It was both an honor and a privilege to be invited to this year's Ocktoberfest celebration at the Whortonsville Yacht and Tractor Club. This annual event is generally restricted to the current slip holders at Ensign Harbor, but Nick kindly extended an invitation to us a few months ago. We have been looking forward to the reunion with friends ever since.

The trip from New Bern to Whortonsville is about 35 nautical miles by way of the Neuse River. Winds were ENE, which gave us the opportunity to sail for a few hours before we got to Minnesott Beach. From there we were reduced to motorsailing because the winds were directly from where we wanted to go. In order to gain any assistance from the sails, we had to sail a little off the wind making our progress a little slow going. In addition, the waves had built in this section of the Neuse to a point where several of the waves were sufficient to knock our speed down considerably.



We finally gave up on gaining any assistance from our sails and pointed the bow along the rhum line with engine alone. Wind and waves kept our average speed below 4 knots for the remainder of the afternoon. Sheryl was kind enough to keep an eye on our bouncy progress while I went below to rest my eyes (still trying to recover completely from last week's illness).

We arrived to a very welcome reception at Ensign Harbor, where we tied Prudence up to the end of the dock. Sheryl put things in order while I helped Nick and a couple of other dockmates move some chairs and tables from a local church for tomorrow's festivities.

Once back to the boat, I went for a quick swim to check out the growth on our depth sounder transducer. Fortunately, the water is still warm, so only a pair of swim trunks and a dive mask were required. The growth was fairly minimal, but I cleaned it off anyway. Still, though, our depth sounder continues to act up. It shows accurate numbers only when it is in the mood. Otherwise, it simply generates random numbers. Unfortunately, it rarely seems to be in the mood to show accurate values when we most need them.

We have ordered a replacement for the cockpit mounted 'display' portion of the sounder, in hopes that a quick fix can be had by swapping this out (which should be relatively simple and inexpensive). If the problem lies with the transducer, a fix will require hauling the boat out of the water. If we go to that effort and expense, we will probably go with an entirely new depth monitoring system. Looks like more research in our immediate future.

However, tonight is for socializing with old friends. It is good to be back in Whortonsville, enjoying the sounds of silence and a million stars in the sky.