Sunday May 12: A View from the Penthouse

Friday was the final day on the water. By the time we managed to finish up the electrical work in the morning, it was after lunch and time to pull the boat.

Matt and Wendy were due to pick us up at the marina (about 45 minutes from their house - including the 20 minute ferry ride) on Saturday morning so we spent the night living aboard out of the water! The view of the marina from the flybridge is now like being on the top floor of the local hotel!

Nice place from which to view the sunset :-)

Saturday the initial unloading was freezer and fridge contents along with our bikes. They will stay at Matt and Wendy's in the garage. Good place for them to be out of the salty air - keeps the rust from getting worse while we're gone.

Our home out of the water actually works out well as the boat is sitting very close to the showers/restrooms and more importantly close enough that we are able to get power to the boat.

This means we can have out usual power supply for cooking, lights etc. Matt's climbing back down as we prepare to leave for the weekend.

Tomorrow we'll head back to the boat to complete a number jobs to prepare the boat to sit for the next 3 months. This is a great place for Yesterday's Dream to be for what we hope will be a mild hurricane season!

We also need to figure out how to approach the leaking shaft log. But that's for another day ....

For now we'll enjoy being with the kids and enjoying the view the sunsets over the Neuse River from the front yard.

The plan is Cleveland/Loudonville a week from Tuesday then on to Canada the following week.

Friday May 10: Wayfarer's Cove, NC

It was a good second day at Dudley's in Swansboro. The weather wasn't supposed to be all that great for traveling so we were staying put. It was up and bike to breakfast. Same place as yesterday – still good. Then ride a mile or so farther out the main highway. We were looking for a continuity tester. This handy $5 device will allow to trace wires easily. One end on one end of the wire and the other end of the suspected other end of the wire and presto! A light comes on! So much easier when trying to trace a wire that starts in the engine compartment and ends up in the electrical panel.

Sadly after spending the morning working, tracing and testing we didn't feel like we were any closer to a solution. Time to go – 11:30 target leave time with an actual leave time of noon.

We are still very close to Camp Lejeune – as was evidenced by the pair of helicopters that were apparently practicing taking off, flying over us and then landing. Take off, fly over us and land. Over and over. Practice must make perfect :-)

But it was really fun watching them – definitely had entertainment value!

By 3 pm we were were passing through Moorehead City – a mere 27 miles from our destination of Wayfarer's Cove on the Neuse River. It seemed funny to see large ships in the seeming small port. We're also very close to Beaufort but since we've been there by car a couple of time we decided to skip going there by boat.

The ICW travel is marked by miles with a marker placed every 5 miles. I don't think this is along the whole length though. What the 200 means is if you continue on the ICW you will in 200 miles reach Norfolk, VA. The sad thing? The first time we traveled this way, we thought 'mile 0' was New York City! Wow was that a shock!! Oh well, live and learn :-)

While piloting the boat, I have lots of time to think about what we need to do to get ready to change boats. Yesterday's Dream will stay on the Neuse River while we drive to Ontario and travel the Trent on Guppy. Sadly I never remember to bring paper up to the flybridge so notes end up on my hand. So the list is: have our mail sent to Matt/Wendy's, go into ActiveCaptain to make a note of missing markers 45A and 20, order enough medicine to carry us through September, check out getting some LED lights for Guppy, and take some earthquake putty to Guppy (it holds electronics and stuff very nicely for the rough water).

It was getting late (7:30) by the time we made the turn into Wayfarer's Cove just across the Neuse River from Matt and Wendy's home. The sand banks have been shifting for the last 6 months making the channel in interesting. An “S” curve – it seemed as though we wouldn't fit but we did.

However the catamaran that needs to leave here Monday CAN'T fit!! Sounds like there will be some dredging going on over the weekend.

And the electrical work continued. All day Thursday. Trying to make sense of how this boat is wired. How hard can this be??? Finally after much thinking, many drawings and sleeping on it, we figured it out. 

The real issue? Red wires (that are HOT) are spliced to BLACK wires (so now the black is HOT). 

Wouldn't be so bad but all of the OTHER red wires in the boat are NEUTRAL. Amazing to us.

Fortunately most of the work was done in the closet and not under the floor. Definitely a good thing!!

Steve was a very happy camper when the clamp on ammeter finally read “0” - which meant all of the current entering the boat also left the boat!!! (so 30 amps IN – 30 amps OUT = 0). What a battle this has been. Probably the most challenging issue to track down that we've dealt with on this 35 year old boat.

Cross it off of the list!!!

Tuesday May 7: Work in Swansboro

 Finally - a nice morning to go exploring! We found a fun breakfast place in the old downtown of Swansboro. It has a lot of Elvis stuff but also has many pictures of old cars (like from the 50's).

There was even a poster of the Lone Ranger (Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels - none of this Johnny Depp Tonto stuff).

The town itself is quite small. I think we could have ridden down every street in a sum total of 30 minutes or so. The marina here has a courtesy car but we really didn't need anything (main stores are about 5 miles or so away).

You can tell  you're in a small town when the main bank in town has rocking chairs on the front porch!

Steve found the breakfast place had some really nice flowers - exceptional is the way he termed it.












Many of the homes were from the 1700's and 1800's as the town was founded in the late 1700's. Very interesting place. The 'old downtown' has a variety of restaurants and gift shops.



The most surprising thing we saw was the flock of pink flamingos. I didn't realize they lived this far north :-)





The view riding back across the bridge was nice. Sure didn't look like this when we pulled in yesterday. A few sprinkles last night and that was it.

Today was a work day. We are again chasing down an electrical issue. It's becoming a familiar theme. Most likely a loose or corroded ground wire somewhere on the boat. And of course this means the front cabin, closet and dinette seat are all torn up. The sad thing is that working on the issue from 11 am until 5 pm didn't produce a solution. We think we've isolated the issue to a couple of places but still it just seems that this shouldn't be that hard to figure out.

Tomorrow is another day - the weather is supposed to be good and we will continue up the waterway. Should end up at the marina that is just about 20 minutes from Matt and Wendy's place in Havelock. I expect it will seem like we never left :-)

Monday May 6: Dudley's Marina in Swansboro, NC

Go? Don't go. Go? Yes. No. Maybe.

Finally this morning with the bridge opening in five minutes we decided to GO. Under the bridge and after 10 minutes we were in the lead of the pack! 5 sailboats, 1 trawler, 1 power boat and 1 catamaran.

Eventually we all settled into our spots: the powerboat first, the catamaran second, the trawlers third and the sailboats bringing up the rear.  It's the cruising speed that matters.


It was a day of timing bridges and watching the rains come and go. We actually thought we would miss most of the worst of the rains. I think it was wishful thinking! The storms would kind of come and go from off shore in a circular fashion.

Some wearing itself out before reaching shore (and us) and others not.

One was a REAL downpour that opened our eyes to the fact that our flybridge canvas clearly needed to be waterproofed again!

Fortunately Steve came up to the flybridge using an umbrella to try to stay dry coming up. Little did he know that I was going to confiscate it in order to stay dry under the canvas! Water was coming in everywhere through the canvas. The chart was soaked as was anything laying around inside what we though was a dry area. Guess that goes on the list of thing to do :-)

The timing of the bridges could not have been more perfect. First the one 5 minutes from the dock and the next one 3 hours away. We were hampered by currents again us big time (like 2 mph) so we had to compensate by exceeding our normal cruising speed.

The result was we made the 12 noon bridge by about 2 minutes! This is just too much stress. If we had missed the bridge, it did not open again until an hour later at 1 pm. The picture above are the sailboats behind us that just didn't quite have the speed to make it - sadly they have almost an hour to wait. Sometimes it sucks to be a sailboat .......

The friendly giant giraffe is still living at the same home as before! We enjoy seeing him every time we make this trip :-)


Then it was on to Camp Lejuene. The marines were out in full force with their what appeared to be 'duck boats' although we don't really know what they were. As you can see there was a long string of them. Fortunately we were very near the front when we joined them at an intersection in the waterway. They waved us forward - thank heavens - they are MUCH slower than we are! Really cool though!! There must have been about 30 of them.

And as always, there is the usual assortment of old equipment lining the ICW through the Camp Lejeune area. There are sometime live round (like gunfire) along here and then the Marines just close the waterway.

As you can see in the background we are just traveling along the Atlantic with narrow land masses between the ocean and the ICW.

After an overall rainy cloudy day, we arrived in Swansboro with a wonderful blue sky. Steve is finishing tying up the boat.

We saved an hour at the second bridge by not having to wait for the next opening and 30 minutes by just also making the 3rd bridge. So in and tied to the dock by 4 pm instead of arriving at 5:30 pm.

What a difference that made!

And a great sunset to boot. Can't ask for anything more ....

Sunday May 5: Wrightsville Beach, NC

After checking what the weather was doing, we finally decided to move on today a very short 14 miles to Wrightsville Beach.

This area (including Carolina Beach) is made of up of many areas that are nothing but sand dunes. There are a few along the waterway but farther out toward the ocean they seem to be everywhere.

Many small inlets along this stretch - the other side of the waterway is mostly homes and boat docks.

One of the reasons we moved on today was to be near the bridge that opens only on the hour. It's so much easier to time when we're docked 5 minutes from the bridge!

The next stretch of travel (about 8 hours worth) has 3 or 4 bridges that we will have to have raised and all are on a schedule so being near the first one really helps.

Plus it keeps the next leg of travel to a reasonable 8 hours instead of 10. This part of the ICW has limited marinas and even more limited anchorages! Normally we would just anchor at a place in Camp Lejeune but with the wind still predicted to be high, we'll likely pass it up this time around.

It was a good score on the bike ride though. A nice Harris Teeter grocery store and a CVS pharmacy with a Redbox! We started watching "The Hobbit" when we were at Matt and Wendy's but didn't have enough time to watch the whole thing.

We also scored by being in CVS during the quick downpour (which wasn't supposed to happen).

So tonight: The Hobbit is on the agenda. We really like Redbox - wish it would have been my idea to start something like that!

I keep forgetting to add the picture Wendy sent a while back: proof positive that there was work accomplished while we were staying at their place a few weeks ago.

Wendy and Matt had hosted a volunteer appreciation get-together and given the great view they have, the windows might as well be clean!

We'll be back there by the end of this week - wonder what work they have in store for us this time :-)  Seems like a fair trade for housing though so no complaints for us!

Saturday May 4: Carolina Beach State Park, NC

What a difference from the Waccamaw River! We're now toward the northern end of the Cape Fear River in North Carolina.

The choice today to travel the 14 miles up the Cape Fear River was pretty easy: fight the 2+ mph current and 20 mph winds or having the current going our way but the winds against us - producing some very nasty waves on this large river. Easy - fight the current and the wind.

It was an interesting trip and the docking was even more interesting with the winds and gusts. But as you can see we are tied up nicely to the park dock :-)

The view from the flybridge for the last couple of days has been rather boring - just a bunch of rain drops on the front plastic!

It's still cold travel and yesterday's squall was probably one of the worst we were in for a long time - very windy and rainy with gusty winds of ??

What's with this weather? It IS May after all, right?


The travel itself has actually been pretty boring - and I don't usually say that but after the tree line river, it's been a man made canal north of Myrtle Beach. From there it's mostly just a line of homes and docks along the waterway.

It's then that I started to notice the brightly colored homes - are we back in Florida? Quite surprising since I didn't realize that North Carolina was into such a variety of colors of houses.

So I just started taking pictures of the unusual ones.

Anyway, you get the idea :-)




We ended up spending Thursday night at a small marina, Coquina Marina, in North Myrtle Beach. It's a nice place and the lady that runs it is very nice and always glad to see us back. She lives on a large trawler in the marina. Her and her husband had just bought this boat and then he had a heart attack and died. Sadly they hadn't really had much of a chance to travel on it. Guess that's why we keep going while we can .....

Then last night we finally met up with Sailor Dave on Mary Lee!! The last time we saw Dave was in Oriental last fall as he was moving the boat south. He plans on being in Southport for a while yet working on building a dinghy (nesting dingy actually - it's quite interesting as one half fits inside the other half when stored. Click here to see a picture of one! The best picture is top row right.)

We really enjoyed seeing him again and it served to remind us of how fortunate we are to be able to have met such great people in our travels.

After joining us for breakfast this morning, he helped us off and off we were on our way to the Cape Fear River.

The most excitement was the freighter coming our way. I quickly moved out of the large ship channel to give it LOTS of clearance!


So now we wait for the weather to get nice again. Probably not going to happen for a few days though. May stay another day or may move on. We'll see .....

Sadly, I stepped out from behind the flybridge plastic to snap a picture of our favorite place in Southport - the Provision Company - and lost my visor to the wind. Overboard. Gone. Could have turned around but too windy to want to do that.

Guess I'll need to go to the Dolphin Research Center in Marathon to replace it!

Wednesday May 1: Anchored off of the Waccamaw River, SC

So surprise upon entering the marina bathroom last night and finding a Mansfield sink! I know it's probably weird but I always check to see if the china fixtures are from Mansfield Sanitary or not.

This was a business started in part by my grandfather and is where my dad worked most of his life. It was sold in the 70's but I still look for the brand. It's actually been a while ....

Again it was up and on the water by 7 am. What's with the early mornings? Truth be told I was awake by 6:30 anyway. This has got to stop!!!

Low tide when we left - in the mud pretty quickly but a fast reverse and a change of direction made short work of the low waters. It's so much easier traveling at high tide instead of low tide.

So you have to figure out the 6 things that are wrong in the picture to the right. All is revealed below - spoiler alert!

1. The sky is cloudy and the sun is not too be seen anywhere.

2. Calf length socks instead of the regular shoe toppers.

3. Jeans.

4.  Winter gloves.

5.  Insulated mug containing hot chocolate.

6.  The layered look of t-shirt, long sleeved denim shirt, and finally a windbreaker.

Yes - it was cold today! And yet we continue to move north :-)

But a pleasant day nonetheless. We are now north of Georgetown, SC on the Waccamaw River. A nice eagle was spotted along the river - it's such a change from the marshes of the last few days.

Many cypress trees and the almost always present osprey and their large nests line the waterway. This is one of the prettiest rivers on the trip north.






We had a nice current going so ended up traveling 75 miles today - picked out a nice anchorage just off of the river in Sandhole Creek. The charts said 7 feet at the first part of the creek but we found about 12 feet - which is fine. NE winds of 15 knots predicted - perfect place to be.







Wide enough to swing with the change of current - anchor sticking on the first try (awfully good in fact - we may be stuck on a log - who knows - we'll find out tomorrow morning :-))

Best of all? I am able to pick up an over-the-air Fox station tonight (our Direct TV dish can't pick up a signal when we anchor because the boat moves too much).

I mean, really, it IS American Idol and they are down to 4!


Tomorrow : likely stay somewhere in Myrtle Beach.