Well today made up for yesterday's grind against the current. We got a current boost much of the day including a spectacular boost as we went up the Cape Fear River doing 9 knots over the ground!

We had calculated the timing to make sure we caught the flood tide on the Cape Fear River as the currents in it are strong enough that you really don't want to have to fight them. Well, 0800 came and one boat left the dock and the rest of us were getting ready in a leisurely sort of way. Suddenly a tugboat pushing a large barge came by and, the moment his wake passed, the docks exploded into frenetic activity as four sailboats, including Symphony, left the dock in less than minute! Why the sudden rush? The next portion of the ICW is traversed by several bridges including some that only open once per hour. The only exceptions are commercial traffic. So, by following along with the tug and barge, we essentially gained the keys to the bridges for the day...The tug had quite a little parade by the time we cleared the last bridge for the day.

The day was very nice in terms of weather, too: The thick morning clouds broke up and left bright sunshine and light, cook breezes behind. The only blot on the day was a sudden, loud, strange noise under the boat the seemed to be linked to our propulsion: It stopped when I throttled back. We got back underway without the noise for a mile or so and then, just as we had decided to it was too early to stop and we should press on for another couple of hours, it happened again. This time we decided we needed to investigate and turned around to the Oceana Marina which was only 200 yards away. After tying the boat to the dock and running the engine hard for 15 minutes I had failed to reproduce the noise so we called a diver to come and inspect the underwater stuff. He did (To Leslie and Evelyn's complete fascination), but found nothing interesting: One of our zincs was a little loose, and I had him replace both zincs while he was down there, but nothing was loose or broken and there was no indication that we had hit anything...That leaves the transmission and although the fluid level was correct, I changed it to be sure. Will the problem re-occur? Or have we actually fixed it with our fiddling around? We'll just have to see.

(34 03.575'N 77 53.296'W)