It's kind of strange being back in these waters. We have such good and bad memories of our previous time at Cooly's. Not to mention Ft. Lauderdale was the jumping off point from where we left the US almost five years ago. We've had so many experiences, seen so much and met so many people since we've left. It almost seems like it was all a dream and now we're waking up. I guess "Living the Dream" really does fit.
We departed Lake Worth yesterday morning. We actually received an email from our friend Wolfgang on s/v Momo late the previous night. He was anchored 5 miles north of us waiting for Momo to be loaded on a freighter for shipping back to Europe. If we had spent more time there it would have been so good to see him. The weather window was short forcing us to get moving or sit and wait again. Sorry Wolfgang, hopefully we meet in the Canaries.
We left the inlet and traveled about 5 miles out into the Gulf Stream once again. And once again it was too lumpy for our liking. The problem is the weather window is closing; it's either go now or wait the 10 plus days for another window. We could always motor up the ICW but we really want to do some sailing! So we decided to sail a bit west, back toward land, and run north along the western edge of the Gulf Stream. This worked out great. We had 15 knots of wind, 2 to 4 foot seas and a 1 to 2 knot current helping us northward. We sailed between 6.5 and 10 knots until 2:00 am when the wind dropped below 7. We started motor sailing and headed more toward the center of the stream as the waves were dropping along with the wind. It was a good night. Not too lumpy and not a whole lot of other boats. We made ~200 miles in the first 24 hours. We know we're going to loose the 3 knot current the closer we get to the Carolinas and back toward land. Right now (Friday 6/10 @10:30 am) we're just making the best time we can. Tomorrow we'll need to decide where to make landfall based on a daylight arrival. We do not want to get to Beaufort in the dark. It would be way too difficult to navigate the several miles to the anchorage, as there are several marked channels and strong currents inside the inlet. We could head into the Cape Fear River or maybe a little further north to Wrightsville Beach. Both places are 80 and 70 miles closer, respectively. There is also a hook of land at the bottom of the outer banks known as Cape Lookout that might be doable at night. Cape Lookout is about 5 miles from the Beaufort inlet and it might allow us to anchor safety for a few hours and then travel through the inlet in the morning light. We'll see...
From
The Trip Home
The water here in the middle of the Gulf Stream is 86.8 deg and a deep blue. It is 400 fathoms deep or 2400 feet deep and every now and then for no reason that we can see the water almost boils. We will be sailing along in smooth water and up ahead we'll see white caps. We get there, there are confused waves bouncing up and down everywhere for four or five minutes and then it's all-calm again. Weird...
Saturday- The wind died around 2:00am we were only making 5 knots mostly because of the current. At 5:00am I woke for my shift and started the motor since we were now making 4 knots. Just after 6:00am I set a fishing rod out. Not because we need more fish but just for something to do. We still have a lot of Mahi and Cero Mackerel in the freezer. Around 6:30 I saw the fishing line pull, the rod bent, and a big splash a hundred feet behind Tashmoo. That was it - it was over. I assume it was a large Wahoo since the line was cut clean. I had an 18" steel leader in front of the lure but whatever it was, was big with sharp teeth. I went to get another fishing lure. Cindy has a habit of finding better places to store things even after five years of living on Tashmoo. She must have found a better place because the lures were not in her last place. She was asleep so, so much for the new lure. I went back to the cockpit and sat, wondering what it was that now has my new lure as face jewelry. I decided to put out our other fishing setup. It's a Cuban yoyo with 150# line and a cedar plug. Around 7:30 I notice something on that line. I pulled in a nice 2 foot long Mahi. It was hooked in a bad way and would not have lived had I let it go so, it's in the freezer next to the other fish... Sea temp today hit 89.9!
We sailed straight into the Beaufort Inlet just after 8:00am, perfect timing. We were headed toward Beaufort center where we planned on anchoring in Taylor Creek. Enroute Cindy called Tom and Doris of s/v Footloose. They had asked if we wanted a slip at their yacht club. They hooked us up! We turned around and headed up the ICW to the yacht club. It was low tide when we arrived at 9:30am. I saw 5.4' of water heading down the private channel to the club. Tom was on the dock pointing at our slip. It is not a big yacht basin so I just bowed in rather that trying anything fancy like backing in. After we were in the slip we were on the dock talking to Doris and Tom and I notice the wind was perfect for manually turning Tashmoo around. Tom and I stayed on the dock while Cindy and Doris were on Tashmoo. Tom and I pulled Tashmoo back as far as we could with lines and then let the stern go. The wind pushed the stern out and around as we pulled the bow windward. 10 minutes later Tashmoo was stern into the slip. This will make it easy to leave. Although at $10/day I'm not sure we'll want too...
From
The Trip Home
I've got to say once again we are really enjoying the Carolinas. People are so friendly! We'll be walking down the road and the people driving by wave, people in their yards will stop what they are doing to chat. It's very nice. Today Cindy and I went out at low tide and dug little neck clams. I also caught a small fish and put it in a crab trap hanging off the side of Tashmoo. We now have crab to go with our clams for lunch tomorrow. Here's the weird thing; usually if we're somewhere and the weather is not good we're fine sitting and waiting out the weather before we move on. However, the weather is absolutely perfect here. It is sunny and in the mid 80's by day and low 70's by night. The wind is light and refreshing - very nice but... offshore the weather is not good. The winds are from the north and way too strong to go out. We feel like we should be moving north but it's a false feeling as we are perfectly comfortable here. Today several guys went out fishing from the yacht club. They came back with a wagon "full" of sea bass, mahi, ocean triggerfish, snapper and grouper. I mean hundreds of pounds of fish! I said, wow you had a good day! They sad it was average! Wow! There are loads of fish here! I did not expect to see that much variety.
From
The Trip Home
Cindy wrote and sent out a letter the other day saying we are back in the states and Tashmoo is for sale. We got a ton of email responses. Some people were sad to hear our plans, some responses were funny and some a bit sad. This short one from or friend Laurie cracked me up; "Please live in Massachusetts you goof balls, you will find jobs even if it takes a little while. I will kill you if you move away again." It was nice to hear that so many of you do still read our blog spite the lack of comments we receive! Thank you.
After five days in Beaufort the weather was still not great for an offshore passage. We decided to rent a car and see some more of North Carolina. We drove over 400 miles west to the Blue Ridge parkway. Spectacular scenery! We drove to and hiked up Mt. Mitchell, the highest point east of the Mississippi. Motorcycles were everywhere on these windy roads. We found a motel on Expedia for the night, The Mountaineer Inn in Asheville. The description said it needed updating but was clean. Hell, we've been traveling through third world countries, it couldn't be that bad. It was okay but for $80 it was over priced. The only thing it had going for it was that it was close to downtown Asheville. After dinner at a local restaurant we drove into town. There were street musicians performing everywhere. In a small park there were about 30 people playing drums with a couple hundred people listening and dancing. We joined in. The rhythm was like a heart beat. They played non-stop for hours. Very cool. Asheville is known for their arts and good restaurants, being home to several colleges.
From
The Trip Home
From
The Trip Home
The following day we drove further west to the Tennessee border and the famous "Tail of the Dragon" stretch of road. This road is a little over 11 miles long and has 318 banked turns. Fast bikes and fast cars have loads of fun on this road. On many of the corners there are professional photographers snapping pictures as you come around the corners. You can purchase these pictures later. There we were in our rented Hyundai Accent driving around the corners mixed in with $100K+ cars and fast race bikes. I wanted to look at pictures; maybe they keep them online for a while. I'm sure we must look pretty funny! We had great fun and the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains where some of the prettiest places we've been in the USA, a definite addition to our bucket list for a return trip. Our second night we stayed in Maggie Valley at a nice family owned motel on the river. Maggie Valley was hosting an owner's rally for Cam-Ams and the roads were loaded with them. We tried to go into the fairgrounds but it was by invitation only. We would have enjoyed test driving one and learning a bit more about them.
From
The Trip Home
Back on Tashmoo from driving 1200 miles in 3 days it felt good to be in our own bed after all the driving and motels. It felt good until 2:30am that is. 2:30 is the time that Tashmoo healed over far enough to knock things of off counters. Keep in mind that we are tied to a dock in a very protected boat basin. A storm came up fast, I mean fast! I woke at 2:15am and closed hatches as it was starting to sprinkle. I could hear thunder off in the distance, no big deal, we're in a slip right? At 2:30 the wind piped up to 30kn, then to 40, 50, 60... knots! I saw 62 knots on our wind indicator and I wasn't looking at it very long. I was too busy trying to make sure our lines didn't snap! Usually a storm like this doesn't last long, usually... Actually we don't usually get storms like this! This was not the case here. It lasted about 20 minutes and then came back and lasted another 20! Coming in from offshore over a week ago we passed under the Morehead-Beaufort Bridge about a mile up the ICW and real close to where we are now. They clocked 85 knots of wind on the bridge last night, and 91 knots at the nearby airport, which is well into hurricane force winds! Tashmoo and her crew were fine. Some other boats in the yacht club have bimini damage and dinghies where thrown about. We saw one sailboat on the hard that was blown off of its boat stands! I'm so glad we were in a slip and not on anchor or sailing! It's still not boring out here!
We where planning to leave Beaufort Tuesday afternoon. We had everything ready and I mean everything. We basically had the motor running and dock lines in hand to leave when I downloaded some last minute weather. I downloaded gribs and the lift index. Incase you don't know a GRIB is a gridded binary file containing a computer generated weather forecast. They are from NOAA. The Lift Index is a measure of atmospheric instability. Again it's a computer generated value of air temperature at ground level raised to ~18000 feet. The lower the number values the higher the chance for unstable conditions, ie. thunderstorms. The lowest number we've seen in the past was a -5.5 and we had strong thunder/lightning storms. Anyway, when I downloaded the Lift Index it said -9.2 for the next several days!!! At -9.2 there is a strong chance of tornadoes! To make a long story short, with long faces we left the dock lines tied and decided to go up the "ditch" the following day and not go around the outside of the Outer Banks.
Good news is that by staying another day we were able to visit with our friends Doris and Tom s/v Footloose who had been away all week and returned Tuesday afternoon. They have also decided to sell their 40' Caliber and have bought a 36' motorhome to do some stateside traveling. I think once the wanderlust bug finds us it never truly departs. It takes a different kind of person to give up the comforts of dirt dwelling life and become nomadic but once you get into that groove it is very comforting and difficult to give up. Well that afternoon John Warrington of Beaufort Yacht Sales, whose slip we were using, stopped by to invite us all to his house for dinner. John and Sondra prepared an awesome clam bake that we thoroughly enjoyed along with some good conversation. We owe Tom and Doris a big thank you for hooking us up with the slip and a big thank you to John and Sondra for their wonderful hospitality. Anybody looking to buy a boat in the Beaufort area, especially a Caliber, should get in touch with John.
Wednesday morning I was up early to study the tides. We had to leave the marina before low tide to have enough water to make it out the shallow entrance. I woke Cindy at 5:30am saying we either leave now or in 4 hours. She got up, splashed some water on her face and we dropped the dock lines and slowly and quietly slid out the entrance. It was sad leaving the yacht club. We had made some good friends there, not to mention the place is beautiful. We joked that if we had stayed there another week we would never leave. We would have made too many friends and fell in love with the place even more so. Many of the neighbors that lived around the marina had begun to stop by on their daily walks to chat. Some places are special. We made it out the channel and back onto the ICW without any issues. We turned Tashmoo north once again. This is a real scenic portion of the ICW. Small to medium size homes are spaced out with beautiful yards down to the waters edge. We motored until the Neusse River where we hoisted the sails and continued to the island of Ocracoke located on the inside of the Outer Banks. We were anchored in Ocracoke basin by 3:30pm. Live music was playing at a bar several hundred feet from Tashmoo. It was nice to listen to with a cool drink as the sun was setting for the day. Tomorrow is going to be a long one.
We departed Ocracoke at 6:30am with 85 miles to go to get to our next planned anchorage. We basically had two choices on how to head north from here to the Chesapeake. We could travel the official ICW, which is a longer run and would be all motoring since it's through narrow canals. The second choice would be sailing the length of Pamlico Sound, around Roanoke Island, and finally through Albermarle Sound. This path is a little shorter and should allow us to sail most of the way. We chose the latter. Unfortunately there are wild fires burning somewhere close by blowing so much smoke into the sound that visibility was down to ¼ mile at some points! Then there were other issues.... As we were approaching Roanoke Island I was looking at the charts once again. This is a very difficult area to get through in the best of concisions so I was double-checking the route. That's when I noticed the fine print on the chart mixed in with a bunch of other numbers. It read, "shoaling to 3.5 feet"! We need 5"! Yikes! I called our friend Ralph since he knows the east coast waters better than anyone I know. He said he thought we should be all right but it might get real skinny. I looked at the chart and it was 50 miles back to the other route! Ralph called a local captain to double check and he confirmed that we should be ok but to stay in the middle of the channel, which would be challenging with the lousy visibility. I said my thanks to Ralph and continued slowly into the channel to the east side of Roanoke. Visibility was ¼ to ½ mile making it almost impossible to see the next set of channel markers to line up the channel. That's when we found out they have changed the numbering on the channel markers! Our charts where now wrong! To add to the confusion this area's channels are constantly changing due to shifting sands and shoals. So moving forward with very limited visibility, bad charts and waiting to run aground in the 3.5' of water we were just a little nervous. We did fine the whole way though seeing 7' at the shallowest spots. Slowly but surely we made our way around Roanoke and into Albermarle Sound. We still had 30 miles to go and it was now 3:00.
We arrived at the spot on the ICW where we had planned to pull over and anchor for the night at 7:30pm. We turned to port to motor the 1.5 miles to the lea of the shore of an island as the sky was starting to look nasty. A few minutes later Cindy said, what's that, it looks like a waterspout! Yup, it was a large well formed water spout several miles from us in Ablemarle Sound! I guess the lift index was right! We set the hook where we felt comfortable with 100' of chain in 10' as we watched the spout move east. It seemed to be moving slowly away from us. Our radar showed a line of squalls for 40 miles behind the spout! Twenty minutes later we had gusts to 50 with torrential rain. Tashmoo was wagging back and forth on her anchor and visibility was about 50'. Fortunately, it didn't last long and we actually had a peaceful night with a nice dinner and glass of wine. One more thing... Not long after dark we saw lights from a boat approaching; it was sailboat coming to anchor in the same area. Now the anchorage is "big", about 2 miles long by 2.5 wide. We were the only boat there. They motored within 20 feet of us and asked what the depth was. I told them we were in 10 feet of water and the whole anchorage was 10 feet deep. They said thanks and continued another 40 feet and started to drop their hook, 60 @#$@%$%$$ feet from us! I didn't need the VHF I just said to them "could you please not anchor so close we're having some strong storms and might drag". They said "oh" and moved a couple hundred feet further away. Arrrrr.
Friday morning we hauled anchor around 7:00am. Cindy joked we should stay since there where a half dozen little neck clams stuck in the ball of mud on our anchor. We left with 55 miles to the next anchorage and a lot of bridges and one lock to deal with ahead of us. Saying there were a lot of bridges here is an understatement and they all operate on the ½ hour, not on demand. But, after all the bridges and a lock we finally arrived in Norfolk Va around 5:00pm. First stop was the fuel dock at a marina; we motored to the pump. The wind was just off of our port bow pushing us gently onto the dock. It was a light wind, so no problem. The dockhand came down to help us with the fuel. He said he was down this end of the dock anyway because he was walking the dock telling all the live-aboards that there was a bad storm coming. Great.... 30 minutes later we were ready to leave. While we were fueling, he washed the stern and starboard side and deck of the boat! Of course the wind had shifted and was now off of our port stern, which made it a little more of a challenge to maneuver our way out but no problems.
We anchored in a nice spot in the center of the Norfolk waterfront among many crab pot buoys. There was a festival of some sort going on onshore with lots of tents set up and live music. There were three other boats in the anchorage with us. Checking the weather it looks like the best window for an offshore run to Block Island is starting the following day. After that the weather heads down hill again. We would have liked to visit Norfolk and rest a day or two but Mother Nature has not been real cooperative lately. We fell asleep listening to a really bad band playing. The last song I remember as I was drifting off had the rock lyrics: "I like your belly, it's not smelly, it's like jelly". You just can't make this stuff up... At 2:45am the squalls came through. Heavy rain and maybe winds to 25. I sat up in the cockpit in raingear for and hour making sure we didn't drag. Cindy slept through the whole thing. Lucky girl.
Fair Winds
John & Cindy
S/V Tashmoo
sailtashmoo att yahoo dot com
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