Day 11          

Today is Saturday, and I didn’t really want to get up this morning.  It rained overnight, and the sky was dark and overcast when I opened my eyes.  I had set my phone alarm to go off at 6:30 a.m. so I would have time to get my tea and relax a few minutes before beginning our departure routine.  I kept feeling the boat gently rocking from the wakes left by other passing boats and thought, why are they out so early.  My alarm hasn’t even gone off yet.  Finally after dozing on and off for a while I looked at the time on my phone.  What?  It was after 7:00.  What is going on?  It turns out my alarm is configured to go off Monday through Friday, but not on Saturday or Sunday.  So even though the time was set, it would never have gone off today.  So I decide I will get up and we will get started when we get started.  Today is estimated as a 50 mile day, still very doable. Heck, we did 67 yesterday, 50 is just a walk in the park

.

We got our tea/coffee and started to depart.  It was quite breezy, and the wind was pushing us up against the dock.  How are we going to get off the dock far enough to turn the boat in a confined space with other boats on the next dock over, and get out into the ICW with a running current you ask?  Excellent question.  Of course Rick had no clue, he would have tried to push us away from the dock, only to have the wind push us right back against the dock.  But, there is a way, using a spring line and opposing forces.  I tried to explain what I was going to do and what I wanted him to do, but I got a blank stare back.  Not good.  Finally I just told him to hold on to this line tightly and let go when I tell you.  Well it worked to perfection.  Swung the stern out away from the dock, backed the bow away from the dock, did a pivot and motored out into the ICW.  Piece of cake.  We were finally underway by 8:15, not bad.

As we entered the ICW another boat was going by that really caught my eye.  Unfortunately I was a little busy at the time and wasn’t able to get a picture.  The name of the boat is “Coastal Queen” out of Jamestown R.I.  It is a converted buy boat but it has two levels and looks almost like an old paddle wheel steamer from the rear, but without the paddle wheel.  It had a center stack and mast as well.  Really pretty.  Look it up on the internet, Rick found it as we followed it down the ICW.

Today’s journey was relatively uneventful, which is a good thing, just a few tricky spots where hurricane Matthew decided to move the channels around a bit just to confuse things a little.  All of a sudden you go from 12 or 13 feet of water under your keel, to 4.5 feet under your keel.  Where did the channel go?  So you throttle down to idle and take a guess, do I go port or starboard?  What are all the new markers that are not on the navigation charts, and where are the markers on the navigation charts that you can’t find on the water.  Sometimes a little confusing, but in these cases you have to trust what you see and react to it, not follow the chart.  We also had to wait for two bridges to open which held us up for about an hour, but still managed to get here before 3:00.  For most of the day we had a favorable current pushing us along.  I had the engines doing very moderate RPM’s and we were still doing over 11 knots, which is really good for this trawler. Everything worked out and we are at Carolina Beach State Park Marina nestled behind a breakwater just off the Cape Fear River.  This is a nice place, inexpensive, clean, has power available at no additional cost, and water.  We even did laundry after we got settled in.

 

Tomorrow we are headed for Myrtle Beach which is estimated to be a 60 mile day.  Today we went 50.3 miles, for approximately 521 total miles. It took 6hrs. 40mins.

Until tomorrow, over and out.