Unexcused Absences East Coast Cruise - Week 2 (he said)

East Coast Cruise – Week 2 (he said)

by Kent 10 Nov 2015

November 1 to November 7, 2015. Early Sunday morning in the bight at Cape Lookout was partly cloudy, which made a beautiful sunrise. Our original plan was to cruise “outside” in the Atlantic down to Wrightsville Beach, but once we left the bight the forecast light north winds were in reality 10-15 knots from the south-east, and the calm seas from yesterday afternoon were a bit lumpy and would not be comfortable at all broadside to the boat for 10 hours. So at Beaufort we turned back into the channel and picked up the Atlantic Intra-Coastal Waterway.

A fantastic sunrise at Cape Lookout

Our friends Carl and Leah whom we met in Deltaville had suggested the outside trip to Wrightsville because this leg of the ICW was mostly row after row of boring houses. And for the most part they were right. One bit of excitement was at Camp Lejeune (the big Army base), the authorities have not been keeping up with dredging the channel and there is now more than a bit of shoaling between buoys 61 and 63. Our depth sounder went right down to 4.5 feet (our boat draws 4 feet) so it was a bit nerve-wracking. I crawled through at idle speed, but we were being pushed by a 1.5 knot current, so we were doing over 4 knots. But we didn’t hit bottom, and soon we were on our way again.

A typical view from the ICW in southern North Carolina

Later we heard through the cruiser’s grapevine that five sailboats had all gotten stuck there the previous day. Towboat US was out there pulling people off as fast as they could hit the sand bar, but it was still pretty chaotic. The Atlantic ICW is supposed to have a minimum depth of 12 feet, so someone at the Army Corps of Engineers and/or the Coast Guard is falling down on the job.

The Army recommends you don’t transit Camp Lejeune when they’re firing live artillery

By evening the rain clouds were building and we pulled off the ICW into the small sound behind Topsail Beach, which turned out to be an awesome anchorage. The anchor held like a rock, and the entire eastern horizon was filled with beautiful waterfront homes. At “cruiser’s bedtime” (9pm) the rain started.

Monday morning we were under way at the crack of dawn so we could get to Carolina Beach anchorage before noon. More rain was forecast for the afternoon and we wanted to run some errands around town (groceries and the hardware store, just like in France). I was doing something in the engine room while Heather was cooking lunch using the 1500W power inverter, and was just thinking that it had been several days without a mechanical problem, when I looked at the big rotary switch controlling the DC current into the inverter, and saw smoke.

As you probably know, electrical devices run on smoke, and when you let the smoke out, they stop working. This was no exception. The switch was fried, I couldn’t even turn it to “off” (not so great), but fortunately when Heather turned off the hot plate the smoking stopped. The bad news was that the inverter powers our fridge (full of things that need to stay cold like wine and beer) and our freezer (full of $300 worth of frozen meat), and the current to power the inverter passes (or used to pass) through this burned-out switch.

It was now a race against time to get the switch replaced and the inverter powered back on so that the fridge and freezer would have electricity. Somewhere on the boat (I use that phrase a lot) was a brand new, 300 Amp DC battery switch, which would make the perfect replacement for the smoking one. But where, exactly, on the boat? Miss Adventure is not like our French canal boat Après Ski, which is very small and only has a few cubbyholes for storage. Miss A has literally dozens of places to stash spare parts, and the previous owner had done just that. I could picture the new switch perfectly. I just couldn’t picture where it was stored.

A frantic half hour of tearing the boat apart (while the whole time, the fridge and freezer were slowly warming up), and nothing to show for it. I lamented to Heather that I couldn’t find the switch, and we were in danger of loosing everything in the freezer (you don’t just pick up one of these switches at a local hardware store), and she asked me to describe what I was looking for. I did, and she walked to the V-berth/ship’s storage room and returned in 30 seconds with the new switch. Amazing.

So I installed the new switch, turned it on, and the inverter hummed back to life. Double amazing. Thank you, favorite wife. And it was reassuring to know that we were back on track with our MPOD (Mechanical Problem Of the Day). Speaking of which…

The next morning (Tuesday) I checked the battery voltage, and it seemed lower than it should have been. Strange, because we ran the generator several hours last night while Heather was cooking and baking, which should have given the batteries a good solid charge. I started the generator and checked the voltage again, and where it should have read about 13.5 to 14 Volts, it was reading 12.3. Not good. That’s why the batteries hadn’t gotten charged properly the night before, the charger was not doing its job. So for the second time in 24 hours, we were again in danger of loosing the fridge (wine and beer) and freezer (expensive frozen meat). It’s hard to say which device I was more worried about, at this point. I guess the fridge had some vegetables and other non-essentials too.

Again we were in a race against time, and as you probably know most boats don’t just carry spare marine battery chargers – they’re big and expensive. Except… this boat did. I’m starting to think that the main purpose of the good ship Miss Adventure is not to take us to the tropical waters but rather to allow us to carry spare parts around the east coast of the US. I had purchased a top-of-the-line battery charger back in the spring, brought it to the boat, and discovered… that the old battery charger was the same brand, just an older model. Since it seemed to be working well enough at the time, I just stashed the new one in the guest cabin for a rainy day. And not only was Tuesday a very rainy day, but I desperately needed a new battery charger.

About one and a half hours later the charger was installed and I was dripping with sweat (the engine room had cooled to 95 degrees overnight, down from about 120 degrees while the engines are running). Finally we could go ashore and visit Carolina Beach, except that it was pouring rain again, so we just hauled up the anchor and continued south.

The rain came down in buckets. Our flybridge is fully covered, but that doesn’t mean it’s dry. Lots of little seams and zippers leak, just a bit, so I had to drive with a bucket to my left to catch a big drip, a towel folded on my lap to catch a little drip, and a whole line of rags along the windscreen to keep the water off the instruments. If I kept the flybridge windows buttoned up, the heat and humidity would fog the inside, but if I opened the windows the rain would pour in. I had to constantly adjust which window was open so that it was the one downwind and would take on less water. We’re really living the dream, huh?

But the rain ended literally as we were turning into the yacht basin at New River Inlet, and we paid for our first real marina of the trip. The Coquino Yacht Club is really just a lady named Sandy who lives on a boat and rents out a few extra slips (that belong to a waterfront condo) to passing boaters. But the “Yacht Club” comes highly recommended on Active Captain, and they also have laundry and showers. We have a washing machine on board, but with the rain and humidity it was much better to do everything on land and then tumble-dry the load (we don’t have our own dryer) so that mushrooms wouldn’t grow while we were waiting for the clothes to dry. Plus, a buck a foot for Boat US members? That’s a real bargain, considering most other marinas along the ICW start at $1.50 a foot per night and go up from there.

A redneck boat (note the Rebel flag) at the “Yacht Club”

I really wanted to stay at a dock (so we’d be plugged in to electricity) in case we had further problems with our inverter and/or the battery switch and/or the battery charger. Plus, we had the great fortune to meet our boat neighbors Kitty and Scott, a really nice couple who have sailed around the world three times (!!!), including once on a 30-foot sailboat and another time with their two young children. A happy hour turned into a 3+ hour visit.

Wednesday, as we were getting ready to go, Sandy told us there was a mechanical problem with a drawbridge south of here and we might get stuck and have to come back (there are no anchorages between here and Myrtle Beach). Well, at least it wasn’t our mechanical problem, although it probably still counts as our MPOD.

Fortunately, by the time we were underway, we heard over the radio that the bridge was sort of fixed, but would only open at the top of each hour. Fair enough, at least we could continue our trip. We stopped at Osprey Marina for fuel, it’s the cheapest diesel price in South Carolina (according to Active Captain), and the marina turned out to be a real gem. Nice folks, great floating docks, and guests even get a little goodie bag of local goods (jams, vegetables, swag, etc.). But there was supposedly a beautiful anchorage a few miles south just off the ICW on the Waccamaw River, and we had already done our one marina stay this week, so we bought 100 gallons of diesel (at $2.02) and continued on our way.

The beautiful and mysterious Waccamaw River

The anchorage was more beautiful than the glowing descriptions we’d read; a narrow creek snaking through the cypress trees and spanish moss. Thursday morning we had to wait until 8:15 for the fog to clear, then cruised three hours to the free city dock in Georgetown. The dock is only for day visits, but we wanted to stretch our legs and see the town. A Montreal couple on a sailboat pulled in next to us and we used the opportunity to practice our French.

Being tourists for a few hours in Georgetown

Later, at a little deli where we had just sat down to lunch, we saw the same couple again, invited them over, and shared a nice long lunch talking (2/3rds in French) about boating, skiing (they’re season pass holders at Mont Tremblant), and more boating. Underway again by 2pm, we cruised the final two hours and arrived at Minum Creek. While we watched the sun set over the salt marsh we marveled that we had made it a full day without a mechanical problem. That evening we heard what sounded like light rain hitting the windows, but the sky was completely clear. It was little hard-shelled bugs, thousands of them, attracted to our lights inside the boat. Fortunately the bugs stayed on the outside, and we stayed on the inside.

Friday morning we woke to see the deck covered in coffee grounds. Only it wasn’t coffee grounds, it was one million of those same bugs. The pictures don’t lie; in places the dead and dying bugs were a quarter inch deep. Never seen anything like that before, and hope never to again. We washed the deck with our hose and it really was like washing thick coffee grounds into the sea. Remarkable.

Dead (or extremely sleepy) bugs on deck

After recovering mentally from the biblical plague of bugs we cruised south and through Charleston Harbor and arrived at Lynn and Ron’s dock at 3pm. We met Lynn and Ron in France (of all places, considering they are South Carolinians) several years ago. Lynn publishes the fun website Southern Fried French (check it out, Lynn and Heather did a photo shoot on how to tie French scarves) and she and Ron live most of the year in a beautiful house in southern Burgundy. Heather was a loyal reader of Lynn’s website, and when we were in Dijon in 2012 we invited them up for a cruise and a picnic lunch aboard Aprés Ski. And we’ve tried to get together at least once a year since then. We actually stayed with them just a few months ago in Burgundy at the end of our 2015 summer trip.

“Miss Adventure” docked at Lynn and Ron’s house

Saturday morning we did some boat chores and joined our hosts for a delicious pizza lunch, then took an afternoon cruise in the rivers and creeks around their house. Ron has the same look as I did a year ago, the look that says “I want to buy a boat,” and in fact he’s pretty far along in researching his options. They are taking a weekend of “trawler school” in Florida this winter, to be followed by a few days of cruising solo on a rental boat. Hopefully by the next time we see them they’ll be proud (or more likely, if they’re like us, terrified) owners of a new boat.

Happy Hour cruise with Lynn and Ron

Lynn made a delicious sautéed shrimp dish for dinner and we ate sitting at a table overlooking their deepwater dock. Miss Adventure looked great on their dock, and as we close out Week 2 we’re almost half way to our destination. Hopefully we can get by without the Mechanical Problem Of the Day during Week 3 – but I wouldn’t count on it.

East Coast Cruise – Week 2 Numbers