Sunday, November 5, 2017
National Parks Dock
66 miles 9.8 Engine Hours
Underway 6:35AM Docked 2:52PM

We finally leave Manteo after a week of being here. Nice day although our body clocks are thrown off by the time change. It will be more light in the morning but getting dark near 5PM.

Nice ride down the Roanoke Sound and then the Pamlico. The passage is mostly the Pamlico sound with only two course changes over a period of 36.7 miles - about 5 hours. Thank you my trusty autopilot.

Susan and I are still adjusting to the sights and sounds of the new transmission and cooling components. We think the exhaust looks a bit lighter in color and maybe there is not as much water coming out the exhaust as before. We have three new components in the raw water path. I installed a new raw water impeller, the mechanic installed a new transmission cooler and exhaust elbow. The temperature gauge at the dash says all is fine. Still I get my temperature gun out and scan the exhaust manifold, exhaust elbow and various other places and everything is cool. In fact the last place the raw water flows into is the exhaust elbow and the temperature is 110°, which I think is very good. The raw water has cooled the oil cooler, heat exchanger and transmission cooler at that point. If we had a raw water restriction I’d guess the temperature would be much hotter. We are traveling south and the wind is NE about the same speed as the boat and the exhaust just kind of keeps up with you. So, I’ve dismissed this as NORMAL.

One nice improvement in entering Ocracoke is that the car ferries have installed AIS. This summer I actually wrote the NC ferry system and asked why they had not installed AIS, as it is required on vessels their size. I thought it might be a security issue as it makes them visible on the Internet. You can look at www.marinetraffic.com and see all the vessels in the world including Liquid Therapy when we are underway. Of course the Navy ships do not have AIS running to make them an easy target. And, lots of ships near piracy areas cut off their AIS transponders so the pirates can’t see those ships. Anyhow, I know I’m not going to get surprised by having to maneuver to get out of the way of the Ocracoke Ferries. I can see them on my AIS displays many miles away.
After docking and registering with the Park Service, we walked to SmacNallys restaurant. It was 4-ish and too early for dinner but we ordered Mahi salad to go as they were going to close the grill at 4:30. They had Spanish Mackerel on the menu but had run out. Darn it! Not many visitors this time of the year and lots of restaurants are closed for the season. We struck up conversations with other people at the bar. It’s always fun to hear other people’s stories and we tell them ours. A guy sitting next to Susan was 69 and riding a bicycle from Miami to I’m not sure where. But here he was in Ocracoke. A couple on my side were from Alexandria, VA and had started out at 3:30AM to cope with the I95 traffic to come to Ocracoke for a few days.
That’s about it for now.
Today’s picture is the Swan Quarter Ferry coming back to life this morning.