I get to play Captain

It was still quite chilly this morning when we got up.  I took Ellie up to the marina parking lot and let her run around a little and get some much needed sniffs.  We had a few butt-down runs, some hippity hops and a few potties. By the time I got back to the boat, David has started the generator and was firing up the electronics.  We still had to take the power off, a 50amp cord is about 1" thick and being make of wire, because it was so cold, it was difficult to get it to bend to unplug it and then get it stowed. To start the engine you turn on the key, push the black button, flip the 2 blue switches on the electrical panel, turn on the thrusters and test all 4 directions, test the wheel movement, turn on the VHF to channel 16 and make sure the volume and squelch are correct, turn on the radar, turn on the stabilizers and then decide the order the dock lines will come off the dock. We were finally ready to go.  David did the lines and I took the boat off the dock.  My departures are getting more difficult, this time we had a sailboat in back of us and a seawall in front of us.  I did have a big area to thrust away from the dock and carefully use the thrusters again to get us turned around to go in the right direction.  There was a pretty strong current pushing us to starboard so I stayed to port so as not to get pushed into the boats that lined the fairway. There was a lot of wind today, 20-35knots which roughed up the water.  Thank goodness we were going with the wind.  With that following sea we got really good "gas mileage" today.  We put the engine in neutral and we were still going 5knots, so between the wind and current pushing us, we had a little shorter day than expected.  I saw 5-6 dolphin but none of them stayed to play.  I was the active captain, David was checking something, and I got nervous when the autopilot was not turning soon enough to suit me, we were about 40' away from running over a day beacon so I quickly put it on manual steering and turned the wheel hard to starboard.  I'm glad I didn't wait any longer to make that decision or we may have had, what we call, "a bad boating day".  Disaster averted!  I'm slowly but surely leaning to Captain our little boat.  It's always interesting to see the yard decorations people use in different parts of our country. I've seen decommissioned day buoys, statues of manatees, boat skeletons with flowers in them and today I saw a new one.  It was a rather large cement hippopotamus and worth a photo, but darned if I can find it on my camera.  Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!  Today we went from Hampstead NC to South Port NC, 38 miles, 5 hours.

 Rough water but at least a following sea

  Same

  Butt-down runs

  Ellie

  Channel dredging equipment

  Ferry for cars and people 

  Pics don't show the reality of how rough the water is

  Ocean water meets channel water, it makes for disturbed seas and churns up lunch for the seagulls

  Derelict sailboat, they park 'em and leave 'em

  Sometimes the channel takes us so close to the land's edge, yikes!



  Cold Ellie with her coat on

  Some gorgeous houses, beachfront properties



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