Belhaven and waiting for weather

June 5, 2019

Raven is lopping in the harbor at Belhaven, NC as gusty winds and sloppy waves knock her about. It’s our second day here, stuck in harbor because we get cranky motoring into standing waves.

Days 2 and 3 of this trip were spent napping at anchor in South River. It’s so beautiful there, with just a few houses and a gravel quarry of sorts to one side of the river and endless trees on the other. After our first exciting 24 hours on this trip and the wild ride down the Neuse, we were content to watch thunderstorms rumble by on the big river and nap in the breeze funneling down the front hatchway.

A few houses on one side of South River.

On the other side...nothing (but one ghost town and a nice old spooky cemetery and lots and lots of bugs).

Restless by day 4, we upped anchor and headed north, across the Neuse. Winds of 12 and 13 knots invited us to raise the sails and enjoy the morning, which we did, but then the winds honked up to 18-20 and blew from the wrong direction and it got to be work, so we decided to motor. The wind howled right down our nose and we bucked our way across the river into three-foot standing waves that caused Raven to rear like a horse, slam down with a thud and stop, about once every five minutes. Not a calming ride, it was like dragging ourselves hand over hand at 2 knots for four hours until we were finally able to change direction and everything smoothed out. After a calm anchorage at Eastham Creek, we motored along the ICW and slid into the harbor here at Belhaven early afternoon yesterday, just in time for the wind to crank up and knock us around. NOAA forecast more of the same (20-25 knots) for the next couple of days, so we have decided to stay put.

We weren't the only ones who stopped into the harbor.

The reefing lines that David so laboriously installed in Pensacola have been nothing but a nuisance, dangling over the deck and over the bimini and trying to strangle us. Out on the river, as David was bringing in the jib, the darned thing tangled itself around the jib sheet in an actual knot. So one of his first chores was to take out two of the three reefing lines and stow them away in a locker. Some improvements aren’t.

In the morning quiet, David assembled the dinghy and we puttered into the town dock. We have plenty of supplies, but the fresh vegetables were getting pretty low and neither of us likes canned, so we went in search of a grocery. The only one here is over a mile from the dock, so we opted for the charming public library and some free wi-fi instead. They had “friends of the library” books for sale, so I had a nice browse and found several that looked good.

Beautiful downtown Belhaven. Could use some investment if you want to open a business in a lovely place.

Upon hearing that we were afoot and wanting to go to Food Lion, Shirley the Librarian (almost as good as Marian the Librarian in The Music Man) got on the phone and got us permission to use a golf cart. She then took a break and drove us down to the cart, about a quarter mile away! The friendliness and helpfulness of people we meet along the way never ceases to amaze and delight me. David fired up the cart, and we toddled off to the grocery store in the fresh air at about 15 mph. Once stocked up at the store, David dropped me and our bags at the dock, returned the cart, and walked back. By that time, the wind had swelled and the water was good and choppy. We bucked and sloshed our way back to the boat and were glad to reach the relative stability of planet Raven.

Lovely little waterfront town. Down this street is where you go to snag a golf cart.

Our three hours ashore consisted of accomplishing two errands, meeting three lovely ladies at the library, enjoying a three-mile round trip in a golf cart, and taking one moderately choppy and one really lumpy ride across the anchorage in the dinghy. It’s always a surprise at how long things take on a boat, but then we always have some sort of minor adventure, so who cares?

June 6

More waiting for weather. The wind has finally clocked around to a different direction, so we have stopped hobby-horsing. It’s supposed to be calm tomorrow, so we intend to set off early for a long (30+ mile) day. It turned hot today for the first time since we left New Bern. David has hooked up the wind scoop (imagine a kite flying from the forward hatch, acting as a wind funnel to send the breeze down into the cabin) to cool us off. We are wearing the absolute minimum of clothes and are grateful for the breeze and the shade of the cabin. A couple of shandies helped, as well. :) (To the uninitiated, “shandies” are a mixture of beer and ginger beer, served cold.)

Today’s accomplishments were making chicken salad, having a bath, and washing my hair. It’s great to feel clean and powdered and to have stuffed my wilted clothing into the laundry duffel. Baths on the boat are, by necessity, brief, using about 4 cups of water when I clean head to toe. When I was a kid, we called this sort of abbreviated wash “spit baths” because of the limited water. I spent a hot summer at our farm when I was about 12, and when the well went dry, we hauled water from the pond to flush the toilet and for baths used a tiny amount of water in a basin, filled from the big jug we bought in town. So spit baths are not new to me! I wash my hair in river water, rinsing with vinegar, and it comes out well and doesn’t use up anything from the tanks. David hooks up the wash down hose on deck and has a “shower” with the river water. This arrangement works great until it starts getting cold, at which point we tend to hunt for hot showers ashore!

Day One

Our anchorage at South River, looking back toward the Neuse. So quiet! One of our favorite places.

June 1, 2019

Dear Lord, what a year. We have travelled extensively by car and by plane (from New Bern to Texas, from New Bern to England, from England to Germany, from New Bern to Tennessee). We have been at the dock for far, far too long. We have wrestled with medical issues, doctors’ appointments, and endless trips to Walmart. We have been plagued the last month with hordes of weird, non-biting mosquitoes that die on deck by the thousands (hundreds of thousands) and by the spiders that have grown fat and far, far too large by eating only some of the mosquitoes. The weather has been cold for too long, and is now hot. Really hot. 98. No wind. Hot. Time to leave. Past time. A break in the heat forecast for Friday, May 31. That’s the date for pulling out.

Amid the usual last minute this, that, and the other, Raven finally left the dock at 9:15 a.m. Friends on the dock helped guide her out of the slip in a light wind (Raven loves to be contrary when backing – with their help, we actually went forward down the fairway). The sun sparkled on the water, the warm breeze sighed over the deck, and the sky shone blue and clear. We rumbled along under power for about 45 minutes and then hoisted sail. It’s a lovely moment when the sails catch and the growl of the motor is replaced by the swish of the wind and the swirl of the water along the hull.

Spotty wind swelled to ten or eleven knots and then died off to five or six knots, swelling and ebbing as we coasted down the Neuse River. Raven sails well with ten knots or more; in the lulls we just drifted along watching the bubbles in the water go by. Not in a hurry, we just lay back and watched the shoreline slide by (at 2.5 knots, it slid by very, very slowly).

The entertainment consisted of periodically sighting and squashing our stowaway spiders. I am the sort of person who captures spiders that wander into my dwelling and deposits them outside. After all, they perform a valuable service. But our plague of mosquitoes had fed the spider population until it was completely out of control. We must have had 100 spiders when we left the dock and their webs were everywhere, encrusted with uneaten mosquitoes. Spiders pirouetted from the rigging, swung down in our faces on their webs from the bimini, fell out of the sails, galloped across the deck, and tried more than once to cuddle down our necks. Enough already. Splat. Their bodies and the bodies of literally thousands of dead mosquitoes that carpeted Raven’s decks made us determined to hose down the deck with the washdown pump as soon as we were safe at anchor. As it turned out, that wasn’t necessary.

At the helm, I noticed the sky going awfully dark and took off my sunglasses. Sure enough, in front of us were a lot of gray curtains of rain falling in the distance. A look at the radar showed the showers (and a few alarming thuds of thunder) moving off to starboard, so I held course and hoped we’d skirt the worst of it. The weather cell was moving starboard, but also curving around toward us. David made the call to haul in the sails, due to fears of heavy gusts of wind. Under power, we chugged forward into some rain and winds of 15-22 knots. Not bad, all in all.

Then I looked behind me. Bad move. A very dark horizon loomed behind us and it was no great calculation to realize that with winds of 18 knots, it was going to catch us. It did!

Oops.

David shrugged into his waterproof jacket and I surrendered the wheel to him to go find my own. By the time I climbed back into the cockpit, the rain was lashing the boat sideways, the winds roared around us at a steady 30 knots, and the river was in 3-4’ chop. Basically, it blew like stink, drenched us to the bone, and hurled us across waves you expect to see in the ocean. Raven, of course, was completely unfazed (it helped that David was at the helm, guiding her through the water), shouldering aside the water and ignoring the 40 knot gusts that tried to push her off course.

The storm bludgeoned by fairly swiftly (an hour?) and, weirdly, David and I had a great time. Not for one moment were we scared, which probably goes to show our synapses are not all firing. Neither of us thought to put on our foulies, even though we had plenty of time between the time we saw the storm coming and the time it hit. Neither of us thought about life jackets until about 30 minutes into it, when I thought, “Oh, I guess I should put on a life jacket.”

I thought about the first thunderstorm we encountered 12 years ago, on our first trip, and how absolutely petrified I was, just rigid with fear. I guess I’m an old salt now. Emphasis on old.

We dropped the hook in South River about 5 p.m. The storm had rumbled off toward Pamlico Sound, on the other side of the Neuse from us, so anchoring was easy and mostly dry. I shucked off all my clothes in the cockpit, as I had no desire to dribble around below leaving puddles. We were both tired, especially David after an hour of manhandling the boat, so we just sort of lay around glassy-eyed.

I went to bed about seven, I think, and conked out shortly thereafter.

BAM! I shot out of the v-berth like a scalded cat. Lightening was crashing everywhere around us, illuminating the dark cabin like a strobe. Flash, blinding flash, CRASH, flash, BOOM. The thunderstorm was right on top of us. David stood, peering out the portholes, as the lightening pulsed through the sky above and around us. I huddled on the settee, counting seconds to see how far away the lightening was (5 miles? 3 miles? Too close!). As it began to move away, we just sat, stunned. Sleep was not an option, so we shared a cup of tea and gaped at each other. Weather in a house is just weather. Weather at anchor is an event.

As David said, grinning, “Day One.”

One of those days when it all goes wrong...

Below is the log I wrote just before we came in to the New Bern Grand Marina, plugged into some very welcome A/C and started a nice two-week rest, filled with old friends. Fortunately, days like the one I detail below are not that common!

[Hilde’s log]

As I write this, we are at anchor under driving rain in Goose Creek, about seven miles from New Bern where we have a slip a week from now. We are desperately hoping they can squeeze us in earlier. We have enough food for a day before we started eating really weird combinations of things, and I have no more clean underwear. It’s getting urgent.

It's always a good idea to avoid expectations when you travel, and that rule holds true even more so when you are cruising. However, when I've been out 12 days and am hot and sticky and smelly, I tend to romanticize coming ashore. I have visions of hot showers, food I did not cook, a dry boat, and maybe a bit of conversation with other boaters over a hot cup of something.

I certainly had all these expectations for our planned stop at Oriental, a tiny town on the banks of the Neuse River, well known among boaters in this area. We met some nice folks in Georgetown who waxed lyrical about the free town docks we could tie up to for 48 hours, and get water and a pumpout. We were looking forward to connecting with them again, and looking forward to those services. Our cruising book advised that we could anchor out if the docks were full. No problem!

This morning, all looked promising. The NOAA forecast was for thunderstorms in the afternoon, and we certainly didn’t want to cross the Neuse River in that. The Neuse is extremely wide, and is more like a bay than a river. The fetch is long and when the wind blows, it can work itself up into quite a froth.

So about 8 a.m. we pulled out of our anchorage at Cedar Creek and eased into the channel. Unlike in Texas, thunderstorms in this part of the world can lower the overall temperature about 15 degrees. Because we’d had rain all day yesterday, it was downright chilly, and as we began our crossing the wind piped up and it was downright cold. The waves were all over the place, and Raven bucked along throwing spray to one side and then the next. No problem! We were only an hour from civilization and hot coffee at The Bean (a local coffee shop we visited once, many moons ago, by car).

Well. We did get there in an hour, only to discover that the “free town docks” we’d been told about were at the end of a long, narrow channel and were occupied; docks to the right of us hosted a boat that had taken the “middle half” and left no room for us. Other possible places to anchor were very shallow or had been taken over by new dockage. If you draw 5’ or more, do not plan to anchor in Oriental. Ok, problem.

After our aborted attempt to anchor in shallow water, David went below to start the washdown pump to wash off the mucky anchor and chain (the switch is in the head). To his extreme frustration, he discovered the door to the head had locked itself (because I had inadvertently bumped the lock in our lumpy crossing). Dangling her mucky anchor and chain, Raven waddled over to the main channel and we dropped the muddy hook a second time. David went below to dismantle the door lock (read: take the lock completely off the door). Meantime, as he steamed and banged around below searching for tools and trying to see what he was doing, a small skiff with two older men motored by, pulling a fishing net, and the older of the two, a prune-faced fellow whose wife is no doubt thrilled that he spends all his time wandering around the creek, yelled at us to “Get out of the channel!”

So much for the "friendly" part of my daydream. Sheesh.

On top of all the rest, there is no T-Mobile phone service in Oriental, so any hope of getting weather or any other information we needed was quashed.

Once the door lock was removed and the anchor chain washed and in its locker, we “turned on our heel” and motored back out into the river. So much for daydreams of friendly, quaint little villages and hot coffee and showers and potato chips (that last is especially painful).

Cold, smelly, tired, frustrated, and chipless, we turned north and huffed our way up the river for about four hours, pulling into Goose Creek in the middle of one of those thunderstorms I wanted to avoid. We just caught the edge of it before setting the hook and diving below, getting drenched in the process. Shedding wet clothes, we have applied baby powder to our bodies and are drinking tea and have not been electrocuted, so I guess all is well that ends well.

[Here are photos we took of our anchorage, which we would have missed altogether if Oriental had worked out. Far better than my feeble daydreams!]

Our view from the Goose Creek anchorage once the rain stopped.

Sunset on Goose Creek. Dear Lord, it was beautiful!

Sunrise the next morning. Were we glad to be at anchor and not at a dock!

Pipeline Canal - Southport, NC

[Cap'n Dave's log]

Hi! Everyone:

It’s been over one year since you received tales of our travels on Raven. We are on the move again. 

We arrived in New Bern, NC, in October 2006, in time for the Southbound Cruisers’ Rendezvous. After six months of living aboard and over 4000 miles under the keel (from Galveston, TX, to Islesboro, ME, and back south to North Carolina) we were exhausted and ready for a break. We became enchanted by New Bern and early in 2007 decided to settle there. Our vision included part time jobs and time to sail on Pamlico Sound. Reality became more and more like the life we had left behind: long hours, no time off, and this time for little pay. When the Sheraton Marina doubled the dockage fees, we would have had to give up downtown living and add a commute to our lives. Enough! We began to convert Raven from live-aboard mode to cruising mode. Stuff had to be sorted, pared down, and stored. Maintenance that I’d ignored for too long had to be done. We got it all done just before the rate increase came into effect. We left Friday, November 30th, 2007.

The trip down the Neuse River was in sunshine but very cold. The air temp was 58 °F and the chilling effects of a 15 knot breeze easily penetrated our clothes. We toughed it out, enjoying the brilliant colors and the familiar scenery. Raven’s cabin was still a shambles, with clutter everywhere. All those last-minute “essential” supplies that hadn’t yet found permanent homes were scattered on settees, the vee berth, and the cabin sole. I knew that we’d sort it all out eventually – or heave them all overboard.

We turned into the Adams Creek Canal and settled into Cedar Creek for the night. One boat was already there and two more followed us in. It was wonderfully quiet, almost too quiet, causing our ears to ring. The familiar traffic sounds from Highway 70 had disappeared, replaced with bird calls and the gentle slap of water against the hull. We slept deep and hard.

We woke with the sun and got under way first thing. We find that having breakfast at anchor makes for a disproportionately late start. We prefer to get going, then enjoy breakfast as a warming snack as we travel. The air is always chill on the face at this time of year, so a hot cup of tea or coffee heats us from the inside.

Adams Creek Canal is relatively undeveloped compared to much of the Intracoastal Waterway. Other sections of the ICW are about as natural as Disney World. Large houses lie side by side, each one challenging Snow White’s Castle for grandeur. Many of them appear to be unoccupied; the yards are bare and no lights burn inside.

We negotiated Morehead City, passing under Highway 17 and past the large silos and warehouses. Both landmarks had become familiar to us on road trips to Beaufort, a town as charming as New Bern.

Just before dark, we turned into the harbor at Swansboro. We anchored between red #4 and the road bridge, per cruising guide instructions, but I doubt that we were out of the channel, as suggested. The waterfront buildings reminded me of Rockport, MA. At night, the windows were lit like a decorative Christmas village. We didn’t look too hard, instead preferring to hover over our little propane heater below. It was mighty cold.

We left Swansboro on Sunday morning at 0730, surprised at that hour to be the last of three boats to leave. We had no good plan for an anchorage that night. The closer of two possibilities was Sloop Point, which on the chart looked like swamp in the middle of nowhere, with a narrow, tricky, poorly marked channel. Further on was an nice looking anchorage at Wrightsville Beach, at the end of Motts Channel, which appeared to be narrow but well marked. It would be a late arrival, after dark. That became one element in our running aground.

Early that day, we managed to bump the keel at Green #61A. It was a temporary mark that indicated shoaling from an inlet. We found a way through about two boat lengths from the mark. It was, apparently, positioned in shallow water. S/v Gem, one of the two boats at anchor overnight in Swansboro was kind enough to hail us with a warning while they waited for the Onslow Beach Bridge to open. Their warning allowed us to slow to a crawl, so backing off was easy and I just gently tried different spots until Raven eased through.

After Surf City Bridge, which we timed to perfection, we came upon Sloop Point. It was as uninviting as we had feared, so we pressed on to Wrightsville Beach, undeterred by an arrival after dark. By setting waypoints for Figure Eight Island and Wrightsville Beach bridges into the GPS, we were able to arrive at each just prior to their scheduled openings. At the latter, I was already concerned by how dark it was, in spite of the city lights. Only a few hundred yards after passing the bridge I made the left turn into Motts Channel. I don’t know if the current carried us faster than I anticipated or if I was confused by the chart plotter being set to show “track up” instead of “north up”, but I made the turn at Green 25 too wide and put us hard aground. I could swing Raven to port or starboard using the rudder in forward, but she wouldn’t budge in reverse. We were broadside in the channel and clearly a hazard. I called Tow Boat US on the VHF and thirty minutes later we were secure at Dockside Marina and Restaurant, a mere 100 yards across the ICW from our grounding.

I can’t speak too highly of Tow Boat US, or of Boat US insurance. Each year, we cough up $120 for unlimited towing insurance. It is one of the few bills I don’t mind paying. I try not to use it, of course, but I was glad of it on this occasion. The bill for thirty minutes work was almost $600: time, gasoline, wear and tear for towing, and a premium for Sunday evening, I expect. The operator was cheerful and, more to the point, skillful. He passed me the one-inch polypropylene line, with instructions to attach it to something substantial. On Raven, that meant through a bow chock to one of the 8” bronze, foredeck cleats. Everything about a Cape Dory is “substantial” but I was momentarily worried when Raven tipped to twenty degrees or so as the bow was pulled around.

We enjoyed a couple of beers each in the restaurant bar, then walked back down the ramp to the fuel dock where Raven was dwarfed by a 70’ motor yacht tied within ten feet of her transom. Hilde rustled up some wonderful hot food and we were soon asleep, from too much excitement and good living.

Some early Monday morning rain arrived with very mild air, although the breeze was strong. We checked the weather forecast and decided it was better to travel when the air is warm and take our lumps with the gusts. We topped up the water tanks and dumped our trash. Neither diesel nor a pump out was available, but we were not desperate for either. We had been cruising with (our engine) Big Blue turning at only 2000 rpm, burning only half a gallon of fuel every hour. Just before we shoved off, Chris, a friend from New Bern, passed by on m/v Victory. He yelled greetings to us and we chatted on the VHF. Shoaling was bad at Masonboro Inlet, where Chris ran aground and was rescued by Tow Boat US. I got Raven through with one minor bump. My muscles were taught as bow strings, my dreading having to be rescued by Tow Boat US two days in a row. All was well until Carolina Beach Inlet, where Raven hit hard on the shoaling, marked by a temporary red buoy #152A, that forced us into the blue shallows of the chart plotter, far from the magenta line that indicates center channel. I was horrified, fearing my nightmare was coming true by the minute. This time, Raven backed off OK and I tried going by on the wrong side, closer to the magenta line. No go! I could see the shoaling across the supposed channel. I tried again, leaving the mark to starboard. No go! Was this an ICW mark or a returning channel marker for the inlet? There was no yellow reflective patch denoting an ICW mark. The reflective patch was red, which on a red buoy didn’t make any sense. Finally, with the red buoy about a boat length off starboard, Raven seemed to bump her way through. We touched several times, sometimes feeling like we were atop two sand ridges. It was not a good time, although I was hugely relieved once we were though.

We selected Pipeline Canal, just past Southport, as our anchorage for Monday night. It is “dog friendly”, according to the cruising guide and we didn’t want to force (our Schnauzer) Schnitzel to “explode” as she’d had to on Sunday. The current in Swansboro had been too strong for my dubious rowing skill, so Schnitzel had had to “bottle it” for over twenty-four hours. Our outboard motor had croaked our first night out. The fuel contained water and sludge. I managed to remove and clean the carburetor on the bridge deck, while we were under way and the weather was warm. I was delighted when the motor roared into life.

The cruising guide also mentioned a submerged dam at the entrance to Pipeline Canal. By this time I was phobic about running aground, but I was encouraged by our estimated arrival exactly at high tide. We entered the canal with three feet under the keel and discovered a beautiful, protected anchorage. Protection was a high priority since it had been blowing a steady 25 knots all afternoon, with gusts over 30. Although it was the peak of high tide, the flood was still running west into the ICW against the strong west wind, causing two feet tall standing waves that all but stopped our progress as we chugged west along the channel, with Big Blue spinning at 2500 rpm. Our run down the Cape Fear River from Carolina Beach to Southport had been a thrilling motor sail into the wind. The staysail helped us against the flooding tide but caused Raven to heel 20 degrees. At least on this stretch the wind and current were running together. It was huge fun to use the many lighted range marks, just like the big ships.

We had terrible trouble setting the anchor in the basin. After five tries with the CQR, we abandoned it in favor of the Danforth. It, too, refused to set, even with careful lowering by hand. Finally, I added twenty feet of chain between rode and shank. The extra weight kept the shank low and we haven’t budged since.

Tuesday, December 5th, 2007, we stood down and relaxed. We took Schnitzel ashore mid morning; the dinghy motor worked great. We walked the shoreline of the canal. We took the dinghy up the canal for a joy ride.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007, we again took Schnitzel for her morning walk along the canal, ending up at the entrance from the ICW. We stood in the still-brisk breeze and watched three motor yachts and one 40 foot plus sailboat chug their ways westbound. So far, so good!

My salient memories of the trip from New Bern so far must be the multiple groundings, more in the last few days than in many years of sailing. It is an inevitable part of the experience and usually not life-threatening. Nonetheless, my neck and shoulder muscles are still tense from hours at the helm, willing Raven safe passage through obviously dubious channels. It has convinced us to avoid Georgia’s ICW, especially since the entire state is under severe drought conditions. Weather-permitting, we shall hop from Beaufort, SC, to St. Mary’s River, on the Georgia-Florida state line.

Best regards to you all.