A memorable day

February 05, 2022

What a day! The wind stayed at it's same force and at 7:30am we were trying to decide if it was a go or no go day. We've lost so many traveling days already, I voted to go. If was going to be rough, I could take a dramamine. We began our start up routine and found that our stern thruster was not working. I had already loosened the dock lines getting them ready to cast off at the Captain's order. The wind was blowing us around in the very small slip space we were in. There were 2 guys walking down the sidewalk and saw that we were struggling with the lines and the wind. They came down to lend a hand and we ended up tying the boat back onto the dock cleats while we sorted out the thruster issue. Stanley salutes Dave (ever see that old commercial about men fixing things with Stanley brand tools?). David figured out the automatic charging relay for the thruster battery bank was causing the issue. That would have been my first guess too. See, Stanley salutes! It's a good thing I'm not in charge of battery bank relays or we'd become good friends with the Coast Guard real fast. I truly don't know how people survive on their boats without having the Captain or First Mate being mechanically minded. It was really quite bumpy when we (meaning David) got it figured out and fixed and we left the dock. The wind was blowing 35knots. Our no-go on wind is 15knots but we went anyway. The rough water caused by the high wind only lasted a little while (because of the 2 mile fetch). It smoothed out, the wind died down and we continued on. We made it Camp LeJuene and found we were in their active live ammunition practice ground. The sign said "Stay out when the lights are flashing". They weren't flashing so we passed through. When we were in our 4th hour, we got to the Onslow Beach Bridge, a swing bridge. As we approached, we realized we would be early for the swing at 1pm. We slowed the engine down, put it in reverse and Oh Crap! We had no reverse. David went down to the engine room to see what he could find, there were no leaks, no fluids, no screws rolling around, hmmm, this might have him stumped. In the meantime, I am at the throttle doing circles waiting for the bridge to swing. The bridge operator was late opening by 5 mins, but that's a lot of circles on a boat. After we got through the bridge, he went back down to the engine room to wiggle a few more things, saw a cover to something, unscrewed it, probably swore at it, asked me to put the engine in reverse, and damn! it worked. We had our reverse back. David said he didn't know what he did, but sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. As we keep chugging along, we had several dolphins do a drive by but they didn't stay to play. Finally, I heard one slap the water, grabbed my phone and after about 15 tries, I got a little bit of good footage. We also saw a pelican that had caught a fish and the cormorants were trying to steal it from him. That was fun to watch. The pelicans fish by flying about 2-3" above the water and snatch what they can out of the water. Also really fun to watch. I'll work on that video. So just an observation, since we are headed South, the sun is constantly in our eyes. It's very similar to that blinding sun on the way home from work, you struggle to see what's in front of you. For instance, as we were trying to pick our way through all the crab pots and guys in pontoon boats, we came upon 2 guys in a little fishing boat. One guy was up in the front with his fishing pole, the other guy was sitting on the top rung of an 8' ladder, I assume to spot fish for the other guy. It looked very precarious, especially since neither one had a life vest on and the water has warmed up to a balmy 48 degrees. We always slow way down to pass people in smaller vessels so we don't swamp them with our wake. When the ladder guy saw us, he quickly climbed back down, faster than I could take a pic. Another thing is the depth of the water, 12' is about the average. Right now at the dock we are in 6.3" of water. We draw 5'6" which means were only have about 8" of water under the keel before we hit bottom. Thank goodness the tide is out and it will only get deeper now. The last thing I've observed is our speed. We were told 7.5 knots was our maximum speed, unless you get the tide pushing you (we got up to 9.3 knots today). But if the tide is going against you, we were running at full power and only going 6.2knots, we were going 17% slower and using twice the amount of fuel, yikes, but we were trying to get to the marina before dark. If you want to dance, you have to pay the piper. PS one last tidbit. Ellie has me so well trained...she goes and stands by the door in the pilothouse, then I open the door and she goes up to her potty grass on the bow, tinkles a tiny bit and then goes back inside. Then we get a potty goody. And we do that 3-4 times a day. I'm such a sucker!

You can see the dolphin under the surface

The dolphin

See the fish hanging out of the pelican's mouth

We were so close to the beach, yikes!!

Coming into the marina