard. I had to walk right past the now-shuttered Vino's Italian Bistro, which had been our go-to since the Mexican place closed, until they moved out of walking distance earlier this year.

Monday the winds started building as forecast, but it was still a pleasant enough day to get off the boat and walk. That let me go straight to Kroger for emergency supplies. Louise had gone through every tissue on the boat over the course of two days of heavy allergies, and I had to replenish the Strategic Kleenex™ Reserve. She felt OK by dinner time and we walked across the bridges to the Lockside Grill for dinner. Monday turns out to be $6 burger night (we had no idea) and the place was packed, with people mostly older than us.

Coming home from dinner we got a strong smell of diesel crossing the bridge, and we could see a sheen moving past the boat. I made a report to the Coast Guard. I snapped this picture a full 17 hours later. There is a fuel dock just the other side of the bridge from us.

Tuesday was the most intense day of the storm, with winds gusting to 40 and heavy rain all day. We stayed cooped up inside all day, surfing the web and checking off indoor projects. Except when we were paying attention to the parade of boats that, for some reason, were still coming through the lock and bridge. Many never got the memo about the reduce openings for the bridge and had to station-keep for over an hour. And the weird schedule had too many boats to fit the lock on some openings, leaving the latecomers with unplanned two-hour delays.

By dinner time we were stir-crazy, and when the rain let up to something less than torrential, we grabbed our umbrellas and walked to the closest place. With Vino's gone that is now Chili's, and despite docking here for a decade we had never set foot inside. I think the last time we ate at a Chili's was on a Red Cross disaster deployment maybe 15 years ago, and we are no longer acclimated to this kind of American chain-restaurant fare. At least they had several beers on draft.

Vector on the wall as boats wait for a bridge opening.

Wednesday morning we could have gotten underway and made a Thursday window to cross the Albemarle, and in hindsight I am really sorry we did not. But Louise's phone went to the great cell tower in the sky in Atlantic City, and the replacement I ordered on Amazon had not yet arrived to the locker. By the time the notice came in the afternoon we had missed the window to depart. I took the e-bike down to the locker in light rain, hitting the dollar and grocery stores again on the way home. We walked to dinner at Kagura, with acceptable Japanese fare at an all-you-can-eat price of $26. Louise reported the sushi as a B-, but everything else was decent.

At 11 PM, after Louise had already turned in, I listened to a latecomer as he came through the lock. Apart from towboats, almost no one comes through the lock after about 6 PM. He asked both the lock and bridge tenders if they could see any room at either of the free docks, and as it turned out there was a big space right in front of us. Being nosy I watched him out the back door as he approached from the lock, and then I moved up to the pilothouse to watch him dock.

As seen from across the canal. We have three fenders out "just in case."

As I looked out the pilothouse door I was aghast to see him rapidly approaching Vector, and I flung the door open in my bathrobe just as his starboard side made contact with our port. We had set three fenders out on the port side as a precaution, and the center one saved us from what would have been a lot of damage from his rub rail. It cushioned the blow enough that Louise said it was my screaming rather than the impact that woke her up.

Unfortunately, his complete lack of skill and panic of the moment meant that he turned hard to port and applied power to get away (hard to starboard and rocking astern/ahead was the correct maneuver) and he swung his stern right into us, missing the aft fender and putting a deep gouge in our hull paint. After that he managed to get it docked, and I took a photo of his transom and told him to come by in the morning to provide his insurance. I did not want to go back out  in the rain.

This gouge is about 3" long. Fortunately not down to bare steel, but it's well into the fairing and will need to be ground, faired, primed, and painted, "hoping" it will blend in.

In the morning we heard him calling the bridge at 7:45 for the 8:00 opening. He had not said a word to us and I marched over there to get his info. Never even an apology, just some mumbling about how "these things happen." I showed him the damage, told him there might be more we have not found yet, and got his name, number, and insurance information. He was already gone by the time we called the Virginia Marine Police to come take a report.

There are few words to express how upset and disappointed I am that we have been hit yet again and need paint repair yet again, but while we are literally headed away from the place that should do that repair. We managed to go ten years without anyone bashing into us, and this is now the third time this year. Arranging repairs is highly disruptive, and we are never made whole for that disruption.

Buckets, a sports bar, is one of our dining options. Not today.

Any thought we had about shoving off Thursday morning went out the window as we were waiting on the marine police. Realistically we would have had to make the same 8 AM bridge opening as Dimwit had, and, even then, we'd be stuck in the North River for two nights waiting on today's window to cross the Albemarle. We decided to overstay our welcome by yet one more night, and I had a nice walk in the afternoon. We just went back to Lockside for dinner, which I guess will be our new standard here. It was very quiet in comparison to Burger Monday.

Yesterday morning we dropped lines at 5:45 for the 6:00 bridge opening. It was just us and the towboat Island Fox pushing a deck barge. We had to close the blinds on our back door as his floodlights were coming right in and ruining my night vision. Me made the 6:30 opening at Centerville Turnpike, just before it locks down for morning rush hour, and I moved over to let Island Fox get ahead of us.

Sunrise as we approach North Landing Bridge. That's Island Fox ahead of us.

Normally I have to either run wide open throttle to make the next bridge a half hour later, or else slow roll at idle to make it a full hour, and in the pitch dark it would have been the latter. But they open on demand for tugs with tows, and we just followed Island Fox through the bridge at 7:20, and just stayed behind him the rest of the day. With such an early start, we had time to make it all the way across the Albemarle and to an anchorage off Croatan Sound, but it was still blowing 25 when we got to the south end of the North River.

I called ahead to one of the faster boats that decided to plow across the sound and asked for a condition report. "Breaking over the windscreen" was all we needed to hear, and we pulled over to a familiar spot in a partial lee off Camden Point (map) for the night. We had the hook down before 2 PM. The new solar kept us topped up all afternoon and through dinner, until we needed heat in the evening.

Sunset over Camden Point last night from our anchorage.

This morning we slept in, getting underway around 8 AM, and the conditions have been perfect. Which is why pretty much every boat on the east coast is on the move. These are great conditions for the Pamlico Sound route, and yet still hardly anyone uses it. We've seen only three other boats since leaving the North River, while watching a whole conga line headed for the Alligator on the marked ICW route.

Peeling away from the conga line.

The downside to this route is a dearth of reasonable overnight stops, and tonight will find us in a lee at the Long Shoal River. We will be online entirely courtesy of satellite Internet. Tomorrow we should be back in civilization.

A week in Brooklyn

We are underway southbound in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of New Jersey. Today is the first good weather window for this since I last posted here, and if the forecast holds, we will have another two days before the window slams shut. We are hoping to make it all the way to Hampton Roads while the going is good.

A final glance over our shoulder at The Battery as we leave Manhattan for Brooklyn.

As predicted, the nor'easter had us pinned on the boat the rest of Sunday and all day Monday and we did not leave Port Washington until Tuesday morning. We had a very early start on account of tide, and I was sorry I did not deck the tender Sunday when the wind was still low enough to do it. Judicious timing let us run the entire Harlem River with the mast up, and we had a fair tide the whole trip. We had the hook down in our usual spot in Anchorage 17 (map) before lunch time, and were looking forward to a nice stay.

The fall view from Anchorage 17 is spectacular in the daytime ...

Alas, it was not to be. A relentless north wind battered us our whole stay, and while the river was fine while it was ebbing, once the flood started the wind against current stirred the river into a choppy mess that pinned us on the boat. And the flood started before dinner time and went until past dark each evening. That first night we put our inflatables on and braved the river, but Louise nearly went for a swim boarding the tender.

... and also at night. One of the charms of this spot.

That was on her birthday, and so we were perhaps too invested in getting ashore for dinner. Once ashore we had a nice walk to our favorite neighborhood joint, the Tryon Public House. When we checked in at the marina we learned they would be closed for the next two years for renovations, leaving us with nowhere to land the dinghy in all of Manhattan. We also learned the current administration has cut funding for the renovation of the 79th Street Boat Basin, leaving that project in limbo.

Birthday toast at the Tryon Public House.

That would be the last time we made it ashore for dinner in Manhattan. Wednesday we never left the boat at all, and by Thursday we were stir-crazy and so went ashore during the ebb just to get a walk in. We decided we needed to get off the Hudson, and we booked a mooring ball in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn to wait out the rest of the weather. Expecting to be in Manhattan for a week, each of us had placed Amazon orders due to arrive Thursday, but they had not yet by the end of the ebb.

Quisqueya Plaza on Dyckman is decorated for the holiday.

As it turned out, we both got the notices as soon as we had settled in back aboard Vector. I decided to chance a wet return ride and I zipped back ashore during slack, hoping to beat the worst of the chop. I power-walked over to the Amazon locker, which is located in a housing project. I had a little bit of a splashy ride home but it was not too bad.

Obligatory photo. I weep now when I see her.

Friday morning my decision to race ashore Thursday proved prescient, as we woke to the worst seas yet. Vector was pitching so hard it was challenging to pour a cup of coffee, and the rollers coming down the river were surfing the dinghy right into the back of the boat. At one point it over-rode the swim platform and came down so hard it took a big chunk out of the paint, so now I have another thing to fix. We pulled it around to the side and hip-tied it so we could weigh anchor and get out of dodge before things got worse; there was no way we could hoist it in these conditions.

Attacked by our own dinghy. You can not normally see sky in this camera; that's how much we are pitching.

Having the dink on the hip in these conditions limited our speed to just over idle, and so as soon as we passed under the bridge we decided to trail it. That was a strategic error, or more precisely we need to work on a better technique, because the combination of 4 knots of headway and the steep waves nearly ripped it out of Louise's hands as she moved the lines and I had to stop the boat anyway. By the time we were abreast of Edgewater things had calmed down enough for us to pull over, drop a lunch hook, and hoist the tender on deck for the rest of the trip. No way did I want to tow it through the heart of NY harbor.

The result.

Getting underway earlier than planned, even at the slowest speed we could comfortably keep, put us at Rockaway Inlet at low tide, and we ended up dropping a lunch hook off-channel for an hour to wait for more tide entering Sheepshead Bay. There is a narrow, shallow bar at the entrance, which kept us out of Sheepshead for several years. Now that we have Corps of Engineers surveys available it is doable, and we've been meaning to try it for a couple of years. North wind gave us the perfect reason.

Hard to see but this is literally a hole in the river. Sheet pile goes to the bottom so they can work on the new rail tunnel.

The sounder said we could have made it at low tide; good to know for the future, but better safe than sorry. We were picking up a Miramar Yacht Club mooring (map) before 2:30. At an average of $70 per night, the mooring is double what we were paying in Manhattan, but it comes with launch service, and the harbor is far more protected.

The QM2 was berthed in Brooklyn as we passed.

We prefer our own tender to a launch, and after splashing it I headed over to get the gate code and the lay of the land. Before I even left the boat we noticed we were bumping the next ball over and I thought I would ask if they had one with more room. They did not until the following day, and then they wanted us to move anyway because they thought the anchors where we were would be too light for the forecast wind coming later in the week. I took a short stroll and when I returned to Vector we moved the eyes of the two mooring pennants directly to our cleats, eliminating the few feet of our own line that was in the lash-up, and that stopped the bumping. We did have to stow the dink on the hip.

Sheepshead vibe. This is Lokum; that disco ball is 2' across.

We ended up spending a full six nights in the harbor. Saturday we moved as requested to a beefier mooring, and that proved essential as the winds built to 40+ steady for nearly two days. By the end of our stay we had chafed both pennants, one nearly completely through, and they had to find us another pair. The two 400-lb mushroom anchors did hold us firmly in place, but we set an anchor alarm just in case. Our first mooring had two 250-lb mushrooms.

Port pennant chafed through to two strands. The starboard was not much better.

Sheepshead Bay, named after a fish, is both the name of the bay and the name of the neighborhood to its north. South of the bay is Manhattan Beach (confusingly not in Manhattan), but there is no landing on that side and it is a long way around by land. We spent most of our time in the Sheepshead Bay neighborhood, which, while diverse in the way all of NYC is, has a distinctly Eastern European leaning. Lots of Russian is spoken and lots of signage is in the Cyrillic alphabet.

Local fixture. Cheez on Anything! I passed this every day.

In the same way that we could get any cuisine in Inwood but all of it had a Dominican flair, we could likewise get any cuisine here but all with an eastern European flair. In the course of our stay we dined at Patrizia's (Italian), Lokum (Mediterranean with a Turkish accent), Next Door (Italian), and Emmons Palace (Azerbaijani). During the worst night of wind we took the launch ashore and stumbled to the closest joint, Roll'n'Roaster, which is a quick-service place that has been here forever. They at least have beer and wine, and the sandwiches were good. Our best experience was our final night, at Oda House, serving authentic Georgian food.

They no longer have skating car hops, but it was the era.

I had expected to spend more time in other parts of the city via transit, but the weather was not conducive to it, and a giant project kept me tied to the boat for part of our stay. But we did get into Manhattan once, taking the Q train from the Sheepshead Bay station to Times Square. I had errands to run, and Louise wanted to explore the New York Library. My errands were a success, but the library, overrun by tourists, evidently no longer allows you to just walk the hallowed halls and take it all in. Which is a shame.

Atlas.

We enjoyed a street-vendor pretzel, one of my NYC weaknesses, in Bryant Park before heading home. On some future visit I would like to explore more of the interesting neighborhoods in Brooklyn, which are a shorter train ride than Times Square. It's a safe bet we'll be back with Dyckman Landing closing.

British Empire Building.

I did enjoy walking around Sheepshead Bay most days, and we found a decent bagel place, a close market with great prices and most of what we normally buy, a dollar store, several pharmacies, and even a UPS Access Point, where we had our mail service send our mail. Somewhat out-of-place is an Applebees not far from the dock, which we did not sample even though it probably has the best draft selection in the neighborhood. An Aldi is also a short walk.

Skating before Prometheus has already begun.

The project that drained some of my time and energy was replacing the helm computer which provides our navigation charts and drives the boat to pre-planned routes. We've been scraping by with an old Windows 8.1 machine (the chart software is Windows-only) that I beat into submission a decade ago, and I have been nursing it along every time it has a hiccup. It's down a USB port due to a lightning strike and it goes through a CPU fan every couple of years, but I can no longer reliably get parts.

Old helm PC vs. new. Quarter for scale.

One of the Amazon deliveries in Manhattan was the replacement, a diminutive Windows 11 machine that I ordered when the current CPU fan started making its impending-death noises. In addition to heading off the fan crisis, the new machine allows us to upgrade the chart software to a more current version and also will stop all the drama from various things telling me that Windows 8 is no longer supported.

Installed and connected to instruments. This scrap-wood shelf originally held a laptop.

I'll spare you the gory details, but anyone who has ever done this kind of upgrade will tell you that more things break in the process than just transition seamlessly, and I spent many hours getting it all running, our charts and licenses moved over, and all the instrument connections working. Even with all the testing it would not talk to the autopilot when we left the dock, and I had to hand-steer and fix the problem at the next stop. So far today in the Atlantic it's doing fine, although I learned I need to tweak the screen colors in night mode.

They're building the winter market in Rock Center. Also Bryant Park.

Yesterday conditions were just barely good enough for us to move over to Atlantic Highlands, in Raritan Bay, where we needed to take on fuel. After dropping our moorings we briefly stopped at the yacht club dock to take on water, and we had a nice chat with Josh, a retired firefighter who maintains all the moorings in the bay and also drives the launch part of the week. We learned we can use the dinghy dock for just $25 per day when conditions are good enough for us to anchor in the limited space at the end of the bay..

These very nice (and expensive) stainless steel fences are all over Sheepshead, perhaps one house in three. A local style.

Rather than cut straight across from Rockaway Inlet to Sandy Hook in heavy westerlies, we hugged the Coney Island shoreline until the Hudson and then came down the Chapel Hill Channel into Raritan Bay. We bunkered 200 gallons of diesel at the Atlantic Highlands municipal marina before dropping the hook in the protected harbor (map). The fuel attendant was kind enough to give us a ten-cent per gallon discount for that quantity.

The market had this very tasty porter from Poland for less than three bucks per half-liter bottle. I stocked up.

I say protected, and it was comfortable enough as an anchorage, but we had quite the zesty tender ride to dinner. Just as last time, Thursday night was prime rib night at On The Deck restaurant adjacent to the marina. Louise also found the chicken pot pie quite good.

And every kind of candy, in bulk. If you can read Russian.

The current around the tip of Sandy Hook can be wicked, ramping quickly from zero to nearly three knots in the blink of an eye. In order not to have it against us this morning we weighed anchor at 4:00 AM, and I am a little bleary-eyed as I type. I did have a nap after sunrise, when I turned the conn over to Louise. The early start will let us get all the way to Atlantic City with a daylight arrival.

Final view of the city from our anchorage last night.

If this weather window holds, tomorrow we will depart on the direct outside route to the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, bypassing the slog up Delaware Bay and back down the Chesapeake. We will make the final decision as we approach the sea buoy for Cape May.