Settled in for the holiday

We arrived safely through Masonboro Inlet yesterday afternoon and are anchored in Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, in the short stretch of Banks Channel north of Motts Channel and south of the eight foot fixed bridge (map).  We had a great passage, with perfect conditions, and had no trouble with the well-marked inlet here protected by jetties.

This must be our week for shrimp-boat neighbors, as one pulled in to the Fort Macon anchorage Sunday night shortly after I posted here.  He left his trolling/stabilization poles out and deck lights on the whole night, anchored just a few hundred feet from us.  He was still settled in when we weighed anchor in the pre-dawn hours, even though we saw several other shrimpers heading to sea ahead of us.  A shrimper had even passed us close aboard when we were anchored in Cedar Creek.


Shrimp boat anchored nearby.  I snapped this photo as we were weighing anchor.

Leaving the shrimper and the anchorage behind, we were in the ship channel and passing the barrier islands at sunrise, and we made our right turn in the deep water just past Green 13, which oddly showed on our charts as Green 11.  (Inlet channel markers are repositioned fairly frequently, so this is not all that surprising.)   From there it was a straight 64nm run to Masonboro Inlet, with one large caveat, which is that this line crossed the Camp LeJeune firing range, which extends 15 miles to sea.

Shortly after making the turn, we called Range Control at Camp LeJeune to find out if we'd need to stay clear of the range -- our Notice to Mariners (NOTAM) indicated the range would be in use daily.  The Marine who answered the phone told me that it was our lucky day -- live fire exercises had been canceled, and we could come as close in as we'd like "without running aground."  That saved us nearly five miles, about 45 minutes.  As we crossed into the range I noticed a sailboat very deliberately going around -- I tried to raise him on the radio to pass along the news, to no avail.

That sailboat was the only other vessel we saw all day once we were a few miles outside the inlets.  He was three miles behind us when I spotted him, and nearly eight miles by the time we emerged from the firing range.  It can be lonely out on the ocean.  That said, we never really left sight of shore, being perhaps a dozen or so miles from it at the furthest point, and I even had 3G coverage on my phone for a good two hours after the turn at Beaufort Inlet, so I caught up on email, news, and social media.


Our track across Onslow Bay from Beaufort to Masonboro.  Click to open full-size and eliminate the "moiré pattern" effect from photographing a pixelated display.

Other than having to dodge a buoy marking a fish haven, which my plot line just happened to cross at just the right place, I did not touch a control all day.  Such is the nature of ocean travel.  We passed the time chatting, looking at the distant shore through glasses, doing routine engine room and instrument checks, and planning our next few moves.  I even did some troubleshooting when a random test revealed the horn was not working.  (Who knows how long it's been broken.  The colregs say I am supposed to sound one whistle blast every time we leave a berth -- although no pleasure boats do this -- and perhaps we need to start just to be sure the horn works as it should.)

As we approached Masonboro Inlet and were perhaps ten minutes out, I radioed for Coast Guard Station Wrightsville Beach, to get conditions at the inlet and any last-minute navigational information.  After perhaps half a minute with no response, Coast Guard Sector North Carolina answered, and when I told them I was looking for local information on the inlet, they asked me to stand by.  After maybe another minute, Station Wrightsville Beach came on the radio, and I repeated my request.  The watchstander either was not authorized or else simply did not know the answer, and I waited another half minute or so for a different coastie to come to the radio with the needed information, to wit, that there were no issues, and depths were as charted and no less than sixteen feet.

I had opted to run the boat faster than we normally would on an ocean crossing, to ensure we would arrive at the destination with enough daylight to find an anchorage and get settled in -- days are short this time of year.  We dialed in 1800rpm which gave us 7.8 knots at a burn of 6gph.  That put us here at the anchorage around 3:45 and we were all settled in place by 4.  Plenty of daylight left to splash the tender and even clean up the decks a bit.

Wrightsville Beach has the nicest free dinghy dock I have ever seen, and we made the short trip there last night to have dinner at Tower 7 Baja Mexican Grill just a block from the dock.  The food was excellent, and we learned that Mondays they have $3 XX Ambar drafts and half-price fajitas, which is what we always order anyway.  The two of us had trouble finishing a single order of the fajitas, although we did, as usual, ask for extra tortillas.  Robert's Grocery was just a few doors down, and we picked up milk, eggs, bananas, and ice cream to restock before heading back.

This morning I took another quick tender ride to empty our trash at the large receptacles provided there by the city, and again walked over to Tower 7 in its slightly altered incarnation as Cafe del Mar, which serves coffee and breakfast items.  I picked up a pair of breakfast burritos to bring back, which were also excellent.

We knew the weather today would be miserable and decided to just stay put.  The Nordhavn 50 Grey Goose, which had anchored right behind us, opted to move along, but I was happy to have a chance to see the two boats side-by-side, as the N50 is my all-time favorite Nordy, and is also closest in many respects to Vector, even down to the same powerplant.

We "slept in" this morning, which after yesterday's start meant sometime after 6:30am.  At least I got the trash off the boat before the rain started this way.  After a quick check of news and email, I then settled in to planning mode, as we are just three days away from Thanksgiving with no dinner reservations, or really any idea where we'd be.

I started with Bald Head Island, some 26 miles south of here, as the marina there is the natural jumping-off point for our next outside run, even longer than the last one, to Winyah Bay.  I've always wanted to visit Bald Head, and there are two restaurants there, both attached to private clubs, that are serving the holiday meal.  Renting a slip at the marina enables you to buy a one- or two-day guest pass to the clubs.

I'll spare you the long version and just say that we'd have to have "dinner" at 1pm at the Shoals Club, buy a two-day pass for $50, and rent a golf cart from yet another vendor to even get there, on top of the marina stay which would be north of $100 per night.  All for the privilege of spending $32pp for a buffet, plus tip and any drinks.  I'm sure it's lovely, but the logistics and cost diminish that somewhat, and, to top it all off, that would mean having a schedule on the boat -- never good.

Next I called possibly every restaurant in Southport within walking distance of the docks.  I ended up making 4:30 reservations at The Pharmacy, likely the nicest joint in town.  We'd dock maybe in the yacht basin or else at the Southport Marina and walk several blocks, and 4:30 meant we'd be able to have a fairly leisurely run on Thursday morning, when the weather is supposed to be favorable.  That said, their holiday menu did not really call to either of us -- in the south, turkey is apparently served with collard greens.

Somewhere in the course of the search I learned that there are several places right here in Wrightsville Beach serving Thanksgiving dinner, and I started calling around.  We ended up booking at The Bridge Tender, a restaurant attached to a marina and right next to the lift bridge, across the channel from where we stayed on our way north.  We can dinghy over there and tie up for dinner, so we don't even need to leave the anchorage.

In the course of calling around, I talked to a resort nearby, the Blockade Runner, which we can see from where I sit right now.  They serve an enormous buffet, and they have a dock.  We declined the buffet option, but when I asked about tying up at the dock, I learned that, while we could dock our dinghy there for dinner, the dock was unavailable the rest of the weekend due to "the flotilla."  Hmm.

As it happens, every year at Thanksgiving, Wrightsville Beach hosts the North Carolina Holiday Flotilla, which in most places would be called the holiday boat parade.  I looked at the route and the parade is planned to completely encircle the anchorage where we now lie, on Saturday evening.  Beforehand there will be fireworks, and the NOTAMs say we need to be at least 300 yards from a specific location, which I take to be the launch point.  We currently lie 450 yards from those coordinates.

Faced with the prospect of having one of the largest holiday boat parades in the southeast (it apparently attracts 50,000+ visitors) happen just a few hundred feet from us, on top of having front-row seats for the fireworks, we've decided not only to have Thanksgiving dinner here in town, but also to stay through the weekend and take in the whole event.  As our good friends over at Technomadia would say, it's serendipity.

I did call the Coast Guard station (the same one that took so long to get us inlet information) to verify that we'd be OK right here for the entire event.  Ironically, not half an hour later we were visited, along with every other boat in the anchorage, by a Coast Guard patrol boat making sure everyone was aware of the incoming severe weather.  We're nice and secure, but the patrol boat visit prompted us to pay out another 20' of scope, increasing to 9:1.

Depending on weather, we will likely get under way Sunday for Bald Head, or the nearby anchorage, to wait for a good window for the outside run to Winyah Bay.  I still want to see the island, and we need to be right next to the inlet when the weather window opens.  It's too early to predict when that will be -- coastal forecasts have a short lifespan.

Poised

We are anchored just off the Coast Guard Station at Fort Macon, on the barrier island near Beaufort and Morehead City, North Carolina (map).  This is just about as close as we can get to Beaufort Inlet, which leaves us poised for a possible outside run to Masonboro Inlet at first light tomorrow morning.  We will check the forecast first thing, and if weather at Masonboro looks good in the late afternoon for our arrival, we will weigh anchor and get under way.

This morning we had a spirited discussion about the plan.  We had high winds most of the night and all of this morning at our cozy little anchorage in Cedar Creek -- and that was in fairly protected waters with trees all around.  The temptation was to remain there for another night until the high winds and roiled seas abated before proceeding the roughly three hours here to the Beaufort area.  If we did that, we would definitely miss the one decent weather window for an outside run, tomorrow.  After that, the outside forecast is too dicey to chance it until after the Thanksgiving holiday.

We heard the winds here near the inlet would settled down close to 5pm today, and so we opted to get a late start out of Cedar Creek to time our arrival here with calmer winds, but still enough daylight to get fully settled.  On our way back into the ICW we had to arrange a passing with towboat Pamlico, pushing a good sized tow northbound, and we asked him how things looked.  He reported rough conditions in the Newport River, but by the time we arrived there two hours later it was fairly settled and we had no trouble crossing.

Getting the anchor dropped on station here was a bit of a challenge in 15-20 knots, with nearly a knot of ebb current, but now that we are on the hook all is well.  For that matter, getting the anchor up in Cedar Creek in even more of a blow was also challenging, and Louise had to concede defeat on getting all the mud off the chain as it came in.  We'll need to rinse out the chain and locker the next time we have dockside water.

Tomorrow's run, should we undertake it, is a full 68 nautical miles, our longest ever.  Once we are outside we are fully committed -- there are no stops in between.  At our normal cruise speed of around seven knots, the trip will take nearly ten hours end to end.  That will put us in the anchorage there just at dusk, around 5pm.  With a little luck I will be able to bump it up to around eight knots,  which will shave an hour and a half off the transit.  In reality, I am hoping to make it through the inlet by 4pm as a best case.

If, for any reason, we can not make the Masonboro Inlet, or arrive in the daylight, we will instead divert to the ship channel at the Cape Fear River, which means going around Frying Pan Shoals on an overnight run and arriving at the inlet at dawn Tuesday.  An overnight passage like this is inevitably in our future, but I would just as soon it not be concurrent with our very first outside passage.

Before we leave in the morning we will email our float plan to our Coast Guard designated emergency contacts.  I expect we will be in cell coverage for the first and last couple of hours on each end, VHF radio coverage most of the way, and SSB coverage full-time.  We do not have a real-time tracker yet to which I can point you, but I will do my best to update the blog when we arrive safely in Wrightsville Beach at the end of our passage.

Assuming we do, in fact, go out tomorrow, we will then continue inside along the ICW on Tuesday towards the Cape Fear River entrance.  I expect then that we will be spending Thanksgiving somewhere in or around Southport, and we will be researching decent restaurants in the area offering the holiday meal.

Sound advice

 

We are anchored tonight in Cedar Creek, off the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) between Oriental, NC and Morehead City (map).  We've had two long but very nice days of running across Albemarle, Croatan, and Pamlico Sounds, the later of which is the largest lagoon along the east coast of the U.S..  At several points we could not see land in any direction.  In our entire crossing we saw only two other pleasure boats, both high-speed vessels clipping along on plane.

Yesterday was particularly pleasant.  We got underway around 8:30, which, in hindsight, was perhaps an hour later than we should have, considering how perfect the weather was.  It took us an hour to reach the Albemarle from our spot in the North River, and on our way we found one of the ICW markers over on its side, barely visible -- no doubt the victim of a towboat pushing some heavy barges around the turn which it marked.  I spent several minutes on the radio with the Coast Guard reporting it, as it did not appear in the latest Notice to Mariners.



The Albemarle was glass calm, and about halfway across I remarked that we had yet to even turn the stabilizers on -- we had also managed to run the whole day Thursday without them, a first for us.  By the time we were in the Croatan, between the highway bridges, we could at least see waves on the surface, but we were well into the Pamlico before the very slight roll prompted us to turn them on.

The charts for the Croatan are confusing, showing a marked "channel" with a reported depth no greater than the surrounding bathymetry.  We followed our instincts along with some advice we got from our good friends captains Chris and Alyse of Captain Chris Yacht Services, including a number of waypoints for the route they use when on delivery runs through this section.  Professional skippers like this route because it shaves 18 miles off the ICW route, requires less steering input, and allows greater speeds for boats capable of such.

Shortly after crossing into the Pamlico Sound we took stock of the time, our speed, and the early sunset, and started planning our stop for the night.  We ended up anchoring in Middletown Anchorage (map), an area just off Middletown Creek with protection of land to the north and west, and the enormous Gibbs Shoal to the east.  Increasing winds from the south made it a bit rolly in the evening, but, as we expected, the winds clocked around to the north in the night and we slept soundly.  We had the anchorage to ourselves, and the stars were quite spectacular.

Today's forecast, which was not bad yesterday morning, had deteriorated by the time we anchored to winds 15-20 gusting to 30 with seas 2-3'.  Mindful of how bad 3' seas felt on the Chesapeake, we were somewhat apprehensive, but things looked fine at dawn this morning and we opted to weigh anchor and get under way.  We had a very pleasant ride until lunch time, when the seas finally picked up to the predicted 2-3', and then we had a bit of motion, but nothing unpleasant or uncomfortable.  Even Angel managed to keep her breakfast down.

Once we were in the Neuse River things calmed back down again, and we discussed docking at Oriental at great length. Ultimately we decided to press on, as the free town docks were full up, and we could not think of a good reason to pay $60-$80 to spend the night, or possibly two.  That second night would be on account of tomorrows forecast, which includes gusts to 50mph, so we may very well be staying right here for a second night.

We have just a dozen miles or so to the twin cities of Beaufort and Morehead City, NC.  We stayed in Morehead on our way north.  Our plan is to go outside at Beaufort Inlet, so we will be in this general area until the weather outside is conducive to a full day's run down to Masonboro Inlet some 60 miles or so south.  At this writing, that looks to be after Thanksgiving, so it looks like we will be spending the holiday in Beaufort or Morehead City.  I hope someplace decent is serving a nice holiday meal.

Once more, with feeling

We are anchored in the North River, between the North Carolina (Coinjock) cut and the Albemarle Sound (map).  We are not far from the spot where we anchored on our way north, but with less wind to contend with today, we stayed closer to the channel rather than heading for the eastern shore.  A sailboat that had been a few miles behind us decided this spot looked good, too, and so we have neighbors a few hundred yards away.

We awoke this morning to find a shrimper sharing the dock with us, which suggests that the Corps managed to get the lock open at the 4am low tide.  He had a Belhaven hailing port, and we thought it odd for him to be on the ICW in Great Bridge.  We shoved off right at 8am, to make the 8:30  opening at Centerville, which is closed from 6:30 to 8:30 for rush hour.


Vector at the Great Bridge Battlefield & Waterway Park.  That's a commercial shrimper behind us.

That put us there with four other boats; three sailboats under power, and the sportfisher Diversified, who had fueled with us at Top Rack.  They had spent the intervening time at Atlantic Yacht Basin, and we chatted with them briefly waiting for the bridge.  They are taking the same route as us, via Pamlico Sound, but, being much faster, expected to be through it today.

It was an odd feeling retracing our steps from yesterday morning, and I could not help but look over at George as we passed the same spot where she had her seizure yesterday.  She was content and oblivious to it all, and seems to be just fine after our big scare.

We cleared the bridge right behind Diversified and then set a slow pace to make the North Landing bridge, just four and a half miles away, an hour later, with the three sailboats behind us.  I had to station-keep for ten minutes at the bridge, and we left the sailboats behind shortly after the opening.  One of those boats is the one now anchored nearby, and we saw another continue on south.  I am guessing the third boat, shortest (and therefore slowest) of the lot, is at a marina in Coinjock tonight.

We had a good run today with no issues, although the water level in the canal, the North Landing River, and Currituck Sound was quite low, down I would guess nearly two feet, due to the wind direction.  We saw some depths near 7.5' mid-channel; we passed this along to the enormous towboat we passed at Coinjock.  He draws 8.5', but these tugs just power through the low spots with gobs of horsepower.

Having need neither of marina amenities nor a prime rib dinner, we continued past Coinjock another ten miles to anchor here, with good 3G coverage and a beautiful view.  We dropped the hook by 3pm, making a fairly long day for us but positioning us well for our crossing of the sounds tomorrow.  We are glad to finally have Virginia behind us, and we are looking forward to some open water tomorrow where less focused attention is required on the helm.

George Report

Just a quick update here, as many folks have written in (or called) directly or in the comments to express their concerns and sympathy about George.  She is back home and is her old self after a few hours on IV fluids.  The doctor described her as "feisty."  She seems no worse for wear, although her sister, who dreams of being an only-cat, is not happy.

In other news, the forecast on the sounds is actually improving, so it looks as if we will shove off as planned first thing tomorrow morning.  It will probably be a lonely run -- the lock was unable to open at all today, and we are the only boat on either of the free docks here in Chesapeake. Even Atlantic Yacht Basin seems devoid of southbound cruisers at the moment.

Declaring an emergency

We are back in Chesapeake, Virginia, at a different free dock (map), adjacent to the Great Bridge Battlefield, on the other side of the canal and the bascule bridge from where we've spent the last few days.  We're stuck here until at least tomorrow, on account of a missing crewmember, and possibly longer.

We shoved off this morning in time to make the 9am opening of the Great Bridge Bridge.  As the lock itself was closed, we were the only boat waiting on the bridge; Concrete Idea had gone through on the 7am lift to fuel up at Atlantic Yacht Basin before resuming their own southbound trek.

Three statute miles south of Great Bridge is the Centerville Turnpike swing bridge, which opens on a half hour schedule.  That's a comfortable speed for us and we arrived at the bridge just in time for a 9:30 opening.  As we were approaching the bridge, just as I was about to hail them on the radio, a loud "thunk" alerted me to the fact that George had managed to push a chart book off the settee.  Cats knocking things over is a pretty routine occurrence around here, and I even cracked a joke about it.

When Louise looked over at her, though, she realized that George was having a seizure.  Her legs were stiff and claws latched in to the settee cushion, eyes rolled back, one side unresponsive.  We were in a narrow stretch, and I could not leave the helm.  It was all over in only a minute, but it gave us a good scare.  I had throttled back to idle, and after a quick discussion we decided to immediately divert to the closest vet.

A quick call to the Centerville Bridge tender confirmed what I already knew -- the closest veterinary care would be back here in Chesapeake.  Thankfully, we had not yet passed the bridge, so I did not need to request an emergency opening.  I moved up to a wider spot in the canal just before the bridge and turned the boat around, and we motored as fast as we dared directly back here.  Louise used the twenty minutes of transit time to call some vets and line up a taxi to take us from the landing to the closest one that could see her right away, at 10:30.

With today being a good weather window for the trip south, the four sailboats that were on this dock last night had all left just ahead of us this morning, and so we had no issues at all coming straight in and tying up alongside.  It is at times like these that we are thankful we trained extensively to dock the boat unassisted in all kinds of conditions; this dock was a piece of cake and we were tied up in a matter of just a couple of minutes.

Long time readers might remember that George has chronic kidney disease, and it turns out that seizures can be a symptom of a build-up of toxins in the bloodstream as a result of the reduced kidney function.  A blood count revealed that her BUN and creatinine levels have risen a good bit since her last bloodwork, although most of the other numbers looked pretty good and she is nowhere near being in crisis.  While we can give her subcutaneous fluids here on Vector to try to flush things out, we opted to have the vet do a course of IV fluids instead, for more immediate effect.

So George is at the vet for the rest of today, and we have an appointment with the taxi to take us back over there before they close at 5pm to pick her up.  This will give the vet the rest of the afternoon to observe her as well, to make sure there are no additional signs or symptoms.  He has also recommended we step up the administration of sub-cu fluids moving forward, as the disease is clearly progressing.

While we were waiting for our return taxi, a woman came in with a beautiful young American Eskimo dog, which brought back a flood of memories of Opal.  It has been a rough morning.  I am hoping that the fluids will perk George back up and we will have a better evening once she is home -- she was still pretty out of it when we left her at the vet.

Of course, this delay means we will miss our window for good weather on Pamlico Sound.  We'll be sitting down with the charts and the forecasts this afternoon to see if it still makes sense to shove off in the morning, perhaps getting an early start and running another twenty miles past Coinjock, or if we should stay put a while longer and wait for another three-day weather window.


Opal in 2005 at White Sands National Monument. We still miss our little globe trotter.

Weather hold

Notwithstanding my last post, wherein I said we would leave here Sunday morning, we are still in Chesapeake, Virginia, tied to the free wall at South Battlefield Park, between the lock and the bridge.  We made the decision to stay at our morning weather conference on Sunday.  The weather here, of course, was just fine -- the delay was due to forecast weather further south on the route.

The many boaters who now follow us here well know this drill, but a few words of explanation may be in order for our even larger readership of RVers and other landlubbers.  That explanation starts by saying we have a very slow boat -- in open water we cruise at around seven knots (about 8 mph), and that might go up to 8 knots in excellent conditions, but often goes down to six knots or less (less than 7mph) when we are restricted to narrow channels.

To put that in perspective, that's only about twice as fast as an average walking speed, and less than half as fast as a comfortable bicycle ride.  We absolutely love seeing the scenery go by at this speed, but it does mean that it can be a long day between safe places to stop, and it mandates careful planning.  Complicating matters somewhat is our six foot draft, which precludes us from accessing many anchorages, harbors, and marinas accessible to boats with shallower draft.

So, for example, once we leave here, there is no place at all for us to stop for the day until we reach Coinjock, North Carolina, where there are exactly two marinas across the canal from one another.  Coinjock is 38 statute miles from here.  Including the time it takes to shove off and tie up, we have to budget at least six hours of running time to get there, and we need to add at least a half hour to that figure due to the timing of the three bridge lifts we need en route.

If anything goes awry on the way, our only real options are to press on or to return here.  Our charts and notes do show an abandoned dock about a third of the way, with reports of eight foot depths, but a small abandoned dock with unverifiable depth reports can not be relied upon -- it could be full (two boats), the dock's owners could now be enforcing "no trespassing", or the area in front of the dock may have shoaled to less than six feet since the last report.

So before we begin such a leg, we need to be sure that the weather will be favorable for the entire run, including both endpoints, and that the boat is ready for it as well.  In this particular case, the run includes a transit of Currituck Sound, an extremely shallow body of water with a narrow channel to which we must keep.  I remember crossing the sound on our way north in decent winds, crabbing the whole way.  While it is somewhat arbitrary, we've set a limit for ourselves of 15-20 knot winds and two foot waves in Currituck for the crossing, just to be comfortable and to keep from being worn out from hand steering by the end of the day.

The weather on Currituck Sound was fine on Sunday and even acceptable yesterday, although today would be dicey.  But this sort of planning happens not just for the immediate next leg, but rather for the next several legs as forecasts permit.  So while we would have had a nice ride to Coinjock on Sunday, it was the next leg that caused us to reconsider.

We want to skip the Alligator River and the Alligator-Pungo canal, and, instead, take the route across Croatan and Pamlico Sounds before rejoining the ICW at the Neuse River.  We'd rather not push through those bodies of water in high winds and chop -- we'd prefer to enjoy the ride and the scenery.  As the forecast called for rough conditions on Pamlico Sound today, we opted to hold off.  We chose to stay here for an extra three days, where dockage is free and we have access to myriad shops and restaurants, rather than push on to Coinjock, only to have to hold there for an extra two nights at over $90 a night, and where the restaurant charges a captive-audience rate as well.

We've been planning to shove off first thing tomorrow, but the forecast for Currituck Sound has been deteriorating.  At this writing we are still "go," but when we read the weather report over morning coffee tomorrow, that may well change again.  With the lock operating at an extremely reduced capacity, the wall here has never filled up since we arrived, so we don't have to feel bad about acing anyone out of a spot.

Speaking of the lock, it was closed all day yesterday, while divers carried out parts of the repair on the valve.  They finally opened it briefly around 1am, and by then boats had stacked up all the way to the Steel Bridge, including two giant tows, with many pleasure boats anchored in the channel.  Our entertainment was listening to all this on the radio, with some sailboats having to scramble to raise anchor to get out of the way of the towboats, and at least one boater who was still asleep below decks, anchored in the channel, as the lock opened.  It's been closed all of today, too, with a plan to let some traffic through around 4pm, and we can see the boats stacked up on the north side.


Vector behind the Hatteras 48 LRC Concrete Idea, with a Corps of Engineers crane sitting in the lock chamber in the background.

The extra few days here gave me some time to tackle a few projects, and it's handy to have some stores in walking distance.  I just came back from Auto Zone with new wiper blades -- the old ones gave out completely on our way here.  I also did some grocery shopping, and Louise got her hair cut.  Yesterday we walked across the road to Atlantic Yacht Basin, the marina and boatyard on the other side of the Great Bridge bridge, where most of the southbound traffic has been tying up en route.  We went to check out their covered storage for our friends, who are thinking of storing their trawler there in the off season.

I have my fingers crossed the forecast holds and we can get under way in the morning.  As pleasant as it has been here, I'd like to get south of Cape Hatteras before winter truly sets in.  With any luck my next post will be from Coinjock or even further south.

Great Bridge

We are tied up at the free wall between the Great Bridge lock and the Great Bridge bridge (map).  We stayed more or less in this same spot when we came through in the other direction six months ago.  It's a great stop, because there are several restaurants and shops within easy walking distance; tonight we wandered over to the same Mexican restaurant that we enjoyed so much on our last stop.

Today was a short day mileage-wise, with only ten nautical miles under our keel, but I spent nearly four hours at the helm.  Mostly, that was due to the current situation with the lock, which today had it closed to traffic until past noon.

We shoved off this morning at 9am, backing out into the channel just behind a pair of very high-end yachts hailing from the New Jersey shore.  Several more boats were not far behind them, putting us in the thick of the southbound push.  We respected the 6-kt speed limit in the river, and in short order we were at the back of the pack and dropping rapidly.  I gathered most of the boats were trying to make the 11am opening of the Steel Bridge for a possible 11:30 lock-through at Great Bridge.

In the fullness of time we caught back up to the pack as they were waiting for the bridge, and ended up going around the last four boats to get to the fuel dock at Top Rack Marina, which is close to the bridge. I tried hailing the last boat, who was hogging the channel, on both 13 and 16 with no response, and we could see him getting testy when we went around, as if we were trying to take his place in line.  Of course, if he had answered his radio he would know we were not waiting for the bridge, but going elsewhere.

We tied up at Top Rack around 10:30 or so and started our bunkering process (a fancy nautical term for taking on fuel).  I had mentally budgeted over three hours for bunkering, because many diesel dispensers can only manage five gallons per minute or so.  The ones at Top Rack, it turns out, crank out over five times that flow rate.  Consequently, it took less than an hour to put on 1,000 gallons of fuel.

Our center tank took a little over 400 gallons, which means the other 600 gallons, 4,300 pounds worth, is split between the wing tanks, which are both aft of center.  We are now riding decidedly nose-up, but we should level out somewhere in Georgia.  We now have somewhere around 1,400 gallons aboard, which is enough for the longest leg of a transatlantic crossing, so this is a good test for the boat.

We cast off from Top Rack just in time for the noon opening of the Steel Bridge, with a half dozen other boats.  We had figured these would be our lock-mates at Great Bridge for the 12:30 locking.  What we did not know, however, was that there was no 11:30 locking, as conditions were unfavorable.  So absolutely every boat that had passed us this morning, whether in the river or while we were at Top Rack, as well as anyone who did not get the memo about the lock and tried to get an early start, was stacked up in front of us waiting for the lock.  The string of boats extended for three quarters of a mile in front of us to the lock gates.

When the lock finally opened, all those boats filled up both walls, and we were the first boat to miss the locking.  Actually, they had us pull up to check first, but we were a good dozen feet longer than the space they had left, and I had to back out of the lock back into the channel.  The 40+ foot sailboat behind us also tried to fit but could not.  And so we, and perhaps a half dozen or so more boats behind us had to wait for another full cycle of the lock, and we sat there station-keeping just north of the lock for an hour.

We finally made it through and cleared the lock fenders around 2pm.  Two sailboats that had made the first locking were already here on the free wall, but there was plenty of room for us and for a Hatteras 48 LRC that locked through with us.  The Hatt 48 LRC was one of the boats we had seriously considered, and our broker had previewed this one when it was in Michigan and sent us photos.  I had a nice chat with the new owners, who've had it about three months.

Now that the lock is behind us, we can take a much more leisurely pace from here on.  The nature of the ICW and the outside route means there will inevitably be long days, just due to the separation of safe anchorages and harbors, but we have the luxury of waiting for favorable weather, or staying an extra day or two in a spot just because we like it, or to finish up a project.

Tomorrow morning we will continue south on the Albemarle & Chesapeake Canal.  Our day will start with three draw bridges in succession, each on a schedule.  I expect we will be flanked by the same dozen or so boats we encountered today all the way to Coinjock, the next available stop on this route.  We won't leave the pack now until we are in the Albemarle.

The cats contemplate a flock of Canada geese, each of which probably outweighs Angel.

Escaping winter

We are tied up at the free dock at the north ferry landing in Portsmouth, Virginia (map).  The ferry that lands here would take us across the river to Town Point, where we spent a week back in May.  If we had another day or so to spare, we would do just that, and have dinner there.  As it is, we are still concerned about closure of the Great Bridge lock another ten miles south of here, and so we will shove off shortly and head to Top Rack Marina, another familiar stop, to take on 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel before trying to make this afternoon's window for lock opening.

We had a very nice cruise down from Deltaville yesterday.  There was just enough chop mid-morning for Angel The Queasy to lose her cookies, but nothing else was disturbed, and the new loops on the bilge discharges seem to be working as planned to keep the water from backflooding into the bilges when the boat porpoises.

We shoved off about 8am after final goodbyes and last-minute checks, and we were tied up here by 3:30.  We walked ten blocks or so to Mannino's Italian Bistro on High Street for a nice dinner, and we got to take in a little bit of Portsmouth in the process.  We'll definitely make another stop here some day when we have more time.

The Corps of Engineers has tentatively posted a window this afternoon from 12:30 to 6:30 to operate the Great Bridge lock.  We have two draw bridges before the lock which operate on fixed schedules, and between them is our fuel stop, where I expect it will take us at least three hours to bunker, assuming we don't have to wait in line first.

If all goes well we should be through the lock by mid-afternoon sometime, and we will tie up to the free wall between the lock and Great Bridge bridge, where we stopped on our way north six months ago.  Then we can breathe easy and have a much more leisurely cruise south.  I'll also be able to make time to catch up on some projects that have been on hold while we were in the yard, as well as some new ones that got added to the list.

Chillin'

We are into our second week here at Deltaville Boatyard in Deltaville, Virginia.  We had mentally budgeted for a stay of up to two weeks, so no problem there, but man, has it ever gotten cold since we arrived.  We had a couple of days of shirtsleeve weather last week, but now the lows are dipping into the 30s, and today's high did not break 50.  At least the water is still above 50, so we can run the heat.

We did spend the weekend on the hard, which meant running our three little 1,000-watt portable heaters as high as they would go.  With our integral water tank attached to the steel hull, the water was in the mid-30s when we woke up.  At least we got some sunlight through the pilothouse windows in the mornings.

We had not planned on the haulout, but the stabilizer repair ran a small risk of dropping the fins out of the boat, so the yard decided to err on the side of caution and put a jack under them while the work proceeded.  The plan was to do all this in the slings, but they needed the lift elsewhere and ended up blocking us.  As long as we were blocked, we elected to repair some bottom paint damage as well as take care of the snubber issue.

This last item involves some paint and fairing damage on the bow where the eye/thimble of the snubber was being slammed against the hull by the bow wave under way.  We talked to the yard about maybe some kind of stainless plate on the bow to prevent this, which would have been a good deal of work, but when I showed the problem to our friend, fellow boater, and engineer Rod, he suggested welding a small rod atop the bow eye to keep the shackle from rotating far enough for the thimbled eye to hit the hull.  So that's what we did, and it looks like it will work well, although only more cruising will tell for sure.



A couple of big Krogens came in last week, and another Nordhavn 47 was hauled out Saturday, allowing me to get another great view of two of our favorites, the Krogen 48 and Nordhavn 47, blocked up side-by-side.  The Krogen is actually a rare twin-screw example of this model, which typically has but a single engine.  The Nordy came in with stabilizer problems, on the same model we have, so I was very interested in their tale.


Krogen 48 Texas Ranger on left and Nordhavn 47 Never Say Never on right, backlit by early morning sun.  Compare to last week's photo of Nordhaven 47 Happy next to Selene 48 Changer.

It turned out to be three guys from Chicago -- the owner, and two buddies who were helping him move the boat from Annapolis to Florida.  They had no interest in hanging around Deltaville for a couple of weeks while the repairs happened (or staying in a freezing boat on the hard), and booked flights back to Chicago out of Norfolk Saturday evening.  We offered to drive them to the airport in a borrowed car, and they were very grateful  -- it's an expensive two-hour cab ride otherwise.

That let us do some shopping at Lowe's on the way back, and also have a nice dinner at Fiorello's in Yorktown, a really nice Italian place that happens to be, of all places, in the Holiday Inn.  The Lowe's stop involved mostly flooring supplies, for the woven vinyl product I mentioned in the last post.  The tiles are here and they look great, but I needed skim coat, a contour gauge, carpet tape, and a number of other items to do the installation, sometime well after we've left the yard here.

The other thing that has happened since my last post is the Great Bridge Lock has broken.  The damage involves an underwater valve, and until it is repaired -- a project which will take over a week and has yet even to be bid -- it is "open" to traffic on an intermittent basis, at the ideal confluence of low tide and minimal wind, when the levels on both sides of the lock are the same.  The Corps of Engineers has cleared out the backlog of southbound boats that stacked up when the lock first broke, but the lock could close indefinitely at any time, and right now there is a small window of just a couple of hours each day when we could conceivably get through.

At the moment, we are pinned down by weather in any case.  Yesterday was the last good window until maybe Friday, but our work is not yet done.  We were waiting on a part for the stabilizers, which arrived this afternoon.  With any luck, we will have most of the work done tomorrow and we can prepare for departure on Thursday, moving over to a different dock to re-load the scooters.

The marina and anchorage here have emptied out rapidly with the advent of the cold weather.  We are the only yard boat still in the water, and only the yearly slips are occupied in the marina.  We need to be moving on, before the water's too cold to run the heat, and we will leave at the next good window.  Our next stop will be Norfolk, and then we'll head down from there to Chesapeake to take on a thousand gallons or so of fuel, enough to get us all the way to Florida and then some.  After that, it's anyone's guess -- we'll ether make a window for the damaged Great Bridge Lock, or we'll opt to hammer through the Dismal Swamp Route, or maybe even go around Cape Hatteras on the outside.  What I know for sure is that we do not want to still be in Virginia come Thanksgiving.

The view from the water

Back in this post, Sean wrote about meeting some Canadians who were traveling together. We figured they would enjoy a photo of their two boats out on the bay and got an email address over the VHF. I sent them a couple of pictures, and this week received a few in return.

We don't have too many opportunities to see what Vector looks like when she's under way, so this is a treat. Thank you, Maurice & Renee Goneau of the M/S Le Marie-Sophie!

Awash in projects

We are back at the Deltaville Boatyard in Deltaville, Virginia (map).  We arrived here shortly after my last post, and spent a night on a T-head on the marina side before being moved over to a yard slip.  Our friends Steve and Sandy took us to dinner that evening before he had to zip off to the Fort Lauderdale show.  We've also since had a farewell dinner with cruising friends Tony and Liza, who shoved off Saturday for points south.


Nordhavn 47 and Selene 48 side by side.

In addition to old home week, we've also been reunited, in a way, with a number of very familiar boat models.  When we arrived a Nordhavn 47 and a Selene 48 were next to one another on the hard.  We had spent a great deal of time looking at these two models, and this particular Nordy 47 was one we had seen just last year at the Fort Lauderdale Trawler Fest.  It was quite revealing to see these two boats side-by-side on the hard, as I tend to think of them as more or less the same size as each other and also as Vector.  Both vessels splashed last week and also shoved off Saturday, when the weather was perfect for cruising.


Selene 48, Nordhavn 47, and Vector all lined up.

Now we find ourselves in the company of a pair of Krogens, a 48 and a 52, also very similar boats to Vector.   The 48 is a rare twin-screw example -- the vast majority of Krogen 48s are singles.  Almost everyone is in the middle of a southbound migration, so we are in good company.

The yard has belted out a good number of the items on our list.  The bilge discharges have been extended with 18" loops above the discharge outlets, the bilges have been cleaned out, and the rust spots have been addressed.  Today they are taking care of some paint issues on the aft deck, which will leave the black tank vent problem as the lone remaining issue to be fixed, plus wrapping up the stabilizer repair in the "new work" column.

The tank vent has been held up because the tanks need to be pumped out first, and there is a problem with the yard's pumpout system.  Parts have been ordered and we hope to get pumped out perhaps tomorrow, which would let them get the vent work started Thursday.  With any luck at all we will be done before the weekend, but I am not counting on it, nor can we count on the weather being cooperative for a departure this week.

So long as we were here, I tackled a number of projects of my own, and we had a number of items delivered here to an address that is now already hard-coded into my eBay, Amazon, and McMaster-Carr accounts.  The project list, it seems, never gets shorter -- for each project I tick off, a new one takes its place.



You may recall that our departure from Baltimore was delayed slightly by a late-arriving package.  That package contained a Furuno FA-100 Class-A AIS transceiver as well as a CRT-style radar display, both of which had been removed from a Washington State ferry.  I paid less than $500 for the whole lot, shipping included, and I have since sold the CRT display, bringing my total to less than $450 for the AIS system.


FA-100 with all covers and front panel removed.

The downside of buying these sorts of used commercial electronics is that there is "some assembly required."  The AIS was pulled out of service well over a year ago, and thus the soldered-in lithium backup battery which retained the settings was deader than a door-nail when I tried to fire it all up, and the first thing I needed to do was locate and order the weird battery for it.  To their credit, Furuno's tech support has been absolutely wonderful to work with, supportive and helpful.  Now that the new battery is in I can start wiring up and programming the system, which will likely be the subject of a future post all its own.


Removing the main board.  The pesky battery is zip-tied in place at upper left.

We've been lamenting the absence of any sort of table on the enormous flybridge.  We can seat 6-8 people comfortably up there, but there is nary a place to set down a drink or a bowl of bar mix.  Ever since I completely re-did the pedestal on the dining table and installed a pilothouse table from scratch, we've been contemplating ordering something similar for the flybridge area.  Louise came across a nice Garelick teak cockpit table, complete with pedestal, on final closeout, and ordered it for delivery here.


Where do I set my drink?

Unfortunately, the table arrived damaged, with a big chunk broken off the fiddle edge.  The vendor was very accommodating, sending us a whole new table and leaving it to us to dispose of the damaged one.  We installed the replacement as planned on the flybridge, and it looks and works great up there.  Louise is planning to make a cover for it to keep the teak out of the weather, although until then we can just remove it and move it indoors as needed.


Ah, that's better.  Louise also made the snazzy pillows, which are tied to the stanchions.

I ended up gluing the fiddle back together on the damaged one.  It would not stand up to outdoor use, so we could not have used it in its intended spot on the flybridge, and you can tell it was damaged if you look closely, but we opted to install it in the pilothouse in lieu of the imitation-cherry pressboard round that I had installed there originally.  This oval is a better aspect ratio for the space, and the real teak looks much nicer than the fake cherry, even with the repaired damage.  The old cherry round is going in the giveaway pile.

It's been pretty cold here since we arrived, but we did have two days last week in the low 70s, and I took advantage of them to work on the tender.  Now that we are using it, the lack of a working fuel gauge for the integral 8-gallon tank has become a liability -- there is no "reserve" setting.  So I took apart the console to trace out the electrical system.

I discovered that the wire which is supposed to supply the gauge with 12v power had never been connected, so no matter what, the gauge could not work.  Unfortunately, the wire coming from the sender is also reading a dead short to ground, so now that I have power to the gauge, it simply pegs above the Full mark.  I did everything I could inside the console and the tiny anchor locker, but it appears I will need to access the sender to repair it, which means cutting through the sealant and removing the sole above the tank.  That's a bigger project than I wanted to tackle at the time.

As long as I had the console apart, though, I took the time to install the electric horn I bought for it several months ago.  I had also bought a waterproof pushbutton for the horn, but rather than drill another hole in the console, I opted instead to connect it to the existing power-trim rocker switch on the throttle lever.  Our new 25hp outboard does not have power tilt or trim, so the control was doing nothing, and this lets me use the horn without taking my hand off the throttle.  The horn, BTW, is a Coast Guard requirement, which we previously met with a whistle stowed in the glovebox -- not exactly convenient should use of a sound signal actually be required.

As if I did not already have enough to do with all the boat projects, my laptop computer is on its last legs and needs to be replaced.  I did an extensive write-up here the last time I went through this process, wherein I lamented the passing of Windows XP from the market.  Windows-7 is probably the least of all evils had I needed to stay with a Microsoft OS, but even that is hard to find now with the advent of Windows-8.  Fortunately, the software that had me married to Windows on the bus -- our highway mapping software and satellite dish control system -- have no place on the boat.  For this go-round I've moved to Ubuntu Linux instead.

Fortunately, the marine charting programs we use, OpenCPN and Polar View, both have Linux versions, and almost all my other software is also Linux-friendly, so I should not have too many problems making the switch.  The new computer just arrived yesterday, so I am expecting a good week or so to get myself fully up to speed on Ubuntu's new GUI and get everything moved over to the new platform.  That will free up my old laptop to run the chart software over on the helm, where the fact that the battery is shot and he power supply is taped together are non-issues.

Also in the category of otherwise discretionary projects that have moved up the priority list is replacing the carpets.  I had hoped to hold off on this one for at least another six months or so, but we knew it was inevitable that our aging cat with kidney disease would eventually have an accident, and it happened sooner rather than later.  We've done what we can with enzyme treatment, but once this starts, it's a vicious cycle.  We spent a couple of days looking into alternative floor treatments, since carpet is not really a good idea with these cats.

We settled on a commercial woven-vinyl product similar to what we used on Odyssey.  These are 50cm square tiles rather than roll goods, so they should be fairly easy to cut to the intricate shape detail of the saloon floor.  We'll take delivery of the tiles while we are here, but I don't expect to install them until we are further south.  We'll also need to do something about the carpet in the master stateroom, where tiles are not a good choice because of the bilge access hatches.  Louise is trying to find similar materials in sizes large enough to do the whole room in three or four sections, which can easily be peeled back to reveal the hatches.  The VIP stateroom, which is closed off from the cats, will retain the carpet, which is in very good condition in there.

Whenever we are done here, we'll head south to Portsmouth in two hops, likely stopping somewhere on Mobjack Bay en route.  Not a moment too soon -- it was 48° here yesterday.  I will try to get in one more post here before we shove off.