Saint James Plantation
15 November 2019
• Saint James Plantation Marina
by Michael and Barbara Turney • Cold and wet
Friday 15 November 2019
This morning was a lot more exciting than we had anticipated. Let me start at the beginning. We awoke this morning in calm albeit wet conditions. The light rain we experienced overnight was the only thing that foretold the coming storm. This is a nice anchorage, pretty much surrounded by Wrightsville Beach beach homes and condos with an odd conflict of light current and wind so that we spent most of the night with Nelleke sitting over her anchor rode. That is, with Nelleke pointing in one direction and the anchor streaming back along her hull astern. We had tried to set the anchor twice before we thought that we had a set on the third try. I can’t remember ever being aware of this happening before. I should have known better. We were up before daylight to breakfast and get ready for the morning as soon as the sun came up. We had finished and Barb had actually started the dishes and I was having a meeting with the board in the foreword head when the wind begin to pipe up. In moments the anchor alarm went off. I almost couldn’t believe it! Three times since we have owned the boat the anchor has dragged and all three times have been due to carelessness, stupidity or lack of attention on my part. You would think that I would know better.
Sigh!
Anyway. After a mad scramble to get the ineffective anchor raised and stowed we were underway and heading for our next stop. If it wasn’t so wet and miserable it probably could have been fun but it wasn’t. We made it to the St James Plantation Marina without any further mishaps, pumped out the holding tank and got settled into our dock space. This is a gated community with its own marina that rents out slips to transients at what is nearby the cheapest rate on the ICW. It is definitely the cheapest rate for a marina in this good state of repair. $1.25/ft if you are a BoatUS member, floating docks, pump out facilities, $1/wash, $1/dry laundry, generally nice. Just nothing much to do that is nearby is nearby within walking distance. Although I will say that I was a bit startled to see the place. Last time we were here was 9 years ago and a lot of development has taken place since then.
There are 3000 homes in town and a population of 8500 and the old lift bridge is gone replaced with a 65’ fixed bridge. The restaurant at the marina is cashless which seems odd until you realize that virtually all of the clientele are homeowners within the community and they can come there and eat, drink and party on and charge it to their membership account. You can’t drive up from the outside for a meal. We only got in because we arrived by boat. Kind of like a live in yacht club.
We topped off the fuel tanks and are pretty much ready for Sunday or Monday when we will be leaving if the weather permits.
For us now it looks like we will be making the rest of this part of the trip to Charleston at least in the ICW. We need to decide if we are going to push as hard as we can or take our time and explore some of the anchorages along the way. If the weather was nicer I would be opting for the latter but for the next week it doesn’t look like we will be so fortunate.
Weather like this takes all the fun out of cruising. Occasional bits of bad weather is something to deal with and serves to only punctuate the great times but this trip has been almost continual lousy wet cold windy weather with occasional nice days punctuating the crappy weather. I never thought that I would have these thoughts. Barb and I have even been discussing the advantages of a motor yacht for this sort of cruising. When you think about it, most of all our trips south have been inshore on the ICW. We may as well have had a motor boat. Then at least we would be steering from inside in a warm comfortable helm station.
Oh me.
Oh my.
What thoughts.
I think that the problem with the macerator is with a clogged pipe. Tomorrow when the weather is not fit for much else, I will disconnect the line to the macerator and snake it out. It took forever to empty the tank at the pump out station so I think there must be a clog or partial clog somewhere. Hopefully I can clear it. Barb is holding off doing a wash until I have done that so the clothes I am wearing can go into the wash.
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