(BTW….notice the picture of the creepy piece of whatever it was that was attached to our propeller shaft! Uglyyyyyyyyy!!!)
Our friends and buddy-boaters, Double Dutch, Painkiller and Smoooth Move, anchored around the corner. They would dinghy on over to our dock and walk on the beach. Now, mind you…my idea of a walk on the beach is barefooted in my shorts with the beautiful sky showing a shining sun. Ahhhh. Not there…not during our stay. We did walk on the beach, but wore our foul weather gear, hats pulled down over our ears, with rain pounding sideways and the wind pushing you back. “I realize this is exercise, but this is ridiculous!” Skye, the wonder dog, loved it…herding us all together.Because of the wind and weather, we stayed a few days at Carolina Beach and then scooted up to Southport, NC to plan our route out the Cape Fear Inlet to the Atlantic…goal: Charleston, SC. I’m sure Carolina Beach is a nice area…certainly nice homes where we were, but the weather made it miserable, well almost miserable. We were able to dinghy over to “town.” Not much of a town. Sort of like Pismo Beach in the late 60s. Maybe not even that good. Pismo Beach was fun! We did find The Dive where we had beer and good conversation. Those times are really fun.
While we were at Carolina Beach we were able to catch up with one of Ellen’s dear friends she hadn’t seen in years. How odd that we both were now on the East Coast! Mary Ann Miller and her beau Bryan live in Wilmington, NC now. They came over to the boat one evening bearing ingredients for Blue Sapphire martinis …along with flowers and fresh basil for the boat. And…a wonderful bottle of Pinot Noir. Excellent! Though it was cold and windy, the martinis made for great fun and catching-up conversation before we jumped in their car and found a place down the road for dinner. What a great evening. We are actually hoping to catch up with them again out here on the coast before we get too far away.
Now we had to plan our departure to Southport. Because of the wind and the big current where we were docked at the Joyner Marina, Randy and I had to plot our exit from our slip very carefully. We thought if we got up early….really early…the wind wouldn’t be so bad and Kwanesum would slip out of this sideways-current/sideways-wind berth. We listened all night long to see if the wind would stop, and it kinda did…for a minute. “Well, let’s get this over with.”
We got up at dark and went out to survey the situation. Ugh…how are we going to manage this without damaging the boat somehow? We decided to physically pull her back a little, outside the pilings that defined our berth. At least that way she would be in the fairway, somewhat, as a head start. She’s heavy! Empty, she’s 23,000 lbs! But we got her where we wanted her. When in reverse, Kwanesum tends to pull to the port (left), which is not unusual for a heavy, full keel boat, with a regular prop. [Full keel: A keel that runs the length of the boat. Full keels have a shallower draft than fin keels.] It’s called “prop walk.” I do NOT like prop walk. Our other boat in CA had a fin keel and a folding prop and backed like a champ threading a needle. [Fin Keel: A keel that is narrow and deeper than a full keel. It looks like a fish's fin extending below the boat, and the boat usually has a rudder mounted some distance aft, often on an additional keel-like extension called a skeg.] Not so, sweet Kwanesum.
It all worked well, though… our plan. Thank heaven. Her prop walk was in the direction the current and wind were pushing anyway. We eased her back, working the lines along the cleats of the dock and she went right back into the fairway. Yes! Now we just had to see where we were going and it was pitch dark. The plan was to go to the fuel dock and wait there until morning light and the rest of the crew were ready to go. We didn’t have far to go so I stood on the bow and motioned which way to go. It worked. We could relax now and have our coffee and wait for daylight. Stress is gone.
The trip to Southport, NC was short and fairly uneventful. We were there before noon, the point being that it was at the top of the Cape Fear Inlet we would be taking to get out to the Atlantic for our trip to Charleston the next morning. This would give us a head start. I’m at the helm and it all went well…until we got to our docking spot. “We’ll pull into the Provision Co berths. They provide free docking for the night if you eat there.” “Roger that, Ran, just show me where to go.” “OK…pull in here…this looks wide enough. We’ll tie up on the starboard(right) side so just pull over to drop me on the dock.” “Roger that, Ran.” “Good job, El, just a little closer and I can step off. Just a little closer…closer…uhhhh….why don’t you back up and try again.” “Roger that, Ran.” Remember that prop walk I told you about? Well…I prop walked before I got past the port pilings. “Whoa....Nellie!! Dammit! I liked that BBQ! Why do we have that BBQ hanging on the side of the stern rail anyway, Ran? It’s in the way! Ooooo….shoot.” (…or a facsimile thereof). “No problem, El. We’ll just tie up on the port side. I can work on that big dent in the BBQ later.” I have the greatest husband in the world! =) There is still a big learning curve in getting to know how Kwanesum moves. Duh…I guess so, El! The BBQ was put back into shape and I don’t think I damaged the stern rail. It looks ok, right Ran?
The rest of the crew took up the other docking spots by the restaurant. We all helped each other as it was kinda tricky, despite Ellen’s helmanship. The tide change was huge and we had to account for that. Ours was not a floating dock. Placing lines and fenders for that large tide change required mucho planning and vigilance. All said and done…it’s time for a beer…and a sandwich. Great spot. Reminded me of some of the fun spots in Cabo San Lucas, actually. My kind of place.
The town of Southport was darling. The town is old and Southern. Very careful restoration was noticeable and very pleasing. A nice place to walk. Not all the towns we have visited have had their wonderful homes restored and well cared for. A lot of antique stores there, which drove me crazy. I love antique stores but don’t have a home for antiques anymore. Once in a while I’ll look anyway in case there’s something that would look fab on the boat.
Up at the crack of dawn and we’re ready to go out to the Atlantic! Yay! Ran and I have been looking forward to sailing on the ocean instead of just motoring through the ICW.
Painkiller, the power boat, was going outside for awhile and then back into the ICW to finish their trek to Charleston. Double Dutch, Smoooth Move and Kwanesum would do the Atlantic over night. Hoping to sail. It was a beautiful day.But no wind. Where is the wind when you want it!? Not at Carolina Beach when you’re in dock and you DON'T want it! But it was such a beautiful day it was ok. We motor-sailed doing about 51/2 knots to keep everyone at the same pace….at course 230º South to Charleston. Dolphins swam by…the ocean changed to a beautiful aqua color.
It was great. Lots of shrimp boats about. Randy was in heaven and much more relaxed. Going down the ICW calls for a lot of focused diligence, which makes your shoulders tense when you’re at the helm. This felt like freedom. Kwanesum could spread her wings.The sun set as the full moon rose. What a site that was. We had Double Dutch in front of us and Smoooth Move behind. As it got dark our radar was truly a gift. We could keep an “eye” on both boats as well as other traffic. Our running lights aglow, as we’re still motor-sailing. We tried to sail a couple of times as we were making too good of time, but our heavy boat just flapped in the non-wind. Makes it very uncomfortable. We will need to get a lighter sail like a gennaker (a light sail for using downwind...a cross between a genoa and a spinnaker) for such times as these. We just didn’t want to spend money on that one yet.
It was interesting traveling at night. It was still fairly warm which was very nice. The stars were out…though the moonlight kept them from showing their true colors. I was looking forward to seeing phosphorescence in the water at night where things glow…like dolphins passing by. But, alas, it was not to be on this night. Too much moonlight.
I had the helm a lot during the day. Unfortunately our auto helm was giving us a bit of a problem so we had to actually steer ourselves quite a bit. For any length of time this can be tiring, but we were so “up” and glad to be on the Atlantic that it was not bad at all. I look at it as exercise. It’s much harder when your sailing with little wind…the boat is harder to keep on track, but when motor-sailing it’s not too bad. Toward the evening Randy took over. I was ready to relieve him when 3 or 4 hours had passed, as that was our plan. But he was enjoying it. Therefore…I went below and went to sleep. We tried the auto helm switch one more time, and it turned on. Hooray!
Randy ‘roused me at midnight and I took over my shift. Staying awake and alert is the tricky part at that time of night. But adrenaline takes over. I had a Red Bull and some chocolate and that kept me going. I loved watching the radar and seeing if I could see the blips on the screen in the ocean around us with the binoculars. We had a lot more company out there at that time than I thought we’d see. Could see Double Dutch really well, but had a hard time finding Lonnie on Smoooth Move.
I noticed Double Dutch turned off her running light and slowed almost to a stop. I hailed Theo on the radio to see if he was ok and he was. He just decided to sail for awhile. Their boat is much lighter than ours so it sails more smoothly in light winds. Not so the Kwan-ster. I slowed the engine, which I didn’t want to do. We need to keep the rpms up to a certain level. Randy popped his head up. “What’s going on?” Shoot…I didn’t want to wake him but I had a feeling he was sleeping with one ear open. You can definitely hear changes in the engine. He said he was awake, anyway, (he only slept 2 hours!) so he told me to go down to sleep. I was glad to do that but didn’t feel I was pulling my weight in the deal. But Randy was so stoked to be outside sailing that he was actually enjoying it all very much…no sleep and all.
As I lay down below and just sort of catnapped…I, too, was wired up…specially after Red Bull and chocolate…I heard the engines go off. We are sailing! Woohoo! Finally enough wind to sail. Nice. It’s so wonderfully quiet when you sail. It’s so pure. I like that.
As we got closer to Charleston, Lonnie had to call Boat US to be towed. Boat US is for boats like AAA is for cars. He had been having trouble with his exhaust taking on a lot of water and because he was single-handing it was really hard on him. Boat US didn’t respond, so he hailed the Coast Guard. Mind you, this is about 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning. Ran and I listened in to the calls. The Coast Guard was great and responded quickly and efficiently to him, even giving him suggestions of what to try. He had tried them all, however. They got a hold of Boat US who then hailed Lonnie and lined him up to be towed into Charleston.
It’s morning and we’re almost there. You get to the mouth of the inlet and feel like you’re there but it takes a long time to get into the port. Lots of traffic coming out the channel from Charleston…including a couple of ships and a shrimp boat…with his nets…right in the channel! Sheesh!
You have to watch them as they’re dragging big ole honkin’ nets off the back. Would be ugly to get messed up with that. It was odd to us that they would be allowed to do that in the shipping channels.I hailed the Charleston City Marina as we were getting nearer to our destination. I wanted to let them know of our arrival and find out where they wanted to put us. Ran and I decided to go into a marina and stay for a month here in Charleston. We can’t go past Savannah River, GA until the end of November due to our insurance restrictions. That’s not too much farther down. We get a better price if we stay for a month and we wanted to see a lot of Charleston anyway. It’s a grand town. And Fort Sumter is here and the Citadel. And the Hunley…the old submarine. We were guided into our berth past the MegaDock. Woohoo! Now there’s some boats that take a little fuel. Fascinating to me who these people are that can own such monsters. And I know these are just babies compared to what we’ll see in the Bahamas and beyond. But there are some 150’ yachts in here. Nice! We were greeted by two handsome young men that helped us tie up at our berth. They handed us a bag of information and made us feel right at home. Our neighboring boats came over and invited us for cocktails.
How great is this life!And of course Skipper Meetings on our boat and Painkiller! Love those Skipper Meetings! Painkiller, Double Dutch and Smoooth Move all anchored out near us. Lots of current here so they each had to put out 2 anchors. They were able to easily dinghy into the docks to do laundry and walk to town, etc. We even had Painkillers one evening on our boat in honor of Al’s (Painkiller) birthday. Then Al, Monica, Ran and I walked the MegaDock after dark to check out the big fellas. It really was pretty as they all had their lights on and we could peek in their ports to see what they looked like.
So…here we are in Charleston. Working on our second week. Our co-horts have since gone on farther south. We will catch up with Double Dutch and Painkiller in the Bahamas, we hope. Lonnie on Smoooth Move stayed and sold his boat on eBay. He had had enough of that boat. Randy just dinghyed over this morning to help him weigh his anchors (bringing them up after such a long time and lots of wind and current is not easy) and take his boat over to the marina where the new owner will take possession. Lonnie is going on to Florida and back to school where he’s working on his masters in writing. He’s glad to be rid of that boat.
I’ll fill you in on our fun stay in Charleston in the next installment. I love this town! You MUST see it if you haven’t already.
Bye, Mon & Al! See you in the Bahamas! (below)
À tout à l’heure….
