April 16, 2009 - 43.7 Miles - Mile Hammock Bay Anchorage

Captain’s prerogative, I changed my mind on the offshore sail plan. Last night was very cold and windy. The offshore forecast for the early morning was a little intimidating with 25 mph winds and gusts to 30. Although they were to tame down a bit later in the day, we needed the entire day if we were to make Wilmington, North Carolina. So we took the Intercoastal today. It proved to be the right thing to do. Tonight’s low is supposed to be 38 degrees. This is getting old. My attire this morning included an attractive pink sweater from our throwaway stash of warm clothing. The sweater, when was not worn in the traditional way, it was a very well wrapped headdress. A stocking cap would have been nice.

We pulled anchor around 7:30 AM this morning. I call Colleen the anchor monkey since it's such a pleasant job out here. The anchor usually comes up totally caked with mud. She wears rain gear just to keep the mud off her fine clothing.

This Intercoastal motoring with a 5.5-foot keel is very tiring. One wrong move and were stuck. Today required my 100% attention at all times. After 8-hours, I’m shot. Imagine driving your car down a gravel road using only a GPS navigation screen. You don’t get to look at the road, because in my case, it’s underwater. Then imagine that the GPS charts are not always perfect so you need another form of location verification. For me it’s the depth gauge. My eyes have to go back and forth between my computer screen and the depth gauge. When it’s raining, I have to tuck my computer up under the dodger, requiring me to walk back and forth between my depth indication and my computer. Today, I put the computer right in front of the depth gauge since it was sunny and damn hard work.

The dredged channel depth averages about 10-feet, which is plenty for me. But the average water depth outside this 50-foot wide roadway today was 3 to 5 feet. Now if you think 50-feet is wide, try steering a 46-foot boat down it for 8-hours. Occasional oncoming traffic comes into the picture. You glue your eyes to the depth gauge. When it starts to fall in increments of 1/10th of a foot, you start to get nervous. When it gets under 10, you have to figure out whether you’ve been slipping to the right or left of the channel. So you make a slight adjustment according to your best guess as to where the center is. Watch the depth, you’ll know momentarily if it was the wrong way. You do this constantly, back and forth. When it gets down to 7 and then 6 feet, you really panic knowing that it may be to late. So you take a guess and make a hard adjust.

We only had one fatality today. We went from 6 mph to zero in a second or two. Fully grounded on a shoal. The GPS said we were perfectly centered in the channel, but the depth gauge told me the water depth was 5-feet. The wind was strong and I wasn’t sure which way might be to freedom. A tow charge is $500; so I tell myself, don’t screw this up. As it turned out, the wind was forcing us further into trouble. I tried reversing but it wasn’t enough to overcome the mud and the wind. So I hit forward with full right rudder and it slowly swung the bow into the wind. It was the right maneuver. We slowly worked our way off the shoal and found our way back into the channel. The mud is somewhat forgiving if you don’t get too deep into it.

We saw lots of dolphins early today. They seem to like the Intercoastal, at least near Atlantic openings. I do look forward to the days of warm breezes where my morning checklists consist of lines and sails rather than engine oil and coolant. We probably get very close to 10 miles per gallon of diesel, in case anyone was wondering. That’s not really that bad for a 38-ton boat. Thank goodness diesel is pretty cheap right now.

Our overnight tonight is just about halfway to Wilmington, North Carolina from Bueafort. Slowly but surely, we’ll make our way down the coast. I have a 2002 YOLO crew friend, Denise McCauley, in Charleston, South Carolina that we are hoping to catch up with if we can time it right. One day at a time.