Cruising the East Coast - 2009

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Cruising the East Coast - 2009


We really enjoyed our month long stay at Brunswick Landing Marina. This was our longest marina stay since leaving Kemah, Texas back in October of 2007. The facility at Brunswick Landing was first class. All wide concrete floating docks, with a nearly new shore-side bathhouse, laundry and cruiser lounge in close proximity. Best of all the laundry was free. They also had free wifi and cable TV at every slip.

We cashed in enough American Express membership rewards points to pay for a rental car for the month we spent in Georgia. This allowed us to explore the nearby islands of St. Simon and Jekyll as well as the historic town of Brunswick. Also, we now had transportation to Atlanta and back to help set up the wedding of our daughter Julie and her finance Dan. Our Houston sailing friends Tony & Karen drove to Atlanta early and were a big help with the decorations for the reception. Burt and Mary Jean hosted a beautiful rehearsal night dinner at Canoe restaurant. The wedding took place on the 16th of May and turned out to be a great occasion. We got to meet many of Julie and Dan’s friends and co-workers and we enjoyed seeing family and friends that we had not seen for a long while. Our cruising friends Doug & Sharon drove down from Toronto and Doug played the Stevie Nicks song “Landslide” as the father-daughter dance and then later closed out the evening with a great rendition of James Taylor’s “Carolina in My Mind”. He had plenty of help singing that song from the audience.

With the wedding behind us and the honeymooners on their way to Bora-Bora, we hurried back to Brunswick with plans to sail offshore up the coast. However, cruising sailors should never have set plans. Just as we arrived back in Brunswick an early season low pressure area was moving up out of the Caribbean bringing heavy rains and winds to 40 knots. The low moved north until it was just off the Georgia coast and then just sat there for a week. Finally, on the morning of May 24th we headed north. Approximately 24 hours later we were sailing into Charleston Harbor. We took a slip at the Charleston Maritime Center, which is located next to the South Carolina Aquarium in downtown Charleston. While in Charleston, we had an opportunity to visit with our old friends Tina & Wes Brunson, who just bought a house there after living on the West Coast & New Jersey for many years. They plan on moving back to Charleston permanently after Wes retires.

The next day looked good for moving north again, so we made our Charleston visit short and pulled out at first light, heading offshore for Wrightsville Beach, NC. We enjoyed some good weather and light winds as we sailed overnight to Southport at the mouth of the Cape Fear River. We arrived in Banks Channel behind Wrightsville Beach just after noon on the 2nd day out of Charleston. Here we had a chance to stock up on provisions and get a nice lunch at Flip’s Bar-B-Q place. Nothing beats good North Carolina Pork Bar-B-Q.

The weather was holding in our favor so we raised anchor the next morning and headed offshore to Beaufort, NC. We had a really great sail with 12-15 knot winds on the port quarter most of the way up the NC coast. As we approached the entrance to Beaufort Inlet we could see the thunderheads building over the land to the west. The forecast was for severe weather that evening. Therefore, we made the decision to skip Beaufort and to sail east to Cape Lookout Bight rather that deal with the Beaufort harbor and the many boats that would be anchored there. We hate being anchored in a crowded harbor in a thunderstorm. Cape Lookout turned out to be a great choice. There were only about seven boats anchored there. Just before dark a small monohull with a singlehander we met the evening before in Wrightsville Beach came into the harbor. Unfortunately, he strayed too far right of the channel and went aground on a sand bar. Luckily, I was able to lower the dinghy and use my 15 hp motor to help push his boat off the sand bar. Right after that came the thunder and lightning . Fortunately the storm stayed over the land to the west and never pushed east enough to have any impact on our spot under the Cape Lookout Lighthouse.

Saturday morning dawned clear and cool. We raised our anchor and headed inland, entering Beaufort Inlet an hour later. We motored up the 22 miles up the ICW to the Neuse River. Our destination for the night was Broad Creek just east of Oriental, NC. More importantly, we were now north of 35 degrees North latitude and it was May 30th. Our boat insurance policy is based on us having “Double-Wide” out of the hurricane box prior to June 1st and not re-entering the box until November 1st.

We decided that this trip we would sail out the Neuse into Pamlico Sound toward the Outer Banks. This would give us more opportunity to sail and avoid a very boring section of the ICW. We had a nice 4-5 knot reach east to Ocracoke Island at the very southern part of the Outer Banks. We anchored in a place called Silver Lake, which is a beautiful natural harbor. The fishing village of Ocracoke surrounds the harbor. We spent two nights and three days here. One day we rented bikes and toured the island. There are many tree shaded lanes that are perfect for biking. Another day we happened to be tying up our dinghy to a fishing dock just as a sport fishing boat was unloading his catch of Tuna, Mahi and Wahoo. The Captain offered to sell us one of his mahi for a price way below what we would needed to pay at a fish market. Suddenly, we had a freezer full of mahi-mahi.

Our next stop was the village of Manteo on Roanoke Island, near Nags Head. Manteo is the place known for the “Lost Colony” of Sir Walter Raleigh, the first British settlement in North America. This town had a great little marina with a group of full time cruisers spending the summer there.

From Manteo we sailed out into Albemarle Sound through a huge field of crab pot floats. At times it appeared that there was no way to go between the floats. With our twin sail drives hanging below the surface it is very important not to get the lines from the crab pots caught in our propellers. Soon we were passing Coinjock NC and were in the ICW. From here it was a short trip to Great Bridge, VA where would spend the night at the dock outside the Great Bridge Lock. We would need to pass through the lock early the next morning on our way to Norfolk. There were a couple of other cruisers we had seen in the Exumas during the winter tied up in Great Bridge and we had fun comparing our trips back to the states.

We had an uneventful trip from the lock to Norfolk and were entering the Chesapeake Bay shortly after noon. We soon found ourselves tacking into a building northerly wind and fighting an ebbing tide. I decided to take in the sails and motor the 12 miles north to the York River and seek the calm anchorage in Sara Creek. By the time we turned west into the York, we were only making 3.8 knots into a 4-6 foot head sea with both engines going full ahead. We were really glad to get inside the creek and anchored. It had taken 3 hours to slam and bang our way north.

Our next destination was Reedville VA, to find a boat yard where we had a date to have “Double-Wide” hauled out of the water for the semiannual bottom painting. Trying to find a yard that has the capability to haul a boat that is nearly 22’ wide is always a challenge. We had heard about a new yard in Reedville that specialized in hauling multihull sailboats and had told them we would be there in early June. The trip from the York River to Reedville started out fine but ended with us arriving off the mouth of the Great Wicomico River in a roaring squall with high winds and rain coming down in buckets. I was able to find my way into the river using the chart plotter to guide me from buoy to buoy. We anchored in the rain and waited until the next morning to motor up the creek to the yard.

When morning dawned, we found the yard without much trouble and after arriving were told that we would be hauled later that day after they launched another 41’ catamaran that was nearly finished his bottom job. This yard is rather unique in that they do not use a traditional travel lift or crane but had purchased a very high tech hydraulic trailer for hauling multihulls. The trailer is backed down a ramp into the water and then the boat is positioned so that the trailer is between the hulls. Then the operator lifts the trailer bed using hydraulic arms to support the boat from the bottom. I had not seen this type of rig used before, so was glad to watch the yard lift another boat before our turn arrived. This job seemed to go bad from the beginning. First the large forklift type tractor that usually pulls the trailer developed a problem with its transmission, so they decided to use a very large army type truck to pull the trailer instead. As they were trying to position the trailer under the catamaran, the back of the truck hit the console of the trailer crushing the control box. Fortunately, the damage was not serious and the yard crew had repairs made in about an hour. Next they seemed to have a lot of difficulty getting the trailer to line up correctly under the cat. They resorted to using pieces of styrofoam to block up the lifting pads so the hydraulic arms would not damage the side of the hull.

Finally they had the boat on the trailer and started moving toward the boat ramp. Unfortunately, they needed to make a sharp turn to get in position and the turn just happened to be on a slight hill. Halfway through the turn the boat began to slide off the trailer pads. After much yelling, the boat was lowered to the ground and the trailer re-aligned under the center of the cat. Next the boat, on the trailer was backed down the 100’ long launching ramp. As the boat neared the water the driver of the truck backing the trailer down the ramp stopped very suddenly. Unfortunately, the boat did not stop as suddenly and proceeded to slide off the trailer into the water. The bow of the boat hit the water and began to float but the stern was still in very shallow water and came crashing down on the hard cement. It made an awful sound as it landed on the concrete. Now, the bow is floating but the stern is very much aground. After more maneuvering the trailer is once again under the boat and once again lifts it out of the water. But after backing down the ramp another three feet the boat again begins to slide sideways off the trailer and bounce on the ramp. This time it comes to rest but it is floating. By now the owner of the boat is quite upset and since he is a French Canadian all of the curses are unintelligible to me. He was able to motor over to the dock and tie up behind us. A close inspection determined that the port hull was taking on water but the bilge pump was keeping up with the flow.

Needless to say, we are not anxious to be next for this operation. By now it was nearly dark and the yard crew was ready to pack up for the day. They yelled to us that they would be back in the morning to pull us out, as the headed for their pickup trucks. Nancy and I had plenty of time that night to go over our options and decided to stay at the yard until the next morning and then tell the yard crew that we had changed our minds. Well, the crew never arrived back the next morning. By 11:30 we decided that they probably were not coming, so we decided to push on and wait until Monday morning to find an alternative.

Our next stop was in the Potomac River. We anchored in Smith Creek, just north of Point Lookout. Monday morning we made a list of boatyards between our position and Baltimore and then started checking rates and availability. It turned out that the best choice seemed to be only ten miles away in the St. Marys River. We motored there that morning and found that they could haul us out and at a good price but they had a very large motor yacht in the travel lift and we would need to wait 10 days or so until that yacht was finished. This worked for us since we were scheduled to make a road trip to Wilmington, NC to attend the wedding of our niece Amy. St. Marys Yachting Center seemed like a nice safe place to leave “Double-Wide” while we were gone.

Our trip to Wilmington was a return to one of the places we have lived over the years. This meant we had a chance to visit with old friends including Beth & Bill Brampton and Calvin & Shannon Wells. Amy and Jon's evening wedding was held at the historic Bellamy Mansion in the outdoor gardens. Despite the 90 degree heat, it was a "cool" wedding.

We returned to St. Marys on a Sunday evening and had the boat lifted out on Monday afternoon. Overall the bottom was in pretty good shape with only a few spots where the old paint had worn off completely. We managed to get two coats of wax on the hulls, two coats of paint on the bottoms, and do the oil changes on the saildrives. We liked that this yard allowed us to do most of the work ourselves, saving considerably on the labor charges. By Friday afternoon we were ready to launch the boat. My brother Rich agreed to drive over from his home in Cambridge MD and help me sail the boat to Baltimore while Nancy drove the car.

The trip up the Bay proved to be a motor as the winds were light and mostly out of the North. It seems as though the winds on the Chesapeake usually blow up the Bay or down the Bay and it seems that it is more often than not in the direction we want to go. We did arrive in Baltimore on Saturday night which meant we were there just ahead of the big 4th of July holiday. We had reserved a slip at the popular Anchorage Marina in the trendy Canton area of Baltimore harbor. Our plan was to use this as a base for more northern bay exploration and to take care of our annual doctor’s visits and dental check- ups. We have the use of Nancy’s mother's car for the summer so we decided that a month or two of marina living would be a welcome break. Time to enjoy a little city living on Double-Wide.

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Photos

Wedding Day
Julie & Dan

A family Portrait
Atlanta Skyline in the Background

View from Anchorage Marina
Tall Ship Heading OUt