Back in the Ditch

We'd heard good things about Oriental, NC from other cruisers but hadn't stopped on the way south because we'd hugged the eastern side of the Pamlico Sound and visited Hattaras and Ocracoke.  Because the North wind forced us into the ICW we we were passing right through Oriental and figured it would be a good place to fix our sail and get ourselves sorted out.

We pulled up to the free town dock in the morning after  spending a quiet night anchored in a river up from Morehead.  

Now, a side note.  Over the course of the summer Cody and I have been almost exclusively in eachothers' company. As you might imagine, spending that much unalleviated time with one's significant other can seriously wear on the patience. That morning as we pulled up anchor we were at each other's throats, and it's seriously a miracle neither one of us jumped (or was pushed, with an anchor tied to their ankles) from the boat. It happens.  I think that we're much stronger as a partnership for the events of the summer, and we've definitely learned to work well as a team, but sometimes we wanted to kill eachother.  Again, it happens.  I have no idea how a couple could work together.  If Cody and I owned a restaurant together I'd definitely end up hitting him in the head with a fryer basket at some point.  

Anyway, spitting mad and no longer speaking to eachother we pulled up to the town dock in Oriental.  I noted with pleasure that the dock was located just across the street from the local coffee shop, as much of my grumpiness was due to not having any coffee yet that morning (we'd lost our cloth coffee filter overboard and Cody had been filtering his through an old UNR Cycling Team sock - no thank you).  After we docked an older couple came up to us to talk about the boat.  It turned out they were bonafide seapeople, having lived aboard for 20 years and made several Atlantic crossings.  They were incredibly friendly, offering to drive us to the grocery store, and bring us to their home to shower and do laundry.  It was really fun talking to them, and we would get another chance later in the day.  We talked to them about our sail problem and they immediately called a couple they knew who does sail repairs.  The couple drove right down to inspect our sail, give us an estimate, and took it home with them, promising it by the next morning (mind you, this as a sunday).  

We hadn't had breakfast so we turned down the offer for the ride and grabbed a cup of coffee and a bearclaw before walking to the grocery store.  After being on the boat for so long it's lovely to just be able to walk (despite offers from at least half a dozen other people offering to drive us to the store).

The local grocery store was nice and shockingly inexpensive.  As we walked back toward the boat an older woman stopped in the road to offer us a ride back to the docks.  We were fairly loaded down so we accepted.  

We had a steady stream of visitors to the boat all day.  At one point we walked over to an art gallery across the street to look around.  As we were looking at some neat paintings another older couple  came into the gallery and walked over to talk to us.  They had seen the boat and were trimaran owners themselves.  Also extremely accomplished sailors.  As the day progressed we heard from a number of people, "Oh, you should meet Manfred Rott!  He and his wife have sailed all over teh place nd have great stories."  And we did!  They came and sought us out.  We felt special.  

We received a call from the sail makers in the afternoon and they told us they'd finished our repair early (on Sunday!).  We walked down to pick it up and chatted for a while.  They told us about the town watermelon social later in the day and said we should walk down to it.  Apparently a number of years ago a local watermelon grower had brought his harvest to market only to be offered a ridiculously low price.  Screw this, he said, and he gave all the watermelon to the town in the form of a watermelon social.  His wife, 96 years young, and kids still hold the social every year.  We walked down to the social that afternoon and gorged on watermelon and had another chance to talk to Anne and Neville.  Also in attendence were a number of other older couples, one of whom had circumnavigated twice and the other who had a couple transatlantics.  It was really inspring and fun to talk to them all.

Back at the dock we met another couple who had pulled in for the evening.  They were from Bozeman, MT, of all places.  They had two grown kids and had left everything behind to buy a boat and cruise.  Cody asked them if they'd sailed before making the jump.  "Nope!" They'd lived their whole lives on a ranch in Montana.  What prompted them to make such a drastic change?  The reply was the best I've heard, "Life begins when you get outside your comfort zone.  Nobody wants to hear about us sitting around watching reruns."  Life begins when you get outside your comfort zone!  So perfect.

Anyway, we finally got tucked in for the night and finally watched A Perfect Storm.  Is it weird that neither of us had ever seen it?  We got a nice night of sleep and then pulled out early to head north.

We were luckily able to sail and make great time for the better part of the next day.  The wind was great heading across the sounds, and we were able to sail a number of rivers as well.  Finally we pulled into a marina to get some fuel.  We should have known from the look of the place that there was some bad mojo.  To get in we had to pass a breakwater, that appeared to be snow fencing like you'd see out west to keep the snow drifts from blowing across the road.  Additionally, the entire length of it was completely lined with seagulls.  Like from The Birds.  Like I'm pretty sure seagulls had eaten all the humans and now ran the town.  We pulled up to a dock, also completely inundated with seagulls, and scraped our pontoon up on it.  It was completely covered in seagull poop.  Completely.  Covered.  In.  Poop.  There was one other boat there and the guy came over as we were trying, unsuccessfully, to get tied and bumpered up before we did anymore damage to the boat.  He unhelpfully informed us that the dockmaster was gone (???) for a while, and while we waited for him so we could get fuel we should move over by his boat.  Gone?  No, we'll not be waiting for him to return, thanks very much.  He was stranded there because his alternator had gone out and he was waiting for a repair.  I wouldn't be surprised if he's still tied to that dock and has been completely enslaved by the seagull overlords.  It was a weird place.

Wait we did not, instead proceeding further on our course to another marina that did have fuel but, alas, no beer.  We wanted to get through the next stretch of canal before dark to make our next day a little shorter.  It ended up being a very pretty motor, and we saw two bald eagles!  We finally dropped anchor as the canal opened up into a larger river and had a nice calm night.

The next day we awoke to rain and fog, and I lay around in the cabin while Cody Grunden'ed up and got us moving.  We crossed the Albemarle Sound towards Elizabeth City and the wind was light and annoying and the waves choppy and annoying.  We reached Elizabeth City and decided to not stop, being not in the mood for any confederate sermonizing.  We proceeded to a marina to refuel for our next day of motoring through the Dismal Swamp, which happily stocked beer, then motored another couple miles and dropped anchor for the night.

Anyway, I guess the rest of the trip is going to have to wait for the next blog post, because this has gone on long enough.  Spoiler alert - we're home now, and now that things are feeling more settled I'm feeling incredibly wistful for the adventure and freedom of our liveaboard experience, which is motivating me to write this all down while it's still relatively fresh.  

 Docked in Oriental, NC.

 Watermelon Social!

 Yes.

 Fixed Mainsail.

We attracted some attention in Oriental and ended up on their website homepage.

Voyaging Part 2

As far as cities go (I'm more of a fan of locals sans people) Charleston is pretty cool.  We know our way around all right by now and it's pretty relaxing to anchor off of City Marina and just chill.  Exhausted as we were after our long sail up from Key Largo it was great having that time to recover.   We ended up staying an extra day - not because of Bertha so much as the strong northerly wind that was forcast.  No sense in fighting a headwind in somewhat larger seas (due to the hurricane).  When we'd been through Charleston on the trip south I'd wanted to go to the aquarium and we'd decided to skip it after a shockingly expensive trip to the Harris Teeter.  This time we went, and it was rad.

We departed on Wednesday morning in no particular rush.  We made coffee and breakfast and waited for the tide to start heading out.  Our goal was to make it to Ocracoke, NC, about 250 miles north.  We would have to head west to get around the Frying Pan Shoal before cutting north, passing just west of Cape Lookout and then going in the Ocracoke Inlet.  

Well, long story short, we didn't have as stellar of conditions for this leg of the trip as we'd had for the first.  Our first day and a half we covered barely 80 miles, making it just past the Frying Pan.  It was hot and we weren't moving.  It's difficult to express how disheartening it is to have no wind on a sailboat.  I read one book about circumnavigation and the author said something like, "and deep in the heart of the becalmed sailor lies the fear, however irrational, that the wind willl never return."  I'm completely paraphrasing, but it's sort of true.  

Anyway, on the second evening we were cooking dinner, moving along at a frustratingly sedate 1.5 knots, when the boat jybed hard as the wind abruptly switched from southerly at less than 5 knots to northerly at 15-20.  It was pretty alarming.  As a novice sailor I have a tendency to feel somewhat betrayed when the ocean or conditions do something unexpected, like a cat who thinks you're carrying her to the kitchen for dinner and then you plop her in the sink for a bath.  What - how - why?!?! How could you do this to me?!

Melodramatics aside, we had to tack west.  The wind increased and the seas built a bit.  Cody sailed us through the night.  We made surprising decent headway as we struggled against the stiff north wind. When I came on deck just before dawn Cody informed me that the mainsail had torn.  The seam just above the top battan had separated a month before and Cody had put a beautiful patch on it (sewing through all the old holes for three hours). The new rip was on either side of the patch job and it was not cool.  At this point we decided we should just take our chances with a questionable inlet and get out of the chop and north wind.  To get there we'd just drop our maimed main and motor.  

Now, our reliable little outboard is raised and lowered along an aluminum track.  The mechanism is getting a little old and the springs aren't so hot anymore.  At some point during the night we must've come hard off a wave and the impact caused the track in the motor mount to bend.  The result was that the engine was stuck in the lowest position and operation would cause it to suck in sea water.  Engines don't like that.  Cody at this point hadn't slept in far too long and was getting pretty frustrated trying to bend the mount back into place as we crashed through the chop with our sad sail. Sleep deprivation is an ugly thing.  Anyway, I suggested that we heave-to so that the motion of the boat and the drag on the motor would be lessened.  That did the trick and he was able to bend the track sufficiently that we were able to move the motor up a couple clicks.  Phew.  As we were talking about a game plan and looking at the inlet we were going to attempt to enter we noticed a half dozen dolphins swimming around the boat.  They were just sort of swimming around in circles, coming to the surface to give us some dolphin side-eye.  It was like they were checking up on us!  "You's guys OK?  Why isn't your green vessel moving?"  It was pretty amazing.  We gave them the a-okay and they swam off.  

Cody finally got to go to bed and I motored us through the nasty chop towards the inlet.  I heaved-to again for another hour or so hoping to have a favorable tide.  There were three huge Navy ships doing some sort of training exercises in the bay around us - blowing things up and stuff.  It was entertaining while we waited.  

We made it in the inlet, only running aground twice!  The tide chart I'd consulted had lied to me and we were, in fact, fighting a tide despite my best intentions.  C'est la vie.  We dropped anchor and both took a 4 hour nap.  It was amazing.  We woke up just long enough to heat up some prepared soup and watch a stupid movie, then fell back asleep for the night.  

When we awoke the next day the weather was gloriously cool!  We'd gone from baking heat to rain and a north wind during our sail, so the partially cloudy skies and cool air temperatures felt like heaven.  We motored up the ICW to Morehead City and tied up to a restaurant dock for lunch.  There were a couple other boats tied up there and a big deck with full tables adjacent to the dock.  When we were casting off I made some snarky comment to Cody about not waiting for me to get the bowline and he says everyone on the dock heard me and started cracking up.  I guess when you're at sea for a little while it's easy to forget that in public you might want to moderate the snarky commentary.  Or not.

At any rate, why were we on the ICW?

First a story  

When I raced bikes I would almost always reach a point in the season when I got burned out and didn't want to ride anymore.  Or, if I was racing road I wanted to ride my MTB, if I was racing CX I wanted to MTB and go to yoga or something.  It's as abrupt as loving it one day and waking up the next morning filled with dread for having to go to a race, or go do intervals.  

Well, I reached that threshold with the boating life.  When that north wind snuck up on us I was abruptly Over It, and wanted to do whatever the opposite of sailing is (drowning?). Cody talked to his brother Tuck when we were anchored south of Morehead and he offered to drive down and pick us up with the trailer.  Sold!  How much do I freaking owe my brother-in-law (and Elise!) after this trip?  They watched Riley and my kitties (they even learned Big KItty's spirit name, and it is Gandalf, and he will forever be known as such), and now this.  Um, maybe I can weed the greenhouse or something for you guys?  Or, uh, work on your bikes?  I lack the skills to be of much use to people who make and grow things for a living.  I try not to be, but I'm a killer of plants.  

But I digress.

So as you can see, our voyage back into a cruise northward, trying to get further up so Tuck doesn't have to drive as far.  And more on that later!

I love the aquarium! Cody says it's ok

Cap needs a captains hat, right?

Whatever else I have to say about being offshore, the sunsets are indisputably superior.

It was damp.

Voyaging Part 1

Key Largo to Charleston - 500 miles - 3.5 days

We departed Key Largo on Thursday morning at 3:00 AM.  Why 3?  For some reason it's become our agreed-upon appropriate hour of departure.  Cody took the first watch while I caught a couple extra hours of sleep - probably the only reason why I've agreed to our agreed-upon departure time.  We quickly progressed into the gulf stream, where we got 4 free knots from the current.  We made good progress with a southeastern wind, generally trying to stay out of the sun.  We heard that the heat index was up at 105.  Hot hot hot.  For some reason now, I can't remember much of our first day.  We started a log book, but after the first night I was the only one filling it out so it was, unsurprisingly, quickly abandoned.  My note in the "comments" section coming off watch on Thursday afternoon was, "F#$%ing hot."  At one point I saw a fin emerge off the starboard bow, and a large black shape moving just below the surface.  "Cody!  A dolphin, or shark, or whale or something!" I said.  As we passed 6 feet away from it we saw that it was a big whale shark!  15 feet long, very cool.

There were some thunderstorms rolling around the Florida coastline that evening but we threaded a couple needles and never got caught in one.  At West Palm Beach we diverted out of the strongest path of the gulf stream and paid a price for it when we were becalmed the next day.  We were moving at an excruciating 1 knot for a couple hours as we tried to make our way further west and into the stronger currents.  The gulf stream may throw some wacky weather at us, but nothing is worse than being becalmed, in Florida, when it's 105 degrees.  We folded out the bed and lay around the cabin, letting the autopilot guide us and popping out every 20 minutes or so to watch for boat traffic (you know what voyager Larry Pardey said about being becalmed?  Es tiempo por amor.)  The wind picked up later in the afternoon, and between that and the current we were ripping along at 10+ knots.  Cody had been dragging a fishing line and we caught a little bluefin tuna as I was beginning to cook dinner.  We probably wouldn't have kept it but it had a rough trip back up to the boat and was, well, dead by the time we pulled him in.  We had one of our nicest dinners of the trip - blackened tuna, red beans and rice, and steamed kale.  Pretty classy.

I took the first watch of the night while Cody tried to get some sleep.  The wind and seas built as the sun fell and I performed my first solo-sail-reefing.  Eventually the wind was gusty enough that I wanted to drop the jib, but this time I woke Cody up to help me out, then he went back to sleep.  Running on only the reefed main we were still moving along at 8+ knots, so I figured we were making good progress. Too much time spent staring at the compass made me a little seasick, so I awakened Cody an hour before the end of my watch and crawled into bed.

The wind dissipated throughout the night and by the time I relieved Cody in the morning we were flying full sail and had slowed down a bit.  We continued to lose speed as we once again met those mid-morning doldrums.  At this point we were 80 miles off the coast of the Georgia/Florida border and still 160 miles from Charleston.  Still, we were moving with the current.  Again we hunkered in the cabin during the afternoon, avoiding the blazing sun.  The wind and seas picked up earlier in the day, and we were happy to be moving along at 10 knots again.  Cody was taking a nap in the cabin  while I stood on deck enjoying the cooler evening air and our speed.  I saw a black fin emerge just ncxt to the starboard pontoon, then other off port.  Dolphins!  We were moving at 9 knots and they were swimming alongside us, keeping pace!  They moved behind us and raced along in our wake, and I could see that they were spotted dolphins.  "Cody!"  I kept calling him, but he was dead to the world.  Finally I knew I had to get him, this was so cool!  I shook him awake - he thought that something must be terribly wrong at first - and told him to come look at these dolphins.  Of course by then they were gone.  And I learned a valuable lesson - don't fall overboard while Cody's sleeping, he won't hear your screams.

Haha.

Anyway, Cody took the helm at 10 or so after we'd reefed the main to keep the boat from lurching around too much in the 20+ knot gusts.  I slept until 3:30 AM, then came on deck to give him a break.  He had reached the Hallucinatory Stage of sleeplessness, and once on deck I saw that all along the South Carolina coast, about 30 miles away, were massive thunderstorms with nonstop lightening strikes.  Nonetheless I sent him below to sleep and I reduced our sail hoping that by the time we reached the shore the storms would have dissipated.  The sun rose and I could see that they hadn't.  Oh well.  As I tracked the movement of the storms in front of us I saw that we were going to get hit no matter what course I took (if you don't count going backwards).  I decided to drop sail altogether and just motor.  I went below to tell Cody that I'd be starting the motor (he'd been asleep about 2.5 hours at this point).  I gently shook him awake and told him my plan.  He groggily replied, "Are we on a bouy or at anchor?"  I stifled a giggle and patted his head, replying, "We're underway, but you'll remember eventually."  I motored for a bit, then decided that was stupid, so I just killed the motor and we both went to sleep in the cabin for 2 hours while Tri-oomph drifted around in the storms.  We were out of any boat traffic and far way from anything to run aground on, so we figured we were safe.  During our 2 hour nap we drifted about 1.5 miles southeast, but it was definitely worth it for the restful nap.  By now we were only 26 miles from Charleston and surrounded by storms and choppy seas.  Donning our foul weather gear we motor sailed with the reefed main until the wind became more favorable, then raised the jib and killed the engine.

We reached Charleston and dropped anchor by 3 in the afternoon, making out first leg of this return voyage an even 3.5 days to cover the 500 miles.  We rejoyced in being out of Florida and back in Charleston, where we'd spent several days on the southbound journey.  It almost felt like coming home.  We walked the mile to downtown and got dinner at the bbq joint we'd eaten at with Noble when he'd been with us, then walked home (the boat) and got the most solid night of sleep I can remember ever experiencing.  This morning we met a nice guy from Minnesota on a lovely steel boat with a little terrier mix named Butter who rides on the front of his kayak and then sits on his lap when he pedals his bike wtih her paws on the handlebars.  It's amazing.  I cannot wait to be with my dog again.  Cannot.  Wait.  It's rainy and cool and it feels so flipping amazing to not be sweating and hot.  Tropical Storm Bertha is passing well offshore, and when we head back out to sea tomorrow the most we'll see from it is some 5 foot seas.

The truth is that we were out in stuff the last couple days that is completely safe for a competent sailor, but would have scared the life out of me a couple weeks ago.  I'm so happy with how we managed everything and worked as a team.  I'm thrilled with how Tri-oomph handled everything, and I'm happy to say that I am understanding what she has to say, instead of just trying to intuit what needs to be done (like being able to feel from the handling if sail needs to be reduced or trimmed, rather than having to guess or ask Cody).  We could not have done this trip without our amazing autopilot, a Raymarine ST1000 we've named Martha.  Bless you, Martha.

Our next stop is Ocracoke, although there's a very good chance we won't stop at all.  We'll go out and around the Frying Pan, around Lookout Shoals, and into Ocracoke inlet.  From there we'll sail up the Pamlico Sound and motor through the Dismal Swamp Canal (I'm excited to see the lock operator, Robert, again and share danish and coffee with him again).  From Norfolk, VA it's only 400 miles to Massachusetts, and we hope conditions allow us to make it in a straight shot.  Through the canal, across Massachusetts Bay, and into Gloucester.  It's too early to start thinking about the implications of the end of a fantastic adventure, but never to soon to get excited to see my dog.

You just can't beat the sunsets at sea.

Foul weather-ready.

Hello, Charleston!

That was a really boring collection of photos given the awesomeness of the trip. I'll do better next time.