Heading into Southport

In case you missed it, the first part of the trip can be found here.  Continuing on...

During the second full day of sailing, the winds calmed down and we once again made our way using a combination of sailing and motor sailing in order to make reasonable headway.  I guess I can't complain though, if we were in the ditch, we would likely be motoring the whole way and, in addition, we would have to stop at night and that would make the trip take a lot longer. In the afternoon the wind started clocking around to the southwest, dead at our backs.  With the light winds, I decided to put up the spinnaker for a little while.  I do like that asymmetrical spinnaker, it seems to get the boat moving at over 1/2 the wind speed in broad reaches and downwind directions.

Spinnaker on the open ocean

Thus far I've typically planned trips using a speed of about 5 knots unless the trip is forecast to be beating directly into the wind and I want to actually sail it (I haven't figured out what speed I should use then, but am guessing about 2 knots). A good portion of this trip has been in excess of 5 knots, so it looked like we would be making it to Southport around 2am.  As evening arrived, the winds started picking up from the southwest and, a bit unexpected to me, the seas started picking up from the southeast to around 3 foot on a 5 second period.

Checking the weather forecast, it was now calling for scattered thunderstorms offshore in the Cape Fear area.  As night fell, we could see the thunderstorm clouds building to our east.  The lightning would light up the clouds.  It is a nice thing to watch...from a distance. Since the winds were continuing from the southwest and the offshore breezes would also come from the west, it should keep the storms to the east of us.  But since we had time anyway, we decided to turn the boat westward and make our way closer to shore.  We pointed the boat towards Myrtle Beach and made our way from 30 NM off the coast to around 6 NM.  When we got closer to shore, we also found a little calmer seas.

After the detour near Myrtle Beach, we ended up arriving outside of the Cape Fear river inlet at Southport around 6am.  Since we would be heading pretty much into the wind coming into the inlet, We went to start the engiines.  Unfortunately, the starboard engine, which had been just fine up to this point in the trip, decided not to wake up.  The attempt made the clicking sound that is reminiscent of a dead battery.  That same battery just happens to be the one that also starts the generator and the generator started just fine (and the voltages on the batteries seem fine).  My best guess was that there was some corrosion and the starter wasn't getting enough power, so I spent the next hour, as we slowly motored in on a single engine, down in the engine room cleaning all the starter connections.  Unfortunately that didn't help.  So, here we were again, one engine down and needing to navigate to a marina slip.

Another sunrise over the Atlantic

This time, having a bit more experience with the boat, I decided to give the marina a call and see if they have a dock I can get to without a lot of tight maneuvering.  They did, so I was able to bring the boat into the dock and then, using the lines, the crew walked it around the T-head to the slip.  The Southport marina also has a maintenance yard next door and, having just completed a 3 day passage, I was too tired to look into the problem myself.  They were able to send a technician over later that day and found that excessive corrosion inside the ground cable end had caused  the issue.  They cleaned up the cable, crimped on a new end, and added heat shrink to help protect it from future corrosion (the heat shrink on the original cable had failed and that is where the corrosion started).  Since I didn't have the tools or parts, it ended up being a good call to have them come do the work.

Tucker exploring the boat near the start of the trip

I guess I haven't really mentioned our furry crewmembers much.  For the most part, they are doing fine.  They seem to be adjusting to life on a mobile floating house OK.  To them it is probably just like a big car ride where we are taking all our stuff with us.  The one exception is dealing with the "potty mat".  Even though it should have the right smell to them, neither of them are really sure of the thing.  Tucker managed to do his business there after some coaxing, but our older dog Madison could only be convinced to pee there once.  She held her other business until she was back on shore.

Madison resting in the cockpit, tethered of course.

And for Pete, who jokingly mentioned something about eating Spam on passage, here is dinner the second evening...shrimp with a creamy tomato, garlic, and basil sauce freshly prepared en route.

Shrimp and pasta for dinner.

So, now we need to figure out where we are going from here since we still don't have a final destination in mind.  Oh, and I guess we have a couple more repairs to add to the list, so we may be looking for a place to haul out again.  Such is life on a boat.

Oriental to Dowry Creek - The Spinnaker

Day three of the second attempt to move the boat from Brunswick Southport to Deltaville was a combination of sailing in the Neuse river, Pamlico Sound and Pamlico river as well as some motoring in ICW canals.  Since this was a shorter day trip of only 50 nautical miles, there was no nighttime passage, just day sailing.

Since I have a sailboat, I much prefer sailing to motoring and the day started out with wind of around 10 knots from the southwest. This sort of wind wouldn't give us very good speed with the traditional genoa and main sails.  Fortunately boat came with an asymetrical spinnaker that we thought might be a better option, and since I've been dying to try it, we thought it was time to give it a try.

It took a little bit to figure out the best way to rig it on the boat, but with a little trial and error, we were able to get it setup reasonably well. We tacked the foot of the sail to the windward cleat on the beam that runs between the hulls and supports the forestay, ran the sheet line to a block attached to an eye mounted on the deck of the boat near the sheet winches, and attached the halyard.  We raised the spinnaker (housed in a dousing sock) and then raised the sock to unfurl the spinnaker.  Pretty soon we were sailing at 5 knots in an 8 knot apparent wind.

The Asymetrical Spinnaker

With the color transfer stains in the sail, it was apparent that it spent most of it's life stored in it's bag.  But on this day, we used it twice, once sailing the Neuse River and Pamlico Sound, and a second time when we crossed the Pamlico river.  I wonder if we used the sail more this day than it had ever been used.

After it's first use, when we rounded the corner from the Pamlico Sound into the Bay river, we had to douse the spinnaker and, in an increasing wind, had to tack several times to make it up the river.  But we made it most of the way to the first ICW canal without having to burn diesel, how cool is that.  Hearing the rush of the water past the hull without the drone of an engine is one of the true pleasures of sailing.

We did have to do some motoring, as it is extremely difficult to traverse a narrow canal under sail.  About 4pm we arrived at the Dowry Creek marina where we spent the night.

The marina had a little Memorial Day celebration and cookout for the locals and transient boaters that were there.  Like many of these sorts of gatherings, it is generally pot luck style.  The marina provided hot dogs and most of the boaters brought side dishes or other snacks (note to future cruisers...always have something on board that you can whip together to bring to a party...this sort of thing happens on a semi-regular basis).  I'm not sure who it was, but someone even made homemade strawberry ice cream that was a very welcome treat.  It was another great day of traveling by boat.