At Sea. The fabled mid watch. Six miles off the South Carolina coast, sixty six miles southwest of the entrance to Cape Fear. We are making six knots with very little wind and running on one diesel. We would be making only about three knots if we hadn't fired up the port engine. As it is, we won't get to Wrightsville Beach, NC until well into tomorrow afternoon. But, it's our fist night leg. Too bad it is so hot everywhere on the East Cost. Even out here at midnight it is only passable cool. Most of the crew is below sleeping in air conditioned comfort, and I have my fingers crossed that the generator will continue to run all night. It ran fine for two hours this afternoon on a test. Then, this evening the first time we turned it on it lasted about thirty minutes. I checked the filters, added a little oil and water on the theory that it was overheating, and just as I thought we were out of the woods, it quit again. I let it sit for about an hour and it fired up again and has been running over an hour now so I am praying for a cool but noisy night for those below.

We arrived in Charleston yesterday afternoon. After a quick provisioning we headed to the City Marina figuring that we would have to spend several hours cleaning ZT after laying up for three weeks. We were pleasantly surprised to find her very clean as there had been several good rains over the period.

We had not even gotten unpacked when our great friends Bill and Donna Phillips showed up with Bills USNA room mate in tow to make up our crew for this leg to Norfolk.

Bill and Donna were our duplex mates in both of our first homes at 110 A&B Freedom Lane in Pensacola, Florida while both Bill and I started Navy Flight Training in the summer of 1966. We have been friends ever since and kept up with each other over the years. This is our second sail with them, and it seems like forty years went by in a flash.

As for Bill's boat school room mate, Skip Orser, he and I attended Coronado High School together, and he was on Coronado Beach that Saturday morning in 1958 when I was attacked and chewed up by a blue shark, thus earning the nick name "shark bait".

Skip was a nuclear sub guy for many years before joining civilian life as an engineer. Now retired, he and his wife Linda divide their time between homes in Raleigh and the NC beach below Cape Hatteras. Both are experienced sailors and we are glad to have Skip with us. Unfortunately, Linda was tied up with a local wedding.

We had a great Low Country grits and shrimp dinner at the Marina restaurant and visited late into the night catching up on the latest shipping news and grand kid stories.

This morning we took a windshield tour of Charleston and left the dock right a noon for our planned over night sail to Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina.


Skip was a great asset from the minute we started this morning. We weren?? t a half mile from the dock when the starboard engine quite from an overheat requiring the second water pump impeller replacement of this cruise. I'm beginning to believe that Volvo parts are not to be trusted as this time three of the rubber blades were broken off and had been ingested up the water cooling system. We disconnected the hoses and blew out the pieces and were back under way on two engines in less than an hour. It is always something on boats. You would think that being designed and built to exist in a tough environment that boats systems would be a lot tougher, but that is not the case. Constant vigilance and good luck is required to keep them up and running.

So now it's past midnight. The moon has set, and it is really black out. Nothing showing on the radar, and overhead a million stars. Very little wind so we now have fired up both diesels and are making seven plus knots with fifty eight miles to go to the channel marker, and maybe another fifteen after that to Wrightsville Beach. Hopefully we will be tied up there early tomorrow afternoon in time for a short nap before celebrating our longest passage.

The plan, or rather, our intention is to make the Norfolk Yacht Club by the 9th and stay there for a day or two before heading to the Annapolis area via Solomon's Island, MD, my kindergarten alma mater.