July 2006 Vacation Cruising in Coastal North Carolina
Friday, July 7th

Happy birthday to me! After a long night of anchor watch duty, a short nap found me ready to face my birthday. Actually, Sheryl and I have agreed that birthdays and other holidays really hold no meaning for us. Every day that we are together is a special one. Therefore, it was vacation as usual for us.

The morning began with us taking freshwater showers from our solar shower bags. It was a brisk eye-opener, because the nighttime temps had reached down to the mid-60s, and no solar rays had hit the bags since yesterday afternoon. Sheryl decided to row Puffin to the public dock and explore the cute little town of Swansboro. Meanwhile, I stayed aboard and performed my favorite 3Rs: reading, writing, and relaxing.

Sheryl returned just in time for Jim, Sheryl's friend and co-worker, and his wife Brenda to show up in their 17ft skiff. After a tour of Ashiya, Jim & Brenda invited us to join them for a trip up to the Bogue Inlet, where we did some casting for bait which Jim could use for an afternoon of fishing. Unfortunately, my lingering paranoia over the holding capabilities of our anchor cut the afternoon with them short, as I needed to be back for the next 180-degree shift. At least I had a decent prediction of when the shift would occur, as the pattern had been about 2-3 hours after the tidal peak at Bogue Inlet.

We returned to Ashiya with enough time for a quick run into Swansboro, where Sheryl wanted to show me a used bookstore where we might re-stock our library. I could look at titles and pop my head out the door to see if the boat had shifted or not. When it looked primed to go, I left Sheryl with an armload of paperbacks and told her I would pick her up at the public dock when she was ready. I rowed out as Ashiya was making her turn, and in my haste to board her, I dropped the painter (line tied to the dinghy bow). As the current took Ashiya one way and the wind took Puffin another, I reflexively jumped in the water and grabbed the painter, then did a few quick side-strokes to get back to the stern ladder. Whew! That could have been real ugly. As it was, only one fishing boat anchored nearby saw my gaff.

As I changed into dry clothing and hung my wet stuff on the line, we went WAY, back over to the bridge! I started the engine and watched the shoreline, trying to figure out what I would do if we were, in fact, dragging anchor. The current was much stronger than the previous evening, because we had caught only the end of the tidal influx, and because the moon was on its way to becoming full, so each day caused greater tidal surges. I stewed and worried for nearly an hour, watching the fixed bridge which (in the event of anchor loss) we could crash into in under 60 seconds, but we remained steady, despite the steady gurgling of the water rushing around our hull. When Sheryl appeared and signaled from the public dock, I quickly rowed over to pick her up, indicated our current condition and rowed quickly back out to the boat. Sheryl was quite calm, in an "Oh, we are back where we were last night," kind of attitude. Perhaps my panic was unwarranted, but we had not been nearly this close to the bridge during the morning shift. Just one of the many reasons I love this woman is her ability to act as a counterpoint to my occasional overreaction to circumstances and situations.

Perhaps a map of the Swansboro anchorage would be of assistance while reading this text.

After dinner, I decided to take the dinghy ashore to take care of a full porto-head and get a few gallons of water for our tank from the public bathroom on the other side of the fixed bridge. Level-headed Sheryl decided to hang out on the boat, in the now decreasing tidal current, to ride out the switch back to the other side of the anchorage. I rowed the dingy to the public dock, walked through town, under the bridge and over to the public restroom. After completing the empty-fill tasks, I walked back under the bridge to find that Ashiya and Sheryl were doing a 180, but toward, rather than away from the waterfront, as we had done before. I quickened my pace tossed stuff into the dinghy, and began to row quickly back to Ashiya. I looked over my shoulder to see Sheryl smiling and patting her head (hoping that the universal watersports sign for O.K. would slow my rowing). Once close enough, she indicated that everything was alright, but I must not have seen her thumb and forefinger O.K. signal from the sidewalk. We decided that patting the top of one's head would be our constant non-verbal signal for "I'm alright."

Once aboard, Sheryl informed me that she had gotten bored and decided to play with the rudder. I had not noticed that the rudder had been hard over to the port side, keeping us away from the waterfront as the current flowed toward the bridge. Sheryl moved it to direct the current and move Ashiya closer so I wouldn't have to row as far. Isn't she brilliant?

Bottom line, my 38th birthday was an educational one. Here are some important learning points I can take away from this experience:

1. we never did drag anchor, the differences between the current strength at high and low tide against our hard-over rudder and the wind resulted in the different positions (relative to the bridge) in morning and evening

2. 150 feet of swing around a fixed point is a huge distance, much further than I would have guessed

3. tidal current can be delayed by a few hours from the time reported at an inlet, even just a few short miles from that inlet

4. use of the rudder in a strong current while at anchor may help adjust the boat position without moving the anchor

5. in hindsight, I don' t believe that we ever drug anchor (see evening spent in Oriental a few weeks ago), we simply need to learn how to judge distance when we swing on our anchor.




AUTHOR'S ADDENDUM (Posted 10/18/2006):
For many of you long-time readers, you will know that Sheryl and I have been following the online logs of Tom and Amy aboard Dream Catcher. This morning I awoke to read that they had fallen victim to the current in Swansboro. As Tom writes:

" We awoke at 5 am to the sounds of our wind generator disinegrating against the fixed 12 foot concrete bridge at the head of last nights anchorage. Not the way to start out the day.

There is a strong reversing current here and although we watched the boat ride the change 3 times last night, at some point we broke loose and rode the current into the bridge. Fortunately, the outer mast shroud caught us and kept the hull from actually touching the bridge."

I guess I don't feel so badly, after all, for my rampant paranoia. Prudence pays off in the end.

For the whole story on Tom and Amy's meeting with the bridge, see...Dream Catcher in Swansboro