East Coast Cruise – Week 1 (he said)
2 Nov 2015 by KentOctober 25 to October 31, 2015. The first full week of our autumn cruise started just after daybreak at the Amber Lantern Restaurant, where we had eaten a delicious dinner the night before. We needed to be underway by 7:45am to make the 8:30 bridge opening and lock cycle at Deep Creek Lock, on the Dismal Swamp Canal. The boat was finally in good working order, everything running smoothly, and it was time to put some serious miles under the keel.
Entering the first of only two locks on the ICW
The Deep Creek Lock was one of only two locks we’ll see on this whole voyage. This lock, which we shared with two other boats, raised us up about eight feet into the Dismal Swamp Canal, and the South Mills Lock will drop us back to sea level 22 miles later. Why do we need to go from sea level, up eight feet, and back to sea level? Why didn’t they just dig the canal eight feet deeper? Fortunately, Robert, the amiable lock keeper, had an explanation for these (and more) questions. He also gave impromptu conch-shell horn-blowing lessons to any boat who wanted it. Cruisers passing through over the years have dropped off a number of shells from their southern travels.
Lock keeper Robert with his conch shell collection
Apparently the Great Dismal Swamp (I can’t get enough of that name!) is an enormous peat bog that sits on top of harder rock, and which contains an aquifer that extends to the Appalatian foothills. If the canal were dug deeper, the entire aquifer would – slowly – empty into the ditch. George Washington himself helped helped figure this out when he and his business partners first surveyed and dug the canal about 250 years ago. So, up we went in the lock.
Entering North Carolina on the Dismal Swamp Canal
The Dismal Swamp Canal is quite narrow, and not very deep. Robert warned us that we would hit at least one invisible underwater log on the way through, but not to worry, it doesn’t usually have the misfortune to make a direct strike on a propeller (the most vulnerable part of our boat). The canal is in deep woods, and the ditch is full of dead, waterlogged tree trunks that have fallen in over the years. Well, Robert said not to worry, right?
Prime waterfront real estate
As we approached the free dock at the Dismal Swamp Visitor’s Center to stop for the night, I was just congratulating myself on not hitting anything (note to self – never do that again), when there was a loud double thump from the direction of the port prop. Uh-oh. Sure enough, when I throttled up the port engine, there was a distinct vibration. We cruised the final mile to the dock on the starboard engine, tied up at the dock with the one other boat, and then I pondered our misfortune. We were in a ditch, dozens of miles from a boatyard, with no idea what was wrong – was it just the prop, or the prop shaft, or both? A dismal thing to ponder so soon after the start of our trip.
The perfect name – Dismal Swamp!
Since there was nothing to do about our latest mechanical misfortune, I figured we might as well visit the small Dismal Swamp museum and walk around the boardwalk. As we were setting out for our walk, two more boats showed up, so we helped them raft up and tie off. By the time we got back from our walk and museum visit a couple hours later, there were 9 (!) boats tied to the dock that nominally holds 3 boats – we were all stacked three deep. The good news is we had a bunch of new people to meet, including Andrew, cruising solo, a pair of Quebec sailboats, and Hans and Peggy on an Albin trawler about the same size as Miss Adventure. It’s just like cruising the French canals, where all the boaters stand around and admire each other’s boats, talk about where they’ve been boating, and make plans to boat together in the future. We even got to practice our French with the Quebecois, although it was hard not to chuckle at their accents. Parisien French, it ain’t.
The big raft-up at the Dismal Swamp Visitor’s Center
The next day we were part of the second wave of departures – the first wave left at daybreak to catch the 8:30am lock opening, but we opted to sleep in and wait for the 11am opening, about 45 minute’s cruise down the canal. We made the trip on just the starboard engine, although we started the port engine to maneuver into the lock. Once back at sea level, we were in the Pasquotank River a couple hours upstream of Elizabeth City.
Miami is only 1067 miles away
Elizabeth City is an old port town off the Albemarle Sound, formerly prosperous but now a bit down on its luck. It’s making a valiant effort to survive, though, with a gorgeous new Maritime Museum, free city docks, and a very friendly tourist office. There’s even a group of locals who hang out at the waterfront park and help new boat arrivals get tied up in the slips or along the bulkhead. The ringleader of this welcoming committee is Gus, who’s quite the character. In fact, he’s such a character that when other characters get together, they say, “wow, Gus is quite a character.” The rest of the welcoming committee consists of, at various times, Ted, Dave and Tim. Great folks. Dave was quite interested in our boat, and said he was hoping to purchase a Gulfstar trawler like ours.
The Elizabeth City Welcoming Committee – Ted, Heather, Dave, Tim, and Gus
After tying up I explained my propeller problem, and they pointed me across the harbor to Lloyd Griffin, owner of the “Elizabeth City Shipyard.” I put it in quotes, because I came to find out that the “shipyard” doesn’t have any employees, or even a full-time owner. Lloyd wears many hats, including builder, boatyard owner, and is also a highly in demand boat surveyor. His “employees” were really just a couple of local folks who help out boat owners with projects from time to time. It was late afternoon and they were just finishing up some work on a Kadey Krogen trawler slung from the travel lift, and I explained my situation. Lloyd said he was about to put the Krogen back in the water, and if I could have my boat ready he’d lift me out and we could look at the damage.
I jogged back to the town wharf and got our boat over to his yard as the Krogen was driving away. Lloyd hoisted us up in his WWII-vintage travel lift (that barely had the juice to lift our 16-ton boat) and sure enough, two of the three propeller blades on the port side were bent, one of them a good bit. He asked me if I wanted to pay $1,000 and wait a week to get the prop shipped out for rebalancing, or was I willing to let him give it a whack (it turned out he meant that literally). I allowed that I trusted his judgement, and because we were already just a few steps away from bankruptcy court with our boat, why not go with option two, at which point he nodded sagely and pulled out a pair of sledgehammers, one big and one small.
He showed me where to hold the big one up against the bent blade, and he proceeded to whack the other side of the blade with the small sledge. I promised not to reveal his secret prop-blade-angle measuring technique, so I’ll just say that the method was brilliant and simple. Within 30 minutes he had the two blades back into shape, and we agreed the prop shaft appeared to be bent a fraction, but he wasn’t too concerned, so we dropped Miss Adventure back in the water and took her for a test drive. He took one look through the engine room hatch where the prop shaft enters the boat, smiled knowingly, and pointed. There was less wobble at the dripless seal junction than from before I hit the log. The prop actually seemed more balanced than it was a week ago. Chalk one up for “embracing local knowledge” (and to think about it, “timing is everything” and “size matters” both applied too*).
We were about to drop him at his dock and motor back to the town wharf when he asked Heather what she did for a living. She said she designs websites, whereupon he said “you’re staying the night”, tied us to his dock, and said he had a few questions. He manages multiple websites (for all the different businesses he runs), all at different providers and using different software, and he wanted to know our thoughts on how to consolidate and simplify everything. In between his consulting session with Heather I peppered him with questions about boat systems and diesel engines, and in particular how to know whether all the passages inside the engine for the coolant fluid were unblocked and functioning.
Again the sage smile, and he told me to start my engines, go to the trunk of his car, and get his thermal imaging camera. After the engines had gotten nice and hot he proceeded to crawl around the engine room taking photos with his fancy high-tech camera. It presented an image showing the point temperature at a cross-hair, plus the color-coded temperature gradient for the rest of the image. Amazing, high-tech stuff for a guy who just performed a thousand dollar fix to my boat for $200 with a sledgehammer.
Starboard engine in visible light
The same photo in infra-red
All this, and it was only Monday. After spending the night on his dock at no charge, we cruised back to the Elizabeth City town wharf to wait out the bad weather that was raging out in the Albemarle Sound. The whole coast of North Carolina was getting hit by north-east winds of 20-25 knots, and the rain Tuesday was at times torrential. But Elizabeth City is very welcoming to visiting boaters, and we had a great time having dinner with Andrew plus seeing Rob and Jonna whom we met a few weeks ago when they parked next to us in Deltaville at the Chesapeake Boat Works when they were having engine trouble. We also took the opportunity to run a few loads of laundry through our new onboard compact washing machine (the good ship Miss Adventure is nothing if not deluxe). The only problem was that because of the 100% humidity, it took three days for our laundry to dry.
Cute Elizabeth City house
By Thursday morning the weather had calmed enough for us to continue our cruise, so we said goodbye to Gus, who was currently on point for the Elizabeth City Welcoming Committee, and cruised down the river and across the Albemarle Sound to the Alligator River. Near the headwaters we found a beautiful anchorage in the trees and marsh grass with a handful of other boats. Since we had made good time I suggested we lower the dinghy and go for an afternoon cruise to the upper reaches of the river.
Joining the southern migration out of Elizabeth City
About a mile away we found a narrow (10-foot wide) twisting channel to the north and followed it a few hundred yards through the swamp trees to a small shack with a boat and some crab pots. Very scenic. As we were cruising back out the channel I remarked that it was really nice to have the outboard motor finally working perfectly. We had had some problems back in the spring, but a mechanic in Deltaville replaced one of the o-rings in the carburetor and today it was working perfectly. As we got to the end of the shallow channel I stopped the motor, tilted it all the way down (you have to pull the motor completely out of the water to reset the tilt ratchet), and started it up.
The cool side creek we explored by dinghy
Ten seconds after we got up on plane and were heading back to Miss Adventure, the engine stopped dead. It was completely kaput. No amount of pulling the start cord could get it running. If I hand-primed the motor and then started it at half throttle it would run for about one or two seconds, then quit. The symptoms were puzzling; it was not flooded (because it ran, briefly), nor was it a bad spark plug (because in that case it should at least start and run roughly), nor was it the fuel filter (in which case it should run at idle but not at high speed). Must be something with the carburetor, I told Heather (because I’m such an expert at outboard motor diagnosis and repair). Unfortunately for our predicament, the sun was close to setting, the Miss Adventure was upwind (naturally) into a good 10-15 knot breeze, and we were around a bend in the river so none of the other boats in the anchorage could see us. Time to try the oars.
Swampland upstream on the Alligator River
This was the first time I had ever rowed an inflatable dinghy. In all the years of chartering sailboats all over the world, we have never had a problem with an outboard motor, and thus had never experienced rowing an ungainly inflatable boat. First, they sit high and wide, so they catch a lot of wind. Second, they are almost as wide as they are long, so trying imagine trying to row a large hockey puck through deep grass. I was beginning to scout out options for finding dry land on which to spend the night, only there was no dry land; the terrain was alternating swamp forest and salt marsh. The only thing to do was to row harder. We were making a good quarter knot of speed, at which rate we would be back on Miss Adventure sometime before midnight.
Sunset after the big row with the dinghy
As we rounded the bend in the river, so we’d finally have the wind at our backs to speed us along, the wind died. I mean it truly went from 10-15 knots to about 2-3 knots in 30 seconds, once it saw we had finished rowing into it. But even though we didn’t get help from a tailwind, at least we weren’t being held up by a headwind, and soon we were cruising along at two knots. We even made it back in time to watch the sun set over the anchorage.
Dusk settles over the Alligator River anchorage
Ok, so much for an eventful Thursday. Friday morning we were the first boat out of the anchorage, as I wanted to get somewhere with a cellphone signal so I could start researching where to find an outboard engine repairman. After a couple hours we got some signal and I called a marina up ahead in Belhaven, a short detour off the Intra-Coastal Waterway. They suggested I call Ratcliff Marine, so I called and spoke with Tony and told him the symptoms. He said he’d meet me at the town dock, and five minutes after we tied up he had the cover off the outboard and was checking things out. He removed the carburetor (I knew it!) and said he was going to his shop and would be back soon.
Early morning on the Alligator River Canal
A little over an hour later he shows back up, and said there was a little ball of grease stuck in the carburetor jet. It could have been from the previous maintenance work, he explained. Sometimes mechanics use a bit of grease to hold the o-ring in place while they re-assemble the unit. They’re supposed to use grease that dissolves in gasoline or that dissolves at high temperature, but in this case they hadn’t, and a tiny grease ball had gotten loose when I tipped the motor up to reset the lift ratchet, and it floated around for a few seconds before getting stuck in exactly the right spot to cut off all fuel flow. Oh well, might as well discover these problems now, and not in some remote island in the Bahamas when we’re returning to the boat after dark from a dinner ashore.
Our view from the flybridge
Friday night we camped out in Campbell Creek, off of Goose Creek and near the infamous Neuse River. The Neuse can get really ugly in a hurry, when the prevailing north-east winds blow from the Outer Banks, across the Pamlico Sound, and funnel large waves into an outgoing current. Fortunately for us, Saturday morning the wind was calm and we had a beautiful cruise down a canal to Bay River and from there up the Neuse to Adam’s Creek. After another short canal we entered the Newport River and were soon in Beaufort, North Carolina.
A great boat name in Beaufort
There aren’t many anchorages around Beaufort, and I wasn’t ready to spend $100 at a marina after spending $125 with Tony (the outboard mechanic) and $200 with Lloyd (of the sledgehammer-and-secret method of prop repair), so I searched the Active Captain database (sort of a boater’s combination of Trip Advisor and Facebook) for an alternative. Fortunately someone’s notes mentioned the Cape Lookout anchorage, and I discovered that eight miles from the Beaufort ocean inlet is an enclosed bight that is completely protected from the surrounding ocean. We would have to enter the North Atlantic for a bit, but the weather was forecast to be very calm for the next 36 hours so we cruised down the beach and an hour later were securely anchored off the Cape Lookout lighthouse.
Fishing harbor near Beaufort
Cape Lookout lighthouse
A close look at the lighthouse
“Miss Adventure” anchored at Cape Lookout
The area is administered by the National Park Service, and they had a visitor’s dock and a museum in the old light keeper’s cottage. Because the lighthouse is still a working aid to navigation, visitors aren’t allowed to climb the tower, but it was a beautiful spot to visit. The outboard worked fine, and for the first time in a while, it seemed, we didn’t have any mechanical issues to deal with, so we just went back to Miss Adventure and enjoyed happy hour while watching the sunset and eating Heather’s freshly baked pita and scratch-made hummus. A very relaxing way to end the very eventful Week 1 of our big east coast cruise.
East Coast Cruise – Week 1 Numbers
- Engine Hours: 29
- Generator Hours: 10.6
- Miles Traveled: 205
- Marina Fees: $0
East Coast Cruise – Total Numbers
- Engine Hours: 40
- Generator Hours: 13.0
- Miles Traveled: 273
- Marina Fees: $115
* This is a reference to a set of life “rules” laid out by us and our friends over the course of several yacht charters in the Caribbean. The five “rules” are: 1, Men are weak; 2, People are idiots; 3, Size matters; 4, Timing is everything; and 5, Embrace local knowledge. So our experience at the “Elizabeth City Shipyard” covered three of the five rules (#3, #4 and #5) in a one hour period.
“Miss Adventure” East Coast Cruise – Week 1
A Coast Guard blimp near Elizabeth City
A cormorant in Belhaven, NC
Happy hour at Cape Lookout
Every boat’s the laundry boat at some point
Our new transom graphic
Our pre-sunrise departure from the Alligator River
A cormorant roost in the Alligator River
A rustic fishing camp
Dusk in Campbell Creek
Cape Lookout
The restored lighthouse keeper’s house
Buffet dinner for the seagulls near Beaufort, NC
